The following are remarks delivered by former DEP Secretary David Hess at the PA Land Trust Association Conference in Gettysburg Thursday--

Over the course of this conference you will hear a lot about the tools you need to do a better job, laws and regulations, funding, the ins and outs of easements and experts will give their opinions on how to divine the real meaning of recent court decisions.

I want to talk about something different-- constructive emotion and passion.

In the 45 years… yes 45 years since the first Earth Day… much has happened.  We have institutionalized the environmental revolution.

Pennsylvanians like Rachel Carson, for whom we named the DEP/DCNR headquarters building, Bass A. Beck, Ralph Abele, Maurice Goddard, Rosalie Edge, Joseph Rothrock, Myra Dock, Joseph Rodale, Gifford Pinchot, Franklin Kury, Sam Morris and many others paved the way for us to be here today.

If you don’t know who these people are, do what my Dad, an encyclopedia salesman for 25 years, always said-- look it up!

We got rid of the big chunks floating in the air.  The big chunks floating in our water.

We started to reclaim our thousands of acres of abandoned mine lands.  We started to preserve thousands of acres of farmland, land for recreation and open space and other lands just because we needed to protect disappearing species of animals and plants.

We recycled.  We cleaned up hazardous waste sites.  We put brownfields back to productive use. We funded new wastewater and drinking water systems.

We gave farmers and watershed groups the tools they needed through the original Growing Greener to cleanup their farms and the streams that ran by their own houses.

Companies began to understand that going green didn’t mean doing something extra; it meant savings to the bottomline in energy, water and other costs.

We educated each new year’s crop of 7th graders in stewardship, recycling and promoted an environmental ethic.

We held people, groups and businesses up as examples for others to follow in monthly Green Works For Pennsylvania cable TV programs, newspaper inserts and in online videos and features like Watersheds.tv that reached hundreds of thousands of people.

The last newspaper insert at the end of 2002 resulted in 18,000 mail-in requests to DEP for more information about how to save energy, water, how to restore watersheds that went unanswered in 2003. Never in the history of environmental education programs targeting the general public had there been such a huge response.

In the 21 months I was privileged to be Secretary of DEP, I had the opportunity to travel to all 67 counties in Pennsylvania two-and-a-half times.

I saw people who took pride in the fact they cleaned up a local stream that for 125 years had been polluted by acid mine drainage.  Now they can take their grandkids fishing.

Some of these visits were very emotional.  People had tears in their eyes talking about everything they’ve done to clean up THEIR watershed.

These were tears of joy at being able to accomplish something they never thought was remotely possible.

You don’t get that sort of emotion with a windmill.

I saw businesses who took the initiative to go green; not because anyone told them to, but because they choose to be a leader.

On one trip to Susquehanna County, almost the entire town of Hopwood turned out to show off the stream buffers they installed and to hear presentations by local students on their environmental projects.

The local fire police had to direct traffic.

Has all this positive emotion and local leadership disappeared?  No.

Every year in my newsletter-- PA Environment Digest-- I pull together the stories from the past year where individuals, groups and businesses were recognized for their environmental accomplishments.

The last one in January was 117 articles long featuring hundreds of examples--

-- Agriculture Celebrates Recycling 1.8 Million Pounds Of Pesticide Containers

-- PA Volunteers Receive Top Honors At Keep America Beautiful Conference

-- PA Environmental Educators Recognize Award Winners

-- Philadelphia Recognized As A Leader In Energy Star Green Buildings

-- Hershey Company Recognized For Sustainability Efforts

-- PA Coal Alliance Recognizes Companies Going Beyond Regulatory Standards

-- John Dawes Recognized With The Federal Office Of Surface Mining ECHO Award

-- Paddle Without Pollution Wins National Green Paddle For Conservation Award

-- Lancaster County Honored For Commitment To Land Preservation

You get the idea.

Today’s environmental and conservation heros have not gone away, they just don’t get recognized in today’s 140 characters or less media.

Somehow in the mid- 2000s, it became fashionable to back away from promoting examples of how individuals, groups and business just like you and me can really make a difference in restoring, conserving and protecting the environment.

Environmental education was cut back.  Award programs abandoned.

Suddenly it was alright and acceptable to cut environmental funding for watershed projects, land conservation and other programs that supported local groups who took the initiative to make a difference.

But, in the face of these cuts, dedicated individuals, groups and businesses have persevered.  They continue their work.  They have never given up.

Instead they responded by being even more creative in developing local partnerships, sharing resources and as a result are still very effective.

To reverse this trend we need to regain the constructive emotion and passion of Rachel Carson, Ralph Abele, Maurice Goddard and Rosalie Edge.

We have to decide right now that it ISN’T alright if environmental funding and staff are cut for the 13th year in a row because we’re facing “tough times.”

We have to decide right now that it ISN’T alright if more programs designed to help people restore their own watersheds or permanently protect land in their own communities are left begging for money.

We have to decide right now that decision-makers should not be left off the hook for continuing the historic rollback of environmental programs over the last 12 years.

We have to harness the constructive emotion we had in the past and that thousands of people have now and focus that emotion on again making a difference for the environment.

And that means making a political difference.

The Growing Greener Coalition represents 17 core and over 200 affiliate environmental and conservation groups representing tens of thousands of members who care about the environment.

We need to harness and focus these voices to tell decision-makers what they have done to environmental programs over the 12 years is simply wrong. 

We have suffered more than our share of cuts.

You can no longer hide behind the wall of “times are tough.”

Times were tough when I was young and swam in a Susquehanna River where they still dredged coal fines from the river bottom.

Times were tough when people died in Donora, Pennsylvania because of air pollution.

Times were tough when the Glen Alden mine flooded the Susquehanna River with acid discharge killing hundreds of thousands of fish for the length of the lower Susquehanna.

Times were tough when you could almost walk across Presque Isle Bay because the algae blooms were so thick.

Times were tough when Pennsylvania’s entire first growth forests were clear cut and oil wells were drilled every 100 feet.

Times were tough when thousands of women and children evacuated within 10 miles of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

Times were tough when DEP staff found a Bible with a note to loved-ones from one of the passengers on Flight 93.

Times were tough when DEP staff and many state, local and federal partners, engineered the rescue of nine Quecreek miners.

Don’t tell me times are tough now.

People choose then to do the right thing, the tough thing and we have to encourage, no demand that they do it again.

Let’s bring back constructive emotion and passion and really make a difference.

But we can only do that together.

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5/11/2015