The PennAg Industries Association on Wednesday sent a letter to Sen. David Argall (R-Schuylkill) saying they “do not support [Senate Bill 724] as currently written due to our issues and concerns, contrary to a statement made by Ed Schafer, Bion Environmental Technologies, at a Senate Committee hearing May 6 where he said they did.
When House Bill 1565 (Hahn-R-Lehigh) was originally introduced at the request of the PA Builders Association in 2013 it said simply, “The use or installation of riparian buffers and riparian forest buffers shall not be required under this section.”
Now the Builders Association is unhappy again because DEP is implementing the final language they agreed to in the final version of the bill signed into law as Act 162.
The Senate Wednesday adopted a resolution recognizing the 20th anniversary of Pennsylvania’s Land Recycling Program to coincide with the PA Brownfields Conference being held in Erie this week. The resolution was sponsored by Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Lycoming), Majority Chair of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.
Hundreds of redevelopment and remediation experts from across the northeast gathered at the Erie Bayfront Convention Center May 13 for the 2015 Pennsylvania Brownfields Conference.
The scene of cattle lounging in a stream on a hot summer day may not be so idyllic after all. A new report from the Chesapeake Bay Commission finds that allowing livestock in streams harms both the animal and the water.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law includes a provision providing a stream fencing requirement. Section 702 says, “No administrative agency of the Commonwealth or any political subdivision thereof shall require any person to erect a fence along a stream in a pasture or other field used for grazing of farm livestock for the purpose of keeping farm livestock out of the stream.”
The PA League of Women Voters’ Water Resources Education Network Friday announced the award of $19,000 in grants to four community partnerships across the Commonwealth.
The Department of Environmental Protection published notice in the May 16 PA Bulletin saying permit reviews may now be impacted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s listing of the Northern Long-eared Bat as a federally threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
With the addition of this bat to the list of threatened species, all PA Natural Diversity Inventory searches in this Commonwealth now have the potential to identify this bat as potential concern in specific areas.
Therefore, DEP said, any search that was done before May 4, 2015, did not encompass the Federally- listed bat and will need to be rerun for this threatened species.
Click Here for a DEP fact sheet on the issue.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful is still accepting 2-minute videos of people making their communities clean and beautiful for the Great American Cleanup of PA Video Contest. Entries are due May 22.
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