Don't Expect Protection 
                                                                                By A. Gregory

Savvy conservationists have long satirized the state Department of Environmental Protection as the “Don’t Expect Protection” agency.

And in many instances, the moniker is on target. Oh sure, the agency has done a few things that saved some wildlife habitat here and there.

But over the long run, it has handed the rape-and-scrape crowd win after big win, whether it’s a longwall mining outfit in Greene County or an industrial development kingpin in the state’s northeast corner.

DEP proved again a few days ago that when it comes to real protection, the agency is off in the woods somewhere.

The agency on Thursday approved a stream encroachment permit for a controversial retail-hotel-office disaster in Allegheny County.

From the moment “Deer Creek Crossing” first made it into Pittsburgh-area papers, it has been criticized.

Pennsylvania Trout Unlimited, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, PennFuture and local conservationists have sounded the alarm that the development would ruin one of the few streams in Allegheny that’s still clean enough to support native fish.

But DEP - despite a groundswell of opposition from knowledgeable conservationists across the state - put its PR hat on again this week.

Agency grandpoohbahs declared that the developer of the proposed $250 million eyesore, Deer Creek Joint Venture, had successfully addressed agency concerns over storm water runoff, space for wildlife, and a greenway along Deer Creek, a locally popular fishing creek.

DEP’s decision on the stream encroachment permit (the developer plans to move 7.4 million cubic feet of earth to make way for parking spaces and other asphalt and concrete accouterments while eliminating six acres of wetlands) was the second big victory for Deer Creek Joint Venture.

The Army Corps of Engineers (like DEP, hardly a friend to fish and wildlife) had already given its blessing to the developer by approving a federal wetlands destruction permit.

Combined with DEP’s goodbye kiss to Deer Creek, the bulldozer operators now have all they need to begin converting several hundred acres of Pennsylvania into yet another monstrosity of neon lights, plastic food, parking lagoons, and cigarette butt-filled gutters.

More than a dozen sportsmen’s, conservation and citizens groups oppose this politically popular destruction project. And at least one, PennFuture, has vowed to continue the war by taking the next battle to the courtroom.

“Clearly DEP’s previous insistence that the developers protect the environment was simply a legal fig leaf to cover their shameless failure to do their duty to protect the environment,” attorney Jody Rosenberg of PennFuture told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“We intend to take legal action to stop this development from destroying the area,” Rosenberg told the paper.

Across the state - again and again and again - projects that end up wrecking fish and wildlife habitat have gotten the go-ahead from DEP.

The agency that’s supposed to protect environmental resources (as in “Department of Environmental Protection”) insists all the while that each and every project is a “win-win” scenario.

And it’s right. Developers win, pavers win, fast food outlets win, and traffic engineers get more business.

Boosters argue that the gain of minimum-wage jobs and new tax revenue outweighs the loss of a trout stream and its associated wetlands.

They always come up with this specious claim – across the state and regardless of the project and how much fish and wildlife habitat would be lost.

But as the losses mount, the very agency that’s supposed to be looking out for the interests of native Pennsylvania caves in when politicians clamor and boosters yell.

Ron Tibbott, a fisheries biologist with the PFBC, urged DEP as recently as July to say no to Deer Creek Joint Venture.

“Tibbott cited several studies of the popular fishing creek, including one by DEP’s own water quality expert, that found as many as 21 different fish species and evidence of fish migration from the Allegheny River,” the Post-Gazette’s Don Hopey reported Friday.

“It remains the Fish and Boat Commission’s position,” Tibbott wrote, “that this section of Deer Creek is a public resource much too valuable to risk its degradation by authorizing the proposed encroachments.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pennsylvania Field Office weighed in with similar comments.

“The (scientific) literature is replete with studies demonstrating that paving over floodplains and wetlands not only directly affects those resources, but also indirectly degrades adjacent and connected waters,” office chief David Densmore wrote.

“The proposal before the Corps of Engineers and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is precisely this kind of land use.”

Some folks might say that what happens to a trout stream in western Pennsylvania isn’t going to matter to someone living in northeastern Pennsylvania.

But it does. We’re talking about our state’s natural heritage here, folks. We’re talking about fish and wildlife resources that can’t defend themselves.

If it can happen in Allegheny, it can happen in Luzerne.

Previous PUs on this subject: 
  
November 25, 1999    Give Thanks For Deer Creek While There Is Still Time
December  16,  1999   Would Rachel Carson Approve?
November  08, 2000  Pavlov's Dog
August 22, 2000  Deer Creek Action-Alert.  Your Help is Needed

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