A small group of protesters gathered outside the Harrisburg headquarters of the state Department of Environmental Protection today. They say the agency is failing to protect the public from the risks associated with natural gas development.

About 50 people turned out for the protest, which was organized by several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter, Clean Water Action, and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. They also delivered hundreds of letters from concerned residents around the state to the agency.

PORTAGE, Pa. -- Randy Moyer hasn’t been able to work in 14 months.

He’s seen more than 40 doctors, has 10 prescriptions to his name and no less than eight inhalers stationed around his apartment.

Moyer said he began transporting brine, the wastewater from gas wells that have been hydraulically fractured, for a small hauling company in August 2011. He trucked brine from wells to treatment plants and back to wells, and sometimes cleaned out the storage tanks used to hold wastewater on drilling sites. By November 2011, the 49-year-old trucker was too ill to work. He suffered from dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, difficulty breathing, swollen lips and appendages, and a fiery red rash that covered about 50 percent of his body.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The shale gas drilling industry wants to use barges to move its potentially toxic wastewater across rivers and lakes to disposal sites across the country, but the U.S. Coast Guard must first decide whether it's safe.

"It may be hazardous," said Commander Michael Roldan, chief of the Coast Guard's Hazardous Material Division, stressing the word "may."

He told Public Source, an independent, nonprofit news organization based in Pittsburgh, that the waste can't currently be shipped by barge.