Sen. Wonderling

Sen. Rob Wonderling (R-Montgomery) recently spoke with Venango County grassroots environmentalist John Hummel about the evolution of the environmental movement and the role of citizens, environmental organizations, and business in cleaning up our air, water and land.

The conversation is part of the Senator’s “Talking Pennsylvania: 21 Conversations for the 21st Century” book.

Sen. Wonderling will join John Hummel at an Earth Day event on April 24 at 10 a.m. at the Polk Center in Venango County.

The conversation follows…..

In the nearly 40 years that have passed since the first Earth Day back in the spring of 1970, the people of Pennsylvania have embraced an ethos of environmental stewardship that has made an enormous difference in the state of our environment.

Many trace the birth of the modern environmental movement to Rachel Carson’s extremely influential book, Silent Spring. Carson, who was born and raised in Springdale, Pennsylvania, was the first scientist to capture the public’s interest and raise its awareness about the damage being done to our natural environment by our modern economy.

Over the past four decades, the “environmental movement” has come to take many forms – ranging from highly corporatized lobbying organizations that employ all of the techniques and tricks that every other major, national special interest group does, to small, local groups focused on one specific environmental challenge located within a community.

Most of these groups focus on raising money, supporting certain political candidates, lobbying governing bodies from town councils up to Congress, generating publicity for their cause, raising public awareness, and perpetuating their own existence.

But there’s another part of the environmental movement that is largely unheralded but which is often more effective than any of the large organizations – they are the grassroots environmentalists. These activists – and there are thousands of them throughout the Commonwealth – tend not to spend a lot of time trying to organize a group, raising money, or getting involved in politics.

Instead, they see an environmental issue or a challenge, usually in their own backyard, and they focus on solving it, either alone or together with a small number of likeminded friends and neighbors. They don’t rush to write by-laws, establish themselves as a tax-exempt organization, and set up a fund-raising operation.

Instead, they use the power that every citizen of Pennsylvania has – the power to speak up and be heard – to try to influence the course of events for the good of the environment. And by using that power – the power of citizenship – they can make an enormous difference.

John Hummel is one of those people. John and his wife, Pam, live in and raised their sons in, what can only be called “God’s Country,” on the banks of the Allegheny River near Kennerdell in Venango County. Their cottage sits at the base of a mountain, and their property runs to the edge of the river.

As John and I sat in his gazebo down by the water’s edge on a beautiful early summer day, I quickly came to understand what he meant when he welcomed me to his “eternal sanctuary.” The peaceful sounds of nature – the gentle wind in the trees, the soft sound of the river as it coursed past us, the call of the birds – were unbroken by any of the sounds of our modern age. That gazebo is as reverent a place as any cathedral and the natural beauty in which it sits is as sacred a place as any altar.

John has spent more than 30 years working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but not as an environmental scientist. His educational background is in health care administration which he applies as a staff development specialist for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare at Polk Center.

He has no formal training in environmentalism, but what he does have is every bit as valuable. He has a true appreciation for protecting the health of our environment and a true commitment to leaving the world a better place for his having been here.

Like many citizen activists, John was first moved to action when a place close to home was threatened. Back in the late 1970s, when the “oil crisis” had the country scrambling to produce alternative forms of energy, a group of investors decided it wanted to build a synthetic fuel plant on the tip of a ridge right across from John’s “eternal sanctuary.”

John and his neighbors quickly made known their opposition to locating such a facility in the middle of such an inappropriate place, and as the oil crisis faded, so did the plans for this plant.

Several years later, another group of investors decided that they wanted to buy that same site and build a coal-fired power plant on it. This group, which, according to John, thought “they were so smart and so slick that they could just come in and show these local crackers how things are done,” ended up being shown by John and other citizen-activists how not to do things.

In one memorable show of effective grassroots activism, John’s partner, Tom Thomas, an anesthesiologist from Kennerdell, made one phone call to a union leader, who mustered 300 union members to protest the developer’s threat to use non-union labor in constructing the plant if local opposition wasn’t stopped. At the end of the day, the developer gave up on its plans; the local activists had outsmarted and outmaneuvered them at every turn.

During the fight against this power plant, John came to know his local congressman, Representative Bill Clinger. Congressman Clinger, who served nine terms in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 1996, was in favor of building the plant, because of the jobs it would create in his district. But he was also in favor of preserving the environmental health of the area around where the plant was to be built.

To make that commitment real, Congressman Clinger proposed designating that portion of the Allegheny as a National Wild and Scenic River. That designation would guarantee federal protection for the river and its immediate environment (to learn more about this federal designation visit www.rivers.gov ), while allowing for appropriate uses of the river.

