The Spark

Lancaster Airport is the third busiest in Pennsylvania.

However, the airport could be removed from the Essential Air Service program that was designed to ensure small communities maintain a minimal level of scheduled air service. Lancaster Airport’s Executive Director Ed Foster was on The Spark Monday and explained what EAS is,"The Essential Air Service program is a government subsidized program that allows service in communities where they otherwise might not have service. Historically, it's been limited. If you were within 40 miles of another airport and in 2020, that rule was omitted from the rules, which meant that our airport was eligible for Essential Air Service. We're one of only two airports in the whole country that that rule impacted."

Under the Essential Air Service program, airlines are subsidized up to $200 per passenger to fly out of the airports that are part of the program.

Whether Lancaster continues to be in the EAS program may be determined at the federal level by how many miles it is from Lancaster Airport near Lititz to Philadelphia International Airport. A 2020 amendment to EAS said an airport had to be over 70 miles from another airport to be eligible. Depending on the map used, Lancaster Airport is anywhere from 66 to 96 miles away from Philadelphia International if driving.

What would the ramifications be for Lancaster Airport if it wasn't part of Essential Air Service,"If we didn't have it, we would have no air service at all today. The only air service we have is on the Southern Airways Express that goes to Pittsburgh and Washington Dulles daily, about five or six flights a day. And it allows our local community to connect worldwide at those two airports to go on their vacations or business trips."

Foster he believes Lancaster could support larger planes that hold more passengers.

One of the criticism of the EAS program is it hasn't kept pace, since it was enacted in 1978 after airline deregulation, with changes in the airline industry like smaller, less expensive airlines servicing more rural airports. Foster said he agrees with part of that,"It has a national formula to fit a problem that, in my opinion, does not fix a national problem. It needs to be looked at more regionally or specific (to the airport). And that's the problem we have in our aviation model, is we try to come out with one fix that fixes everything. And you can't. The airports that have the Essential Air Service have a complex need for service."

Foster stopgap spending plan approved by Congress over the weekend should give Lancaster Airport a reprieve for the time being.

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Malin Morrison and Lucas Morrison are both the owners and head coaches of the Red Rose Thunder, which is Lancaster county's pro basketball team. The Red Rose Thunder were participants in the  East Coast Basketball League or ECBL which was Established in 2015 and last season played their games at McCaskey High School in Lancaster City. The ECBL is an independent basketball minor league with teams operating in Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and the Southeastern United States. The league showcases some of the finest basketball talent in the country, and is operated and governed by the league's team owners. This upcoming season will look a little different for the Red Rose Thunder, while Malin's son Lucas battle’s his health conditions.

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Donald Trump won 86% of the vote in heavily Republican Fulton County, Pennsylvania in 2020. But that didn’t stop the county from pursuing evidence of inaccuracies in the election and allowing outside access to the data from voting machines. Now, the county’s taxpayers could be on the hook for almost a half million dollars for the county’s action.

Bruce Siwy is the Pennsylvania State Capital Bureau Reporter for the USA Today Network, wrote about the latest this week and was on The Spark Friday.

Soon after the 2020 election, the Fulton County Commissioners authorized a company to look at the county's voting machines to determine whether there was any fraud or inaccuracies. None were found but then Fulton County hired a second company to look at the machine's data and Siwy said that's where the country encountered trouble,"The real question at this point is why they had it looked at a second time after the first report came out and essentially why this is being done also without any authorization. And that's really what's gotten them in hot water at this point in time, because of their actions, they've been found in contempt of court by a Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge, who has a special master from the Commonwealth Court to oversee the cases now. And because of their actions, again, the legal fees incurred and other fees are incurred now by the Department of State in relation to this case are now coming back to Fulton County in a way that they will pay for this, whether they have some sort of insurance arrangement, whether it comes out of the taxpayer dollars, whether they're personally liable. I don't believe that's been fully determined yet. And the final bill itself has not yet been determined either. The invoices that were submitted by the Department of State to the special master with Commonwealth Court earlier this year were only through June. So that doesn't cover any of the proceedings that happened in August, most recently where they've argued about the escrow agent that would ultimately take possession of the voting machines that had been inspected. And so there really isn't a final tally of this yet." Those invoices total more than $448,000.

