PA EQB Meeting on 20 June 2000

Last May, the Environmental Quality Board (EQB) passed new regulations for Exceptional Value (EV) waters. Some major changes were made to the regulation. One change had to do with how waters of National and State Parks, National and State Forests and other public lands, qualified for consideration as EV waters. The new regulation required that the land- management agency (such as the National Forest) protect the stream with “measures in a resource management plan which expressly provide extraordinary long-term water quality protection.” Sounds very nice, but the Federal regulation, which Pennsylvania must at least meet (the state cannot be less protective, only equivalent or more protective than the Federal), doesn’t require that. It simply says “where high quality waters constitute an outstanding National resource such as National and State Parks and wildlife refuges...” Under the Clean Water Act, these waters are supposed to be protected.

The Raymond Proffitt Foundation petitioned the EQB in March to change the regulation to remove this provision [link to petition]. Please note that our change just allows the waters to be more easily considered as EV waters--the final EV status would still be up for public comment and an EQB vote as occurs now. This deals with how simply waters of public lands are considered candidate EV waters--it doesn’t automatically make them EV. Our change would just remove a step DEP has placed in the path--a step that is not in the Federal regulation.

DEP justified the change by saying that the new regulation would reflect the “existing” program. After we filed the petition, we asked the land-management agencies if DEP has talked to them about this existing program, especially about what “extraordinary long-term” measures are needed so that the waters could become EV candidates. We wanted to know how well the program was working. Guess what? DEP has not talked to them. Take a look at our report [link to report]. How can this be an existing program if, for years, DEP never even works with the affected agencies? Or is DEP, at every opportunity, simply trying to limit the number of streams that get additional protection? If that is the case, then the existing program doesn’t need to be anything more than words on paper, and is currently sufficient!.

Not surprisingly, DEP has stated they are going to oppose our petition when the EQB considers it on Tuesday June 20. Take a look at our letter to the EQB that summarizes our report [link to letter]. Then send e-mails to DEP Secretary Jim Seif and Governor Tom Ridge, telling them something like this:

Governor Ridge and Secretary Seif:

Please give our best waters the consideration the Clean Water Act intends. Recommend to the Environmental Quality Board that it, at the Tuesday June 20 meeting, enact the regulatory language proposed by the Raymond Proffitt Foundation as proposed rulemaking. Thank you.

Your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address

<<<<END>>>>

return