In May two significant programs in the Department of Environmental Protection celebrate their 10^th anniversary—the Land Recycling Program and DEP’s website.

Land Recycling: On May 19, 1995 Gov. Ridge and a bipartisan group of Senate and House members gathered in the former U.S. Steel's Tube Works in McKeesport on a rainy day to sign the Land Recycling and Environmental Standards Act into law at the site of an old steel plant.

Just over two years later, Gov. Ridge stood on the same site and cut the ribbon on the site of a new business that employed over 2,000 people, a symbol of what the program could do.

Since then dozens of states, the federal government and other countries looked to the “Pennsylvania Brownfields Law” as a model to follow.

Through 2004 the program has rehabilitated more than 1,700 brownfield sites across Pennsylvania providing places of employment for tens of thousands of people.

Progress continues today with new innovations like the Brownfields Team to build on the success of the past.

DEP just issued its Land Recycling Program 2003-2004 Annual Report which is now available online.

DEP Website: In May 1995 the Internet and the World Wide Web were something brand new, but the Department of Environmental Protection moved quickly to take advantage of the new technology.

Thanks to the ingenuity of Russ Stutzman, an aquatic biologist in DEP’s Southwest Regional Office, DEP became the first Pennsylvania state agency to have its own website to give citizens instant access to information from the department.

Over the years the website expanded dramatically from 20,000 hits a month in 1995 (which folks thought was outstanding) to a record 58 million hits in May of 2002 when hundreds of thousands of people logged on to watch the Peregrine Falcons at the Rachel Carson Building take their first tentative flights.

Take a trip through time in the online Way Back Machine and look at how DEP’s website (and the web) has evolved—

November 1996 January 1998 February 2000 September 2002

Present Day Department of Environmental Protection

Upcoming Birthdays: On June 28, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources celebrates its 10^th birthday and the Department of Environmental Protection celebrates its 35^th ; its roots going back to the original Department of Environmental Resources formed in 1970.

4/29/2005