Pennsylvania Currents | Summer Update 2012www.CleanWaterAction.org

Earlier this year, Governor Corbett signed into law the most significant Marcellus Shale gas drilling legislation to date, Act 13. Oil and gas companies spent millions lobbying for this law. Act 13 takes Pennsylvania in the wrong direction leaving the state’s communities, health, and environment at continued risk:

➤ Act 13 takes away local control by overturning local zoning ordinances designed to protect residents, for example by keeping drilling away from schools.

➤ Act 13 requires towns to allow drilling in all zones, including in residential neighborhoods. A drilling site, waste pit, or pipeline could be as close as 300 feet to schools, homes, and parks, clearly falling short of needed protections.

➤ Act 13 also enacts one of the country’s lowest extraction fees, allowing billion-dollar companies to avoid paying their fair share.

Fallout from the legislation is already being felt. Drilling companies have begun challenging municipalities’ zoning laws and seeking to drill where towns had previously kept them out. As a result, seven municipalities filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court. The suit claims that allowing industrial drilling activities in all areas in a town will make it difficult for local governments to protect their residents’ health and safety as required under Penn-

sylvania’s constitution. They also argue that the new law treats the drilling industry as a special class, allowing them procedural privileges in permitting and land use that others do not have. An initial Commonwealth Court ruling favored the municipalities who had sued. A final state Supreme Court ruling is likely in October.

Clean Water Action continues to work on holding state legislators accountable for their votes and pushing to repeal Act 13. To that end, Clean Water Action joined with three other environmental organizations to develop a Pennsylva-nia Marcellus Shale Scorecard which grades legislators’ votes as Act 13 was being passed. Find out how your legisla-tor voted at www.cleanwater.org/marcellus-scorecard

ACTION FOR CLEAN WATER

CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF inside: Letter from the State Director — Celebrate Our 40th Anniversary! p. 2

Stopping Sewage Overflows in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, p. 3 Clean Water Action Victory Protects Rivers from Fracking Wastewater, p. 4 Ways to Make a Difference, p. 4 Budget Cuts Hinder Enforcement, p. 5 Protecting Rivers by Paving Less, p. 5

SummerUpdate2012 Pennsylvania currents

gov. corbett signs legislation overturning local gas drilling laws

2Pennsylvania Currents | Summer Update 2012 www.CleanWaterAction.org

From the Pennsylvania State Director

Myron Arnowitt

Celebrate40YearsofCleanWater!Forty years ago, Clean Water Action was founded with a goal of restoring polluted and sometimes flammable, rivers, lakes, and streams across the U.S. We’ve seen great progress through passing cornerstone environ-mental laws like the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Seeing the rush of gas drilling in our state only brings home how much Clean Water Action is still needed for our future. Sadly, some streams in our state are flammable once again. Help us ensure that Clean Water Action is here for the next 40 years — protecting our rivers and drinking water for all Pennsylvanians.

PleasejoinusthisyearinPhiladelphiaandPittsburghtocelebrateour40thanniversaryofworkingforclean,safewater.

pittsburgh: philadelphia: September27,2012 October5,2012 6:00 – 9:00 pm 6:00 – 9:00 pm Bidwell Training Center Fairmount Rowing Center Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild 2 Boathouse Row 1815 Metropolitan Street Philadelphia, PA 19130 Pittsburgh, PA 15233

Fortickets,call412-765-3053(Pittsburgh)or215-545-0250(Philadelphia).

Clean Water Action and Clean Water Fund gratefully acknowledge 40th Anniversary Sponsorship support from

Aveda,NewBelgiumBrewing,We-Care.com,SurveyMonkeyContribute,and the CleanWaterActionVisa®CardfromCapitalOne®(www.cleanwatercard.org)

Here’s a fact about Philadelphia’s waterways you may not want to know: whenever it rains, raw sewage backs up into streams like the Schuylkill, Cobbs Creek, the Tacony and oth-ers. In other words, the same waste that goes out your house-hold pipes ends up, untreated, in the rivers. That’s definitely not healthy and it is not good for streams at all.

It happens because Philadelphia’s pipes combine stormwater and sewage. They were designed that way many decades ago because back then dilution with stormwater flows was the only sewage treatment available. Today, when these outdated systems overflow, spilling raw sewage, it’s called a Combined Sewage Overflow, or CSO, for short. The Clean Water Act was supposed to eliminate CSOs, but many cities haven’t gotten it done yet.

Philadelphia has gotten serious about the problem, though. The city recently adopted new rules requiring the biggest builders to keep most of their developments’ rainwater on site, most of the time. That takes pressure off the pipes and lessens overflows.

