Harry Campbell, Pennsylvania Director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, issued the following statement in response to the General Assembly’s passage of  House Bill 1565 (Hahn-R-Northampton) Wednesday.

“CBF is calling on Gov. Corbett to veto House Bill 1565, which now goes to his desk after passing both the House and Senate. We are disappointed in the passage of this bill, which removes protections for Pennsylvania’s most pristine streams and allows developers to cut down streamside trees. The bill is a huge step backward for the Commonwealth’s clean water efforts.

“Pennsylvania has a commitment to clean water, and streamside forested buffers are one of the most cost-effective, common-sense solutions to reducing pollution, managing floods, and maintaining iconic and economically important fish, like the brook trout. It simply does not make sense to allow developers to cut down existing trees, or to not require they be planted, on land development larger than one acre.

“The science is clear—planting and preserving trees along streams has innumerable benefits and has been widely adopted as a standard pollution prevention practice. Thousands of farmers and hundreds of developers, local governments, and businesses throughout the state have already planted and preserved buffers. These investments have all been made with the goal of managing polluted runoff, reducing flooding, and enhancing property values in the Keystone State.”

Friday, Harry Campbell sent a formal letter to Gov. Corbett asking him to veto the bill.  The text of the letter follows--

Dear Governor Corbett:

On behalf of the over 200,000 members of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, we urge you to veto House Bill 1565, a bill that will significantly weaken water quality protection in state designated ‘Special Protection Waters’ in Pennsylvania.

We ask you to veto this bill for several reasons:

— We believe this legislation reduces the ability of Pennsylvania to meet its commitments under the Chesapeake Bay Agreement, which you signed in August. The Bay Agreement and Pennsylvania’s obligations under the Clean Water Blueprint rely heavily on protecting and restoring forested stream buffers. We should be taking steps to encourage more stream buffers in more areas, not significantly weakening the requirement we have which covers just 4 percent of our watersheds as this bill does.

— Pennsylvania is obligated by the federal Clean Water Act to maintain and not degrade the water quality in designated Special Protection Watersheds.  We believe this legislation reduces the ability of the Commonwealth to meet this anti-degradation requirement and leaves us vulnerable to action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and federal courts determining that our water quality protection program does not meet minimum federal requirements.  We have made this point very clear in letters to both the Senate and House and in more detail.

— The options for meeting any buffer requirements listed in the bill are either not real options, extremely ambiguous, or effectively remove the buffer requirement and its benefits.  A large and growing body of scientific research concludes there are no practices or combination of practices—scientifically speaking—which are “substantially equivalent” to a forested riparian stream buffer.  The other option of allowing buffers to be placed, not at the point of the earth disturbance, but at some other location not only defeats the purpose of the forested buffer, but potentially puts its benefits nowhere near the impact. 

We understand there are some legitimate issues with the way the existing buffer requirement is administered and we have, through the legislative process, suggested changes like setting a deadline for review of these applications by the Department of Environmental Protection (“DEP”) and devoting more DEP staff time to their review. These suggestions have not given serious consideration, in our opinion, because the only solution proponents were willing to accept was eliminating the forested buffer requirement.

The science is clear—planting and preserving trees along streams has innumerable benefits and has been widely adopted as a standard pollution prevention practice. No other practice has been shown to be as effective at protecting and restoring streams. 

Thousands of farmers and hundreds of developers, local groups and governments, and businesses throughout the state have already planted and preserved buffers.  Simply stated, forested buffers are also the most cost-efficient form of water quality protection one can install and protect.

If this bill becomes law, Pennsylvania will take a big step away from its commitments under the Chesapeake Bay Agreement and leave itself vulnerable to actions under the federal Clean Water Act.  But even more importantly, the water quality in some of Pennsylvania’s best watersheds could be degraded forever.

We have appreciated the opportunities the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has had to discuss critical water quality issues with you, the staff in your office, and in the DEP and we thank you for considering our comments regarding this legislation.

Sincerely,

Harry Campbell

Pennsylvania Executive Director

Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Click Here if you want to contact Gov. Corbett and urge him to veto House Bill 1565.

10/20/2014