A joint federal-state commission on Wednesday voted to move ahead with a rulemaking that would prohibit horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing across a large swath of eastern Pennsylvania, as well as the states of New York, Delaware and New Jersey. In a meeting of the board of the Delaware Basin River Commission, commissioners voted to publish for public comment a set of revised draft regulations for drilling operations within the river basin, which includes portions of the Marcellus Shale. The vote was 3-1-1, with representatives of Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania voting yes, the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal government’s representative voting no, and the New Jersey representative abstaining, Kate Schmidt, a spokeswoman for the DRBC, said. Since the vote was a procedural resolution, no public hearing on it was required prior to commission consideration, Schmidt said. About 25 people spoke during the meeting’s open public comment session, […]