PennEnvironment fights for our open spacesThis summer, PennEnvironment stepped up our campaign to protect the places we love by restoring Growing Greener, one of Pennsylvania’s most powerful preservation tools.

From family farms in Lancaster County to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia and Frick Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s natural beauty makes living here special. Yet too many of these places are threatened by pollution or overdevelopment.

Growing Greener, Pennsylvania’s most successful conservation program, stems the losses by preserving threatened parks, open spaces and family farms. But within the next year Growing Greener will essentially run out of money, and its most recent funding source will expire. If we don’t act quickly, we will lose this critical program—and more of our precious natural heritage.

40,000 conversations with the publicThis summer, we opened new fronts in the fight to save Growing Greener. Our staff engaged with Pennsylvanians on the street, and went door to door in communities across the state to drum up public support, speaking to nearly 41,000 Pennsylvanians about the threats facing Growing Greener. More than 1,500 of those people signed postcards urging Pennsylvania’s candidates for governor to fully fund the program. In June, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter stopped by PennEnvironment’s office to brief canvassers on how Growing Greener aids his efforts to make Philadelphia the nation’s greenest city.

Places like Valley Forge have been protected by the Growing Greener program. Now we need to protect Growing Greener.

Taking the fight to the StatehouseOur advocates followed up on these ef-forts in Harrisburg. We persuaded more than 100 key candidates for state office to sign a questionnaire supporting the program, and in May PennEnvironment Director David Masur testified before the House on a bill to permanently fund Growing Greener. “The Growing Greener program is successful, it’s es-

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Firing up campaign to save Growing Greener

sential, and it’s running out of money,” Masur told the committee, which is chaired by state Rep. David Levdansky from Pittsburgh. “We are proud to testify in support of Rep. Levdansky’s House Bill 2443, which creates an extraction fee for the removal of natural gas from underneath the state’s land—and dedi-cates a significant portion of this money to renew Growing Greener.”

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter answers questions about how environmental issues affect Philadelphians at the PennEnvironment office.

Links to additional content are posted in the online version of the newsletter: www.PennEnvironment.org/newsletters/fall10

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Recent actionThis year, we watched the worst environ-mental disaster in American history unfold before our very eyes.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon stopped gush-ing—but we don’t know what long-term damage the disaster will cause. There’s no better reason to push toward a future in which Americans use as little oil as possible, protecting our coasts and reducing global warming pollution, too.

Our staff is working in Harrisburg and Washington, D.C., to ensure BP is held fully responsible for the disaster, and to win a per-manent ban on new drilling off our shores. But we must do more to prevent future tragedies. PennEnvironment is launching a major program to reduce our dependence on oil. Our work with Pennsylvania’s lead-ers, Congress, and the Obama administra-tion will slash oil consumption and move America toward a clean energy future.

I hope that you will join us in this effort to make sure we never have another disaster like BP Deepwater. We owe it to future generations.

David MasurDirector

PennEnvironment

Photo: USGS

You can be remembered as someone who cared enough to keep up the � ght for a cleaner, greener, healthier future by making a bequest to PennEnvironment.

For information, call 1-800-841-7299, or e -mail PlannedGiving@PennEnvironment.org.

How do you want to be remembered?

Defeating a handout for Big OilAs oil continued to spill into the Gulf this June, PennEnvironment and our allies helped defeat a U.S. Senate proposal to remain dependent on Big Oil. The measure, dubbed the “Dirty Air Act,” would have crippled future attempts to reduce our dependence on oil by blocking any regulation of global warming pollution—including new federal clean car standards.

PennEnvironment responded quickly. Our staff helped publish editorials in op-position to the proposal in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and other papers across the commonwealth. We also mobilized thousands of citizens to call, email and write Pennsylvania’s senators, Arlen Specter and Bob Casey, and personally met with the senators’ staff in the weeks leading up to the vote. On June 10, Sens. Specter and Casey stood up to polluters by voting against the Dirty Air Act, helping defeat this dangerous environmental rollback in Congress.

Thousands tip the balance for clean water victoryThis summer, PennEnvironment applauded state officials for approving new and much needed clean water standards to tackle pollution from Marcellus Shale gas drilling. PennEnvironment activists and members helped organize nearly 4,000 concerned Pennsylvanians to speak out in favor of the stronger standards.

The new regulations come not a moment too soon for Pennsylvanians affected by drilling pollution. In 2008, increased pollutant levels in the Monongahela River—partially due to drilling wastewater—forced a drinking water advisory for nearly 325,000 people in the Pittsburgh area.

“These regulations are an important first step in ensuring that Pennsylvania’s rivers and streams are clean and safe, and that our drinking water sources throughout the commonwealth are protected,” said Erika Staaf, PennEnvironment’s clean water advocate. “But while a step in the right direction, there’s more to be done to tackle the ongoing pollution problems caused by Marcellus Shale drilling in Pennsylvania.”

To our members

Erika Staaf, PennEnvironment’s clean water advocate, visiting a holding pond for drilling waste water in a local resident’s backyard near Pittsburgh.

www.PennEnvironment.org/newsletters

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Fall Report | 2010

The threat of legal act ion from PennEnvironment and our allies will force an egregious water polluter to clean up its act.

