The Allegheny County Council is meeting on Wednesday August 23 to consider a resolution backing the Deer Creek development. Clean Water Action is asking for folks to show up and show their opposition.  There is another meeting of another county committee on August 30 where the development will be discussed.

Deer Creek Action Alert -- Your Help Needed!

This coming Wednesday, August 23rd is the next County Council meeting. We understand that Council Member Tom Shumaker will be introducing a resolution for County Council to support the approval of the Deer Creek Crossing Mall. Council is not likely to vote on this resolution at this meeting (it will likely go to the Economic Development Committee which is also considering other Deer Creek proposals). However, since the resolution will be discussed, it would be good for some people to attend and speak during the public comment portion of the agenda against the mall.

If you have not spoken at a Council meeting recently, please come and speak! They need to keep hearing from the public that we don't want a County tax subsidy going to benefit this kind of destructive development.

The Council meeting is Wednesday, August 23rd, 500pm in the Gold Room (4th floor) of the County Courthouse. To speak you must sign up by Tuesday at 400pm with the Council office. You can get a form faxed to you by calling the Council office at 412-350-6490. It is likely that the Council meeting will be quite short as they do not really want to do much business in August.

ALSO...

If you can't make the Council meeting (or even if you can), the Economic Development Committee of Council will be meeting on August 30th to discuss the various Deer Creek proposals. Its helpful for people to come, so that Council knows we are watching what they are doing! The Economic Development Committee is meeting on Wednesday, August 30th, at 430pm, at the County Courthouse, in Conference Room #1, next to Room 119.

Thanks for your help! Give me a call if you have any questions.

Myron Arnowitt 
Clean Water Action
412-765-3053, ext. 203

We have been enjoying the summer this year and have not been attending to business. That's one of the advantages of an unpaid position! But there are a few things on which to report, so here's an update on a couple of things we have been following or working on.

Deer Creek

If you remember, a Texas developer wanted a permit to fill nearly 7 acres of wetlands and move 1/2 mile of a stream so that he could build a shopping center in Allegheny County. The stream, Deer Creek, is only one of three trout streams left in the county. Besides moving streams and filling wetlands, the project was noted by a letter sent from the developer to DEP Secretary James Seif, asking his help so that "myopic" field biologists, or "maverick technocrats" (and he named names) would see all the great things about this project [link to 11/25/99 and 12/16/99 PU's]. Howell was talking to Congressional folks and agency higher ups to help the process along. 

The kicker was that Seif and Howell had met before the permit was approved and decided to call the "replacement" wetlands, the "Rachel Carson Wetlands," "for the furtherance of public education and awareness of the preservation of the environment." But replacement wetlands would only be required if the permit was going to be approved. Wonder why Secretary Seif thought the permit was going to be approved? If it wasn’t approved, there would be no need for replacement wetlands.

This project also needed a Federal permit, but the Army Corps of Engineers received quite a lot of mail opposing the project. Public hearings were held and there was a lot of, shall we say, "negative feedback" on the project. 

The project made the news in other ways. This project has a hefty amount of public money going into it. Apparently, county officials considered this to be a "distressed" area, and were kicking in $20 million. The public money also sparked a controversy whether it could be used to build replacement wetlands, which would be required if a permit was issued to fill natural wetlands. The last we heard was that the county was considering rescinding the money, or perhaps just changing some of the paperwork and putting it up for another vote by the county commissioners so that everything was finally on the up and up.

We also learned that the developer was generous to the campaigns of a couple of state and county officials. Don't be alarmed, though, folks. In our system of government, these contributions are quite legal and are not bribes! And he didn't contribute to public servants anything near the $20 million in public money he received. Hey, maybe he should find out if he can use the public money for more campaign contributions.

On the environmental front, the Pittsburgh office of DEP sent a letter outlining a number of major problems with the project as designed. Essentially, DEP told the developer there was no way they were going to let them move Deer Creek. Has that stopped the developer form pursuing this project. Absolutely not! Howell is proceeding as if no one has said a negative word about his project. Being from Texas, we wonder if he is hoping for a change in the government’s environmental ethic this November.

We have to tip our hats to those "maverick technocrats" in the Pittsburgh Regional Office of DEP that stuck to their guns and called it like they saw it (pretty good vision for "myopic" public servants). And hats off to all of you, the citizens that made noise. Otherwise, the developer would have been successful in greasing the skids by the tried and true method of involving elected officials and agency poo-bahs. Then he would have gotten the permit over the objections of the those whose "current attitude is certain to cause delays," as Mr. Howell put it.

But this one ain't over folks. When projects involve millions of dollars, that means that someone is going to make some handsome profits, and they just don't go away that fast.

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