To go even further, Philadelphia is looking to plant as many “very thirsty” varieties of living plants as it can all over the city. Eventually, thousands of Philadelphia acres will be greened with precisely the native plants that grab rainwater the best and really hold onto it. This strategy keeps the water from ever reaching the pipes. Every drop that doesn’t go into the pipes is one less drop of raw sewage that overflows untreated into rivers. This approach is called using Green Infrastructure to control stormwater without building expensive containment systems.

Clean Water Action strongly supports this approach, but it is a 25-year plan. Clean Water Action wants to make sure it works and is working closely with the Philadelphia Water Department to build public support and keep on track to stop sewage overflows. It is the biggest public project, with more money, more land, more organizations and more people involved than anything else Philadelphia expects to see any time soon. This investment in greening the city to protect its our rivers will pay off for years to come.

Pittsburgh is another city struggling to solve the combined sewage overflow problem. Unfortunately, Alcosan, the regional sewage authority, has not come as far along as Phil-adelphia in putting a plan into place. Not only has Alcosan not gotten a sewage overflow plan approved yet by EPA, but the plan they have recently proposed doesn’t utilize Green Infrastructure at all. Instead, Alcosan is proposing to build large tunnels beneath the rivers to store sewage, an expen-sive solution that the region cannot afford.

The Clean Rivers Campaign, a new Pittsburgh coalition founded with Clean Water Action’s help, is working on a regional plan that would solve sewage overflow problems using as much Green Infrastructure as possible. The Clean Rivers Campaign brings together local environmental, com-munity, labor, and faith organizations. Its kick-off event in Pittsburgh drew almost 200 people, creating momentum for a year-long effort to make Alcosan’s water protection plans much greener and smarter.

Pennsylvania Currents | Summer Update 2012 3www.CleanWaterAction.org

stopping sewage overflows by going green in philadelphia and pittsburgh

Whenever it rains, raw sewage backs up into streams like the Schuylkill, Cobbs Creek, the Tacony and others. In other words, the same waste that goes out your household pipes ends up, untreated, in the rivers.

Since gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale began in Pennsyl-vania, Clean Water Action has fought to stop dumping of the toxic wastewater which is a byproduct of hydraulic fractur-ing (fracking) of gas wells. Fracking wastewater contains multiple hazardous chemicals, including heavy metals such as arsenic and radioactive compounds. The wastewater is also very salty, often 3–6 times as salty as seawater.

The contaminant levels mean this water is not something that should be disposed of in Pennsylvania’s streams. The nearly 6,000 new gas wells in the state producing several million gallons of wastewater each day also threaten drinking water supplies.

Unfortunately, the gas drilling industry never planned on how to take care of all the wastewater they started produc-ing in Pennsylvania. One of the first places they turned to was local sewage plants in western Pennsylvania. These sewage plants were never equipped to treat the contami-nants in the wastewater. Often, the plants simply dumped the wastes into rivers after diluting it with their sewage discharges.

After discovering that the state had never issued Clean Water Act permits for fracking wastewater discharges by two sewage plants in the Monongahela River watershed,

Clean Water Action filed a case in federal court. After Clean Water Action reached agreements with both sewage plants to stop accepting any oil and gas wastewater, many other Pittsburgh-area plants also stopped the practice.

With rising concern from the public and drinking water utilities, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) asked drilling compa-nies to act voluntarily and stop sending their waste to

treatment plants. While this decreased the amount of frack-ing wastewater going into rivers, several industrial waste-water plants continue to accept the wastewater. In addition, the voluntary nature of DEP’s action means that companies could reverse their actions at a moment’s notice.

Clean Water Action continues to work for a complete and permanent end to any dumping of oil and gas wastewater into Pennsylvania’s rivers and streams.

clean water action victory protects rivers from fracking wastewater

More Ways You Can Make a Difference for Clean Water:➤ OnlineActions: Join Clean Water Action online to hold your U.S. Reps and Senators accountable.

www.cleanwater.org/action

➤ MonthlyGiving: Sustain your support for Clean Water Action with an automatic recurring gift.www.cleanwater.org/join/ways-to-give

➤ InternetSearches&OnlineShopping:Generate donations for Clean Water Action with every internet search. Use the “add to search” link on this page: http://cleanwateraction.we-care.com/search

Clean Water Action’s Online Shopping App makes donations for every purchase you make atthousands of online stores. It’s free and automatic. http://cleanwateraction.we-care.com/getstarted

➤ MakeYourOpinionsCountforCleanWater: Sign up for SurveyMonkey. Contribute and each survey you complete means a donation for Clean Water. https://contribute.surveymonkey.com/charity/clean-water-fund

4Pennsylvania Currents | Summer Update 2012 www.CleanWaterAction.org

Fracking wastewater being delivered to McKeesport, Pennsylvania sewage plant.