After PennEnvironment and coalition partners announced their intent to sue RRI Energy’s Seward power plant near Johnstown for violations of the Clean Water Act, the company was issued a new permit that re-quires them to stop all the illegal discharges that our coalition uncovered.

For years, the coal-fired Seward plant illegally discharged aluminum, manganese, iron and other toxic pollutants into the Conemaugh River and the surrounding groundwater.

Threat to sue gets resultsOn May 24, PennEnvironment joined Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Sierra Club in sending a 60-day notice letter of the groups’ intent to sue to RRI and government regulators. The letter alleged nearly 12,000 violations of state and federal clean water laws at the Seward facility. The groups were represented by attorneys at the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and the National Environmen-tal Law Center (NELC).

However, three days before PennEnviron- ment and our allies could file our lawsuit in federal court, RRI and the Pennsylva-nia Department of Environmental Protec-tion (DEP) announced a new permit that would dramatically reduce the company’s pollution levels and address the facility’s ongoing environmental violations.

This new permit addresses many of our con-cerns—it requires the Seward power plant to immediately cease all discharges into the Conemaugh River from one of its sources of ongoing pollution, and to identify and eliminate all of the illegal seeps from its coal refuse and coal ash pile into the river within the next four years.

Backroom dealings mar victoryAlthough PennEnvironment and our allies celebrated this development as a victory

for the environment, we also voiced grave concern at the DEP’s lack of public input to get a stronger final permit, and the agency’s clear intent to shield RRI from any penalties for years of violations.

“Yesterday’s action by DEP, negotiated be-hind closed doors, lets one of the nation’s largest power generators off the hook for years of violations of federal and state pollu-tion laws,” said PennEnvironment Director David Masur. “We need to send a clear message to illegal polluters in Pennsylvania that they can’t cut corners and reap a profit by breaking our major environmental laws. It shouldn’t pay to pollute in Pennsylvania.”

The legal battle continuesRRI is also being sued by PennEnvironment and the Sierra Club for persistent viola-tions at its Conemaugh power plant, located just downstream from the Seward facility. That suit was filed in 2007. RRI Energy, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, is one of the nation’s largest providers of electricity and energy services. RRI owns 37 power plants in the United States, including 17 in Pennsylvania, and earned nationwide revenues of approximately $10 billion in 2005.

Threat of PennEnvironment lawsuit spurs action

RRI’s Seward power plant has been illegally polluting the Conemaugh River for years.

To read our news release, visitwww.PennEnvironment.org/news

Clean water reports

Next step on clean cars

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Electric vehicles reduce oil dependence

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf demonstrated in heartbreaking terms why we need to move away from oil as quickly as possible. That’s why PennEnvironment is working to set aggressive new standards requiring cars and trucks to go farther on a gallon of gas.

In May, President Obama an-nounced historic new clean car standards, which PennEnvironment and our national federation helped secure. These new rules are ex-pected to cut gasoline consumption by more than 11 billion gallons per year in 2016, nearly as much as all the vehicles in Texas use annually. This is a great start, but not nearly enough—especially since the stan-dards are slated to expire in 2016.

The disaster in the Gulf demands that we go fur ther after the current standards expire , so PennEnvironment is calling for even stronger rules requiring the average car and light truck to travel 60 miles on a gallon of gas by 2025. We know that car companies have the technologi-cal know-how to make it happen, so we’re working to convince the Obama administration to make this goal a reality. As our campaign kicks off, we’ll collect thousands of public comments and mobilize support from leaders within the national security community and from areas impacted by the Gulf oil catastrophe.

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As one of the worst environmental disasters in American history unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico, PennEnvironment called on our leaders to stop new drilling off our nation’s shores.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon well gushed up 120 million gallons of oil into the Gulf—the equivalent of 10 Exxon Valdez spills. The impact on fish, birds, sea turtles and other wildlife has been devastating. Beaches from Louisiana to Florida have been coated with oil, and communities around the region will be irreparably affected.

PennEnvironment is calling on federal officials to stop new offshore drilling, hold companies accountable for spills, and improve regulation to ensure this doesn’t happen again. “It will take decades for the ecology and economy of the Gulf region to recover from the BP disaster,” said Director David Masur. “We must immediately enact the policies necessary to transition our economy away from oil dependence and toward a future of clean transportation.”

Cleaning up wildlife after America’s worst environmental disaster in history.

After spill, a push to end new drillingPenn EnvironmentOur missionWe all want clean air, clean water and open spaces. But it takes independent research and tough-minded advocacy to win concrete results for our environment, especially when powerful interests stand in the way of environmental progress.

That’s the idea behind Penn Environment. We focus exclusively on protecting Pennsylvania’s air, water and open spaces. We speak out and take action at the local, state and national levels to improve the quality of our environment and our lives.

Design: Public Interest GRFX, (215) 985-1113Editor: David Masur | Primary contributors: Samantha Rothberg and Erica Rosset Printed on recycled paper.

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