As John describes it, “Congressman Clinger and I had a really interesting relationship. I was all for the wild and scenic river designation but I was totally against the plant being built.” But even though they were not in total agreement, John had established a relationship of mutual respect with Congressman Clinger, and that would prove beneficial a few years later when a third proposal for building a power plant came up.

This time, the developer was a large power company that had lots of resources and lots of experience in locating new facilities. But they didn’t use that experience to muscle their way in; they used it to work cooperatively to address local concerns and work with local activists.

“They were a whole different type of person – people that I really came to like a lot,” John told me. “We actually had a meeting right here on my deck with them and we ended up working with them on how to minimize the impact on this river valley, and on this river.”

As I listened to this, I wasn’t sure I was hearing John right. Most of the environmentalists I have dealt with since being elected to the State Senate come from the ranks of the professional environmental community. I cannot imagine any of them telling me they were able to work with the developers of a new power plant project.

As John was speaking, my gaze wandered across the river to the ridge. I saw no evidence that there was a power plant up there, so I asked John, “What ended up happening? The plant still isn’t built, right?” John’s reply shocked me.

“No,” he told me. They built it. It’s there. It’s on top of that hill. You wouldn’t know it though, would you?”

I had to admit, I was surprised. Sitting along the riverbank and looking across to the ridge, there was no way of knowing that a coal burning power plant was operating there. It really was amazing. And then I remembered what John had told me just a few minutes before about the developers of this plant: “They were very respectful of the local people. They were honest. That went a long way.”

What also went a long way was the fact that the new power plant developer, along with Congressman Clinger, worked with John and his neighbors to advance the Wild and Scenic River designation. By the time everything was done, the plant was built, the river had received additional federal protection, and the condition of the river actually improved. That’s what I call a win-win-win situation.

The time I had with John was growing short – I had a plane to catch and I didn’t want to impose on John’s time. So I asked him to sum up for me why he thought the third attempt to build a new power plant succeeded where the others had failed and why he believed the third company was willing to work with him, when the first two developers had basically tried to strong-arm him and his fellow local activists into surrender.

Here’s what John told me, “I figured out early on that if you want someone to listen to you or to follow you or to consider your ideas, you have to be calm, you have to know what you’re taking about, you have to be rational, and you have to provide a solution that improves the quality of life for everybody, not just yourself.”

John paused and looked out across the river. He continued, “I didn’t want a power plant to be built because I was concerned it might spoil what I had – the beautiful view, the peace of nature. But there were others who had a different view – people who needed jobs, for example. So to succeed we needed an answer that would improve everybody’s quality of life.”

As I listened to the wisdom of this citizen – this person who used the power he had as an individual citizen, acting without the backing of a well-financed organization or a cadre of high-paid lobbyists – it struck me that what I had just heard is really the key to policymaking on every issue at every level of government.

Mutual respect; honesty; solid factual information; patience; rationality; a commitment to listening – these simple and straightforward concepts too often get lost in today’s politics of confrontation and distortion. Fanning the flames of fear and emotion may be effective in stopping progress in the short run. But for those who actually want to accomplish something, John Hummel’s approach is far more constructive.

Over more than two decades, John Hummel and his small band of like-minded neighbors and friends (not even a dozen, by his accounting) have won some major environmental victories – victories in which all the players walked away with something to show for their efforts. He’s done so without ever forming an organization; never raising funds; and never holding a title (although some have called him in jest, “The High Potentate of the Allegheny River”).

He has created a model for how citizens, and the private sector, and government can best protect our environment in the 21st century. We must expect government to facilitate, not dictate. We must expect business to balance the needs of their companies with the needs of the environment and of their neighbors. We must listen to interested and thoughtful individuals as readily and as carefully as we listen to the professional environmental community. And we must be willing to take the time to work problems through until we find balanced and fair solutions.

This is an ambitious set of goals, but as John Hummel has demonstrated, it’s not an impossible dream. If all the stakeholders are willing (and sometimes that’s a big “if”), this approach can work.

There’s an old Native American saying: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” I was reminded of that as I sat in John Hummel’s gazebo, watching the waters of Allegheny travel past, as they have for many millennia in the past and as they will for many thousands of years to come.

Each of us has the obligation to preserve these “eternal sanctuaries,” as John Hummel calls his little slice of God’s country – and I think John’s approach provides an outstanding model, not just for protecting the environment, but also for addressing a whole host of other public policy challenges

If you would like a free copy of Sen. Wonderling’s book or would like to speak with him about the book, please visit his Talking PA website.

4/18/2008