The Board of Directors is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Hersh to Executive Director. Mark began working last month for the Foundation on longwall mining issues. Mark, an aquatic biologist, comes to us after three years with USEPA Region 10 in Seattle where he was working on watershed restoration and salmon recovery issues. Before that he worked 10 years for government agencies in Pennsylvania, with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and Pennsylvania DEP. He is no stranger to the issues and players in Pennsylvania. During that time he worked on some issues of interest to the Foundation, most notably the antidegradation regulations in Pennsylvania and the PH Glatfelter NPDES permit.

Mark will be fulfilling some of our obligations under the Heinz Foundation grant, preparing a report on longwall mining, and including the biological information gathered last year by our consultant, Lou Reynolds. He will also be keeping up with the permits and other issues relating to longwall mining. Mark has already given testimony regarding the Chapter 105 permit application of RAG Emerald Resources to undermine Laurel Run. Lower reaches of this stream were undermined by RAG Emerald starting in 1999, and the stream has yet to recover, even with almost constant restoration efforts by company since then (see related story). Yet they propose similar activities in the upper watershed.