A third-party escrow agent has been appointed to take control of the voting machines as Siwy explained,"My understanding of the situation is that because the court had found the county in contempt for allowing unauthorized access, now multiple times, they want it in the hands of a third party. They want basically these machines away from the commissioners because they've now been found to not be operating in faith when they're told not to touch the machines or have them look that they're doing it anyway."

Siwy was asked what's next,"I think that it's fair to question whether the county at any point is going to challenge this. I think it's also fair to question at any point if once those machines are in a neutral facility, any agency would like to take a look at them, including to see if anything was done with these machines in particular. So, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if we hear more about this. The county has fought tooth and nail from from the outset to try to keep possession, to have them continually looked at."

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Lancaster County Congressman Lloyd Smucker is up for re-election next year. Smucker has been in Congress since 2017 and usually wins re-election by a comfortable margin in a heavily Republican district.

One of Smucker’s largest campaign contributors is Adam Kidan, who served time in federal prison for fraud and conspiracy.

LNP investigative reporter Brett Sholtis reported this story and was with us on The Spark Friday.

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Lancaster LGBTQ+ Coalition, is committed to building a supportive and enriching community abundant in opportunities for LGBTQQIA+ individuals and those with a stake in creating a more inclusive Lancaster County. Executive Director Kay Foley, spoke with us on The Spark and stated that, they offer dynamic programming and services to meet the diverse needs of the Lancaster LGBTQ+ community. Their mission is to build supportive and enriching opportunities for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual individuals, along with others who identify with the LGBTQ+ community. 

Right now, you can donate to help LGBT Lancaster here:

Also: Every other Monday from 2pm-6pm they have free drop in HIV testing for ANYONE

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Dr. Johnny Vega’s story is one of tragedy, triumph and trusting your dopeness. By day, Dr. Vega was once a rising sophomore at Millersville University, but was living a double life. By night he was a drug dealer in the city of Lancaster, who later was arrested and served 10 years in federal prison. Today, Dr. Vega goes around the country to tell his tale of redemption, and mentoring youth on how to change their life-around regardless of their situation, in addition to running his own health and wellness brick and motar store-front in Lancaster. Dr. Vega has inspired a countless number of youth, and adults with his motivating words and story.

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Horticulturalist Erica Jo Shaffer made her monthly appearance on The Spark Tuesday to address a few early autumn topics.

A fall favorite -- mums,"There's garden mums and then there's perennial mums. So the perennial mums obviously are going to come back and you'd find those more at the garden centers on the tables with the rest of the perennials. However, you would maybe find some pots now amongst the other garden mums, but garden mums are, I mean it's temporary decoration, like we're moving through the seasons and it's something that you can put in a pot that's going to look cool for a couple of weeks."

What about planting bulbs to bloom in the spring,"There's a thing called forcing bulbs, which means you trick them and make them think they've gone through winter when they haven't. So you can pull that off with daffodils, grape hyacinths, regular hyacinth. That's where we get our Easter flowers they've been through the worst. And again tricked into thinking they've gone through winter. And those ones can absolutely be planted in the garden. But if you're going to use it as a house plant, then we're talking about paperweights, we're talking about Amaryllis and things like that that can go outside but won't make our winters."

Shaffer said it's a good time to buy plants now too,"Garden centers are looking right now to kind of like get those stock down, because, again, if we have a bad winter and all the plants are still in containers, then there's a threat that the the plant roots can actually freeze. So getting rid of the older stuff is beneficial. Plus, all the new stuff comes in in the spring so you can take advantage of the sales, know what you're buying, know where it needs to go and check the roots because and this time of the year, especially if something arrived at a garden center earlier like, say, in April, it's been being watered all summer long. It's been growing all summer long. If the plant is really root bound, like the roots have been circling and circling and circling, a lot of times they don't encircle. They won't grow out of those. And then three or four years down the road, you're like, Why does this thing not grow? And it never knew it had new soil to start moving into because the roots were so tight and circled.