Pennsylvania Currents | Summer Update 2012 5www.CleanWaterAction.org

Paving Less, a new report by Clean Water Action and Clean Water Fund, spells out step-by-step code changes by which Northern Chester County communities could protect and improve water quality. The changes would decrease pollu-tion caused by stormwater runoff from streets, parking lots, homes and businesses.

Environmentalists have long held that economic development does not need to have a negative impact on the environment. In fact, growth designed to protect environmental values such as clean water will also benefit residents of new develop-ments built this way. Homes and buildings in these types of developments create and retain greater and longer-lasting value for their owners and investments.

A recent Environmental Protection Agency study of low-impact development found that more often then not, building with the environment in mind actually saves the developer money. It costs less to build the right way, but many build-

ers are slow to change. Clean Water Action is working to get townships to adopt greener local ordinances that will help move builders toward low-impact development.

In its most recent stormwater permit for urbanized areas, the Pennsylvania DEP gently nudged towns to start getting their local land use codes more in line with low-impact develop-ment. Each report that towns send to DEP over the five year permit must include information on how local codes have been modified to encourage more low-impact development.

The Paving Less report uses an evaluation tool to rate each town’s code and the degree to which code requirements inad-vertently force developers to over-pave. While a few towns scored well, most have considerable room for improvement.

Paving Less is available online at www.swimmable.us A companion report covering the rest of Chester County is in the works.

recurring dep budget cuts hinder enforcement against gas drilling violationsNews reports on the Marcellus Shale gas industry cover increasing numbers of environmental and health protection law violations. Gas wells leaking, spills of toxic chemicals, ille-gal dumping of wastewater into rivers — surely, the companies responsible must face severe fines and penalties?

In May, Clean Water Action released a report analyzing the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) enforce-ment activity for 2011 against natural gas drilling companies. The report’s findings raise huge concerns:

➤ While DEP issued 1,192 violations, few penaltieswere imposed.

➤ Fewer than half the violations resulted in anyenforcement actions.

➤ Only 7% of the violators faced monetary fines.

➤ Fines being assessed on one company were not assessed against other companies committing identical violations.

Clean Water Action also documented cases where violations posing serious environmental and health threats — such as gas wells not being properly cemented and cased — carried virtually no consequences for the environmental lawbreakers.

With state funding for the DEP at historic lows, such enforce-ment failures are to be expected. This year Gov. Corbett again cut the DEP’s budget, this time by $12.4 million. This repre-sents the fourth year in a row of budget cuts for DEP, totaling

$92.7 million or 43% of the agency’s budget. Just a decade ago, Gov. Tom Ridge’s budgets allocated almost three times as much for the DEP.

Clean Water Action is campaigning for:

➤ Consistent enforcement of environmental andhealth law violations.

➤ Harsher punishments for repeat violators.

➤ No more drilling permits for companies withextensive violation records.

➤ Restoration of DEP’s budget.

The report on DEP enforcement of gas drilling violations is available at www.cleanwater.org/pa

protecting rivers by paving less

Cartoon courtesy of Mark Wilson at EmpireWire.com

Pennsylvania CurrentsSUMMerUPdAte2012

Clean Water Action is a national citizens’ organization working for clean, safe and affordable water, prevention of health-threatening pollution, creation of environmentally-safe jobs and businesses, and empowerment of people to make democracy work.

Clean Water Action organizes strong grassroots groups, coalitions and campaigns to protect our environment, health, economic well-being and community quality of life.

Managingeditor:Jonathan ScottPresidentandCeO:Robert WendelgassWriters:Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania State Director, Brady Russell, Eastern Pennsylvania Director, and Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus Policy Associatedesign: ES Design

Reproduction in whole or part is permitted with proper credit.© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved.

National: 1010 Vermont Avenue NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20005-4918 | Phone 202.895.0420 | Fax 202.895.0438 | cwa@CleanWater.org Pennsylvania: 1315 Walnut Street, Suite 1650, Philadelphia, PA 19107 | Phone 215.545.0250 | www.CleanWaterAction.org/pa

PUT EVERYDAY PURCHASES TO WORK FOR CLEAN WATER ACTION.Support Clean Water Action, and get the benefits of this Capital One® Visa® Rewards Card. Giving has never been easier, or more rewarding. Learn more about this and other card options at www.CleanWaterCard.org

6Pennsylvania Currents | Summer Update 2012 www.CleanWaterAction.org