• Two organizations in Philadelphia received Environmental Protection Agency “Environmental Achievement Awards” – the Upper Merion School District for reducing energy consumption by more than 30 percent and recycling 50 percent of its solid waste, and the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership for restoring more than 13,000 feet of stream, training nearly 9,000 volunteer watershed stewards, and giving more than 60 school lessons.
• Governor Corbett announced the 2011 “Environmental Excellence Award Winners”.  Especially significant projects include the Schuylkill Headwaters Association implemented several acid mine drainage treatment projects to protect water resources, and the Allegheny Land Trust’s work with the Mount Washington Community Development Corps. to improve and expand the park system on Mount Washington in Pittsburgh.
• Black Rock Sanctuary in Chester County won the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ Green Park award for their native meadow plantings, interpretive trail, invasive species management and stormwater wetlands.
• The FrackTracker website is keeping people informed on the Marcellus shale industry in Pennsylvania.  It provides a non-partisan look at where the wells are, where the violations took place, etc.  It can be accessed at: www.fractracker.org.
• This fall, over 10,000 acres were added to State Game Lands in Centre and Clearfield counties, bringing the total number of Game Commission-protected acres to over 1.4 million. 
• Wind energy manufacturer, Gamesa, shipped its 1,000 wind turbine nacelle from its plant in Fairless Hills in southeastern PA.  That plant was sited on a former U.S. Steel brownfield.
• Three Pennsylvania colleges were awarded EPA “Green Power Leadership Awards” for their use of clean, renewable energy sources.  These colleges are Franklin and Marshall, Mercyhurst and Allegheny College. 
• Hundreds of nonprofits and municipalities throughout the state have come together to support the renewed funding of Growing Greener.  You can see a list at http://renewgrowinggreener.org/supporting-organizations. 

There’s been a lot more to cheer about certainly, but the work is never done.  Let’s keep up the good work in 2012!

Things in Pennsylvania, and indeed in the world, are changing, and not necessarily for the better.  The Occupy protests, unrest in the Middle East, the retirement of long-standing politicians in Europe, the divisiveness of the Republican candidates for U.S. President – all of these examples and more highlight the level of financial and political instability common throughout the world right now.  The conservation world is also in flux – protests over the Keystone XL pipeline and Canadian tar sands, the Solyndra solar loan mess, oil spills all over the globe, climate change denial (mostly in the U.S.), and the list goes on and on.  People are up in arms over inequalities both economic and environmental in nature.  The feeling of helplessness is pervasive.

I too suffer from that feeling of helplessness, although probably to a lesser extent than many.  Unlike many of the Occupiers, I have a job with benefits.  Unlike many of the people in the Middle East, I enjoy freedom of speech.  I am certainly thankful for all that I have, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t sympathize with them.  My helplessness stems from uncertainties.  It’s tough to picture exactly where I will be six months from now because of circumstances out of my control.  Some days it looks like my future will be brighter, while other days I can’t tell what my future will look like.  All I know is that the uncertainty is unpleasant.  I need to take more control of my future, but how?

No one can predict the future but we can try to shape it.  What does the ideal future look like to me?  The passing of an extension of Growing Greener funds would be nice.  Expanded influence of the Wild Resource Conservation Program sounds good.  A tax on Marcellus gas extraction that benefits both the communities where it is taking place and ensuring that larger-scale environmental impacts will be paid for by the companies that make the messes, not taxpayers, is essential.  More respect for the environment and all the benefits it provides for us, by all, not just a minority.  Real action and legislation in the U.S. on climate change.  I could go on, but you get the picture.  Some of those items may seem far-fetched but lately I have begun to think more optimistically about the future, even as uncertain as it is.

But that leads me to my personal future.  Where will I be a year from now?  How much say do I have in the outcome?  I love my job and feel like I am helping to expand the conservation message to a wide audience, but could I be doing more?  Will my next role be as a non-profit director, an author, a Foreign Service Officer, a Broadway singer (I wish!)? So many choices; I guess I should be happy to have all those options.  During this week of thanks I am truly thankful to live in a place where almost anything is possible if you work at it, but it can be overwhelming at times too. 

Writing this has helped me see that although I am living in uncertain times, with many diverging paths ahead of me, I am grateful to have the luxury of choice.  Too many people out there are not as lucky.  Unfortunately the environment is not as blessed either; it cannot defend itself from poor policy choices and overzealous economic practices.  So I ask every one of you reading this to spend part of the holiday season protecting the planet and conserving our vital natural resources.  Let’s leave some choices for future generations.

To start from the beginning, let me give you a definition of what an invasive species is; it is a non-native plant, animal or pathogen that causes harm to human health, to the environment or to the economy.  Sometimes an invasive can cause harm to more than one of those segments, too.  Let’s give you some examples:

Garlic mustard grows densely along forest edges. (Photo: Jessica Sprajcar, DCNR)

• Garlic mustard is a very common invasive plant here in the northeast.  It was brought over by colonists as an herb, it escaped from cultivation and has taken over many a forest edge, backyard and roadside.  The roots release a chemical with allelopathic properties – meaning that the plant alters the soil chemistry to benefit itself and prevent native plants from growing.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the West Virginia white is a butterfly that lays its eggs on native plants related to garlic mustard.  If it lays its eggs on garlic mustard, the eggs cannot hatch.  So garlic mustard is bad for our native plants and insects.