Shaffer said roots can be checked just by pulling the plant up from the pot.

Find the recipe for the Blueberry Zucchini with Lemon Frosting here.

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Dr. Mark Kelley mother worked for the Manhattan Project in the head offices in Washington, DC from 1942 to 1946. Her responsibility as a clerical worker was to classify thousands of documents (Top Secret, Classified) passing through General Groves' office in DC as Oppenheimer and company worked to beat Germany to the atomic bomb. It was his mother's first job right out of high school, and unlike the young women who worked at Oak Ridge, TN did not know they were part of a weapons project, my mother knew exactly what we were doing and had some terrifying moments along the way.

After the Trinity Test (of the first bomb), someone brought radioactive slag (Trinitite) from the test site to the DC offices in a wooden box, which sat by his mother's desk for an extended period of time. No one warned the staff of the dangers of radiation, and as a result, his mother died at the age of 59 of the same type of cancer that developed in Japanese citizens exposed to the fall-out from the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

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Cows expel a lot of gas. They burp and have flatulence often. There are so many cattle in the world that all that gas is causing real problems by being a significant contributor to climate change.

In fact, the 89 million cattle in the U.S. are responsible for 25% of the nation’s yearly methane emissions. That’s equivalent to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by 650 million cars.

So, finding ways to reduce cow burps and flatulence is a serious issue.

Ad Crable, LNP’s outdoors columnist and a staff writer for the Chesapeake Bay Journal has written on the methane gas reducing efforts and was with us on The Spark Monday,"Even the media has kind of treated this problem as a joke for many years, but it's no longer a laughing matter. Methane gas coming from livestock is a major contributor to climate change in this country and has become the national environmental priority. The federal government is paying millions of dollars to Penn State, for example, to come up with some of the leading candidates for solutions to try to get feed cows, something where they would admit less methane.

Carbon dioxide gets most of the greenhouse gas attention, but Crable pointed out methane can be worse,"It's by far the most prevalent greenhouse gas out there (carbon dioxide). But methane, even though it lasts less in the environment, in the atmosphere, dissipates quicker. It's not as common as fossil fuels, carbon dioxide, but it's 20 to 25 times more potent in terms of heating the atmosphere. So it is a necessary target if we're going to meet our climate change goals, both national and state commitments to reducing greenhouse gases."

A little known fact: Crable said that 97% of methane gas from cows is through burps, not flatulence.

Crable indicated scientists seemed to have settled on two feed additives that have shown to reduce gas,"You would add that to the feed you give the cows, mix it in with their grain or corn, silage or whatever else they are eating. They both would be administered the same way. Now, the two leading candidates, one is a synthetic feed supplement that studies have shown can reduce methane emissions from each cow by 25 to 29%. The other finalist is a red seaweed found in tropical oceans around the world that can reduce methane by even more. But the problem with it is we can't raid the world's oceans. It would have to be done on a large scale by aquaculture. And some studies are also showing that the seaweed may cause dairy cows to eat less and produce less milk. And not insignificantly, it seems that the cows detest the taste of it."

The feed additive has been approved for us in 42 countries, but so far not in the United States. It's being studied.

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Lancaster City Alliance is a non-profit that is working to ensure Lancaster is a clean, safe, and vibrant city. They convene diverse stakeholders for the common good of Lancaster City, while harnessing the power of the private sector. Next week their premiere fundraiser Velocity kicks off, and is an evening that celebrates the city of Lancaster with music, art, a fashion show, food tastings from local restaurants, and a cocktail competition from local bartenders. This annual fundraiser is for the Lancaster City Alliance and the Downtown Investment District. 

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