Kettle Creek Restoration Project

By David E. Hess, Former Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection

Note: These remarks were delivered at the 8th Annual Pennsylvania Conference on Abandoned Mine Reclamation August 25 in State College.

I want to take a minute right at the beginning to thank the organizers of this Conference, let’s give them a big round of applause…

Over 200 people are gathered here in one place to share expertise, tell “war stories” and share that feeling only watershed folks have-- that what you are doing today will benefit you, your children and many generations to come.

And you are not alone.

The Coldwater Conference this year attracted over 250, the Schuylkill River Congress another 200, the West Branch Symposium over 160, the Ohio River Watershed Celebration registration is near 700 for their September cruise.

By some counts there are over 580 community-based watershed organizations in Pennsylvania (there were just 125 or so before the original Growing Greener Watershed Program) and 11,000 volunteers in the Senior Environment Corps and watershed groups regularly doing water quality sampling.

And our numbers are growing.

Johnstown just had its first annual Riverfest to celebrate the success they’ve had in cleaning up the Stonycreek and Conemaugh Rivers, river sojourns last year attracted more than 14,000 participants and spectators.

The Toby Creek Watershed Association dedicated the Blue Valley Mine Drainage Treatment and Fish Culture Station that uses treated mine water to raise trout and are nearly finished with a 40 year effort to cleanup the entire watershed.

The folks on the Catawissa Creek in Schuylkill County just dedicated the Audenreid Mine Tunnel Treatment system that will clean up 34 miles of stream. Fish are already returning to parts of the stream for the first time in 75 years.

Over half the restoration work needed in the Dents Run Watershed has been finished or is under contract to be finished. All of the 250 acres of mine land restoration will be completed in 2007.

And just this week, they found shrimp in the Monongahela River…. Shrimp! Do you know how incredible that is?

Over the last year there were a variety of new initiatives to promote restoration and reach out to educate the public on the watershed problems and solutions.

Exelon joined with the Schuylkill River Heritage Area and the Delaware River Basin Commission to create a new watershed project grant program.

The Fish and Boat Commission formed a new division dedicated to habitat restoration and provided new funding for projects.

The Rising Nation River Journey organized by the Lenape Indians just finished traveling down the Delaware meeting watershed groups along the way to share ideas and reinforce the connection between the upper and lower Delaware.

A team of 12 high school students, members of Future Farmers of America, just completed a 30-day, 400 mile trip down the Susquehanna organized by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

“Looking to the River” a documentary by WVIA in Pittston and encouraged by the Susquehanna River Heartland Coalition, looked at water quality issues in the Middle, West and North Branches of the Susquehanna.

The Kettle Creek Watershed Association and its efforts were featured in a WPSU-TV documentary “Water: an Endangered Resource.”

Local artists, the Luzerne County Conservation District, the federal Office of Surface Mining and watershed groups collaborated to put on “Anthrascapes” the first art show incorporating iron oxide pigment recovered from mine drainage treatment plants around Wilkes-Barre.

And who can forget the Bassmasters Tournament highlighting how great the fishing is NOW around Pittsburgh. And they recently announced the Tournament is coming back in 2008!

Of course, if you were regular readers of Watershed Weekly by PA Organization for Watersheds and Rivers and www.PaEnvironmentDigest.com, you’d know all that! (Was that a commercial?)

This just touches the tip of the iceberg in terms of what watershed groups are doing in every corner of Pennsylvania and I apologize for the many groups and activities I left out.

You represent today’s environmentalists— dedicated to positive action, collaboration and education to achieve your goals.

You may have seen the study of watershed groups put out by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania in December, but I think the results are worth repeating here because it tells us how important you really are to protecting our environment today.

Penn State did the study and surveyed over 580 watershed organizations in 2002 and these were just some of their findings—

· Groups believe strongly in collaboration and cooperation to get environmental action, not protesting or litigation and use their relationships and networks to facilitate action;

· The typical watershed group felt that solutions to water quality problems lie at the level of the individual and education aimed at changing the attitudes of people and their actions;

· By working with local citizens and local governments, they demonstrate that the community has the capacity and the power to enact changes. They create energy and momentum around environmental issues and community activism in general;

· The typical watershed group is run by volunteers with a core group of 10 to 12 people who help manage the organization and they have about 50 members. A majority of groups have an average of at least six other major partners;

· Water quality concerns were a leading cause for the groups’ formation, but environmental education, habitat, recreation, land use planning, mining impacts, agricultural impacts and water supply. Sportsmen were often among the organizations’ founders;

· 44 percent formed within the previous 10 years, with more than 100 using grants from the state’s Growing Greener program, but nearly 25 percent formed before 1980; and

· The study concluded that watershed groups: empower local residents, develop local leaders, provide examples of successful community organizations, compliment other state and local environmental programs, get results, play an essential role in promoting the environment, and act as environmental advocates. (“Watershed Groups Have Gone Mainstream in Rural PA”)

I think one term from the report sums it up nicely – watershed folks think of themselves as “active environmentalists” not “environmental activists.”

In 1968, when Gov. Schaeffer signed into law Project 500 that dedicated $500 million in bond funds for primarily mine reclamation and doing an inventory of mine reclamation needs, the approach to spending those funds was much different.

On the project side, the old DER and its predecessor would come in, do the project and leave. There was very little connection to the local community in most cases.

What’s the difference today? You are!

You bring local knowledge and a commitment to cleaning up and keep your own watershed clean that can’t be duplicated.

How important are you? Just in terms of stretching state funding alone, you are invaluable-

· For every $1 the state gives you, you provide a $1.25 match. Since 1999 that means the state invested $172 million in projects and you brought another $215 million to the table; and

· Lately your contribution has grown even further with funding shifts. Just this week Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants were announced and the local project match more than tripled the grant funds offered-- $748,100 in grants, to $2,229,689 in match.

And the results? Thousands of acres of abandoned mine lands reclaimed, Hundreds of miles of streams cleaned up, and a feeling that people want to keep it that way.

We do have some challenges, but we also many opportunities ahead.

While 83 percent of Pennsylvania’s assessed streams meet water quality standards, there are over 4,645 miles still impaired by mine drainage.

We need to reauthorize the federal Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund to continue that stream of money coming to Pennsylvania – you’ll hear more on that tomorrow from John Dawes.

On the state level, the Governor and state legislators must find at least $40 million to permanently fund Hazardous Sites Cleanup Program in 2007-08. For the last two years that money was coming from the Growing Greener Fund, so the issue of how to fund watershed restoration projects will be front and center in the General Assembly.

New legislation just introduced – Senate Bill 1286 and House Bill 2878 – would create a Resource Enhancement and Protection Tax Credit Act to give farmers and landowners state tax credits for installing best management practices and forested stream buffers will probably move this Fall.

DEP is set to complete stream assessments and most TMDLs (Total Maximum Daily Load) Plans for all the watersheds in Pennsylvania at some point next year. So next comes the hard part—actually implementing those plans.

DEP can’t do it all alone because it will require lots of local effort to do restoration projects, education and building partnerships. Who best to do that but watershed groups?

I would strongly encourage you to become involved in these issues and help determine your own destiny.

Many times watershed groups are too busy doing their projects and dealing with issues in their own watersheds. That’s your strength.

But sometimes, you have to lift your chin up and look ahead. This is one of those times.

If you don’t get involved, someone else will be telling you what to do or worse, you will not have the resources to continue the good work you’ve started.

By being part of a watershed group you took your destiny in our own hands, that’s what I’m asking you to do here.

It is as simple as that.

As someone who wore a tie-dyed T-shirt at the first Earth Day in 1970, I know how valuable it was to be an environmental activist in those days.

But, we’ve all grown up and so has the environmental movement.

To me you represent today’s real environmentalists.

I continue to be amazed and proud of the work that watershed groups do all across the state and take every opportunity I have to get out there and look at all the good stuff that’s being done in the real world and share it with others.

The partnerships, the creative solutions to problems that no one has solved in a 100 years and the ability to just get stuff done is tremendous!

Keep up the great work! And keep being Active Environmentalists!

Thanks for the opportunity to be with you today!

David E. Hess served as Secretary for Environmental Protection under Governors Ridge and Schweiker from 2001 to 2003. He can be contacted at DHess@crisciassociates.com .

9/1/2006