Pennsylvania's Waterways: A Year in Review

In recent years, Pennsylvania has become a leader in reversing the deleterious effects to its waterways from mining, farming, development, and industrial operations. The year 2005 has been a pivotal year for water quality improvements in Pennsylvania.

The Commonwealth has taken action to clean up waterways, instituted new water quality standards, and provided hundreds of millions of new state dollars for restoration. Some of the major highlights of Pennsylvania's efforts to improve the health of its waters include: 

	In January, Pennsylvania's Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy was unveiled. The water quality initiative signaled a dramatic increase in state funding targeted for water quality programs and resulted in a greatly increased rate of implementation for cleaning up lakes and streams in the Commonwealth.
	In May, Pennsylvania voters passed the Governor’s Growing Greener II initiative, securing $625 million in new funds that, like the original Growing Greener program, provide substantial new resources for projects that improve water quality.
	In August, Pennsylvania imposed new nutrient conditions in the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits of 190 significant sewage and industrial dischargers in the Commonwealth to require the monitoring and reporting of total nitrogen and phosphorus.
	In September, PA Governor Rendell introduced a new nutrient and sediment trading policy that offers farmers, communities and industries another tool to help them meet, or exceed, state and federal water quality goals. This market-based program provides incentives for entities to create credits by going beyond statutory, regulatory or voluntary obligations and goals. The credits can be traded to others to help them more cost effectively meet their obligations or goals.
	In October, the Commonwealth finalized extensive water quality regulations for large-scale farms and expanded the number of farming operations considered Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations from 165 to 350, therefore requiring more operations to obtain permits.
	Throughout 2005, Pennsylvania has continued to strive toward meeting their goals as part of the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement among Bay states and partners. By the end of 2005, Pennsylvania will have: preserved 2,717 farms totaling 311,679 acres (more than any other state in the nation), restored 1,135 miles of riparian forest buffers more than 35-feet wide, restored more than 2,250 acres of wetlands and enhanced an additional 2,830 wetland acres to improve their function, and opened 548 stream miles to fish passage.

  http://www.dep.state.pa.us/newsreleases/default.asp?ID=3732