Zombie bill intent on dirtying your water

With fall approaching and Halloween right around the corner, I thought I’d share a frightening tale with you. Here at PennFuture, we have been dealing with a “zombie bill” for over a year and just like real zombies, this bill rises up again and again from the (almost) dead. It may well take an outpouring of citizens to finally kill the bill as the clock moves toward midnight at the end of the legislative session.

What ghoulish bill do I speak of? House Bill 1565 (insert blood-curdling scream)! This proposed legislation would remove riparian forest buffer requirements for our best waters -- those designated as exceptional value (EV) or high quality (HQ). These requirements, established just a few years ago, acknowledge the importance of forested buffers to our water quality, wildlife, and communities. Now, there are some in Harrisburg who want to remove these protections because they believe we can either get by without them or engineer controls, such as rain gardens and wet detention ponds, to do the same things forested buffers do, but that’s just not true.

The unique benefits of maintaining or installing forested buffers are many, including:

           ·          filtering pollution from agriculture and other land uses, improving water quality

           ·          natural flood control for downstream communities

           ·          preventing erosion and stabilizing the stream bank. This helps to maintain the natural width, depth, and sediments of a stream

           ·          improving stream health, which increases the level of in-stream processing of pollutants

           ·          providing habit and food for aquatic life, and shade which keeps temperatures stable

           ·          increased opportunities for fishing, kayaking, and hiking

           ·          increased property values by preserving scenic beauty and natural character

It’s clear that forested buffers provide more than just water retention and sediment removal. How could we engineer shade, aquatic food and habitat, or scenic beauty? A better question might be, why pay to engineer and maintain systems when forest buffers do everything they do, and more, for free?

Additionally, under the Chesapeake Bay pollution limits, Pennsylvania committed to establish forest buffers to reduce pollution from its part of the watershed, but we have fallen behind in meeting our commitments. To achieve our 2017 goal, we need to establish roughly 50 acres of riparian forest buffers every day through 2017. In the recent Chesapeake Bay Agreement, Pennsylvania, along with the other Bay states, has also agreed to conserve existing forest buffers until at least 70 percent of riparian areas throughout the Bay watershed are forested. Given our commitments, we should be doing everything we can to preserve existing buffers and establish new ones, but HB 1565 will do just the opposite (insert second blood-curdling scream).

Sharpen your wooden stake…no wait, that’s for vampires. Get your silver bullet…sorry, wrong again. That’s for werewolves. Stay tuned to find out how you can help put an end, once and for all, to this zombie bill.

Jennifer Quinn is central Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for PennFuture and is based in Harrisburg. She tweets @QuinnJen1.

Riparian buffers: An irrefutable case

We’ve talked before about the importance of properly managing the polluted runoff that results from stormwater. One important mechanism for controlling polluted runoff is the use of riparian buffers. These undeveloped areas adjacent to the water’s edge have wide-ranging benefits. Buffers can help reduce the amount of runoff that enters our streams and rivers, and they filter pollutants out of the runoff that does reach our waterways. Buffers also improve the quality of habitat for aquatic life and even help to increase the values of nearby properties.

On January 27, several organizations sponsored a presentation to Pennsylvania state legislators to educate them about the important role that buffers play in protecting us from the harms that polluted runoff can cause. Representative Greg Vitali, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Clean Water Action, American Rivers, PennFuture, and the Pennsylvania Campaign for Clean Water invited three speakers to the State Capitol to talk to a group of more than two dozen people comprised of state legislators and their staff. 

Dr. Bern Sweeney, Director of the Stroud Water Research Center, gave an entertaining and informative presentation about the scientific merits of buffers. He was followed by Mayor J. Richard Gray from the City of Lancaster, who spoke about his city’s experiences implementing green methods of managing polluted runoff. Finally, Patti Elkis from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission summarized buffers’ economic benefits.  

Overall, the information presented during the session made an irrefutable case for the importance of creating and maintaining riparian buffers along Pennsylvania’s waterways. We are grateful to Dr. Sweeney, Mayor Gray, and Ms. Elkins for taking time out of their busy schedules to give the presentations, and we trust that the legislators and legislative staff in attendance found the information valuable.

Mike Helbing is a staff attorney for PennFuture, based in Philadelphia.