West Nile virus is spread by mosquitos. (Photo: Susan Ellis, www.invasive.org)

• West Nile virus is an invasive pathogen spread by mosquitos.  It was first discovered in the U.S. in 1999 and has spread throughout much of the country since then.  Infected people can have mild symptoms like nausea and headaches or potentially fatal symptoms like encephalitis or meningitis.  While most people survive contracting the virus, roughly 10 percent of severe cases pass away, according to the National Institutes of Health.
   

Zebra mussels growing on a native mussel. (Photo: Randy Westbrooks, www.invasive.org)

• Zebra mussels are tiny mollusks that arrived in the Great Lakes in boat ballast water.  These fingernail-sized critters have since spread to rivers in the northeast and beyond, as boaters take their watercraft to new lakes and rivers in the name of recreation.  Zebra mussels, and their kindred – quagga mussels – have caused at least $5 billion (yes, with a “b”) worth of damage to the Great Lakes area between 2000 and 2010, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.  These invasive mussels also kill our native mussels by smothering them and they are such effective filter feeders that they leave little phytoplankton for other bivalves and young fish.

To me, those are all serious impacts to our lives and the health of our environment and seem worthy of some thought.  But I get the sense that still, most people out there have no idea what an invasive species is.  How do I get people to care more about them so that they can identify a few of the more troublesome species and take the effort to try and get rid of them (or at least let an agency like mine know so that we can try to help)? 

I look to you for ideas!

Citizen Science is used to describe projects where people with little scientific background get involved with scientific observations and measurements.  These volunteers typically do not analyze the data on their own; it is used by professional scientists to fill in research gaps with data that they could not have collected on their own, due to geography, time or monetary shortcomings.  Informal citizen science work has been done for decades.  Any time someone picks up their binoculars and records the birds that they see, or any time a farmer keeps track of the blooming time of their crops, they are participating in citizen science.  Citizen science is all about recording observations.  Yet it wasn’t until recently that the term took shape.  (From my article on citizen science in the spring 2011 issue of Keystone Wild!Notes)

Citizen scientists use website databases like eBird, Project BudBurst, the Phenology Network and others to record their data.  Professional scientists can then access this information to help support their research.  Citizen scientists allow for data collection worldwide, 24/7, with little monetary effort and no payroll to worry about.  People just like you are contributing to the collection of scientific data that can help protect species, preserve habitats and monitor for possible climate change impacts.

And that’s why citizen scientists are so important.  They do what regular scientists don’t have the time or resources to do.  And with the data from thousands of citizen scientists across the globe, imagine the monitoring power possible! As one of my colleagues, Brook Lenker, says, “Citizen Science is a way to unplug from electronic distractions and plug-in to the environment that sustains us.  If we can help make that connection and it endures, then our collective future will be much brighter.  Citizen science is a tool to uncover trends and secrets about the natural world, but it also an intervention to mend broken relationships between people and nature: an excuse for human-kind to look, see and realize what they’ve been missing.”   

Want to learn more about becoming a citizen scientist?  The Pa. Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has a new web video series called Science Afield and it’s dedicated to promoting the cause of citizen science.  Check out the first video, “Citizens Count,” at: http://www.iconservepa.org/csi/scienceafield/index.htm(You might recognize someone from the video).

And be sure to check the site every other month as new videos come online.  Future topics include invasive species, phenology, weather and species migrations. 

Are you ready to become a citizen scientist?

Here in Pennsylvania, companies are extracting natural gas from a layer of rock known as the Marcellus shale formation.  This shale is located several thousand feet underground and only recently has it been economically feasible for drillers to extract the natural gas from the shale.  The process is called hydraulic fracing, where a hole is drilled into the ground and large quantities of water and other materials are flushed into the hole to bring out the gas. 

Each natural gas well uses more than 3 million gallons of water.  Sounds like a lot, huh? It is, but if you compare it to how much water one person uses for showering, drinking and washing their clothes (69.3 gallons per day, according to the American Water Works Association) and multiply that by the population of Pennsylvania in 2009 (12,604,767 people according to the U.S. Census), you get more than 873 million gallons of water per day.  The Susquehanna River Basin Commission estimates that when the natural gas industry is working at full capacity in the state it will use 28 million gallons of water a day; still a relatively low number when compared to other industries.  So yes, water use is important, but it’s not the key piece of the equation, in my mind.

What is more important is what happens with that water once the company is done with it.  An estimated 20 to 30 percent of the water put into the hole comes back up.  It is no longer just water though; it also contains brine, sand, drilling fluids, and perhaps radioactive materials from the rocks underground (the New York Times published an article recently about the radioactivity of the waste fluid, but state officials say the article misstated a lot. Who’s right? I’m not sure.)  If the fluid is sent to local waste water treatment facilities, they have to be able to filter out the pollutants. Some people question whether or not they have the capacity to do so.  Some of the drilling companies reuse their waste water, but eventually they have to dispose of it somewhere.

Then there is the issue of surface spills.  Accidents happen, no matter how careful you are.  So there is a worry that some of the fracing fluid, wastewater, or even the diesel fuel from all the vehicles involved in drilling and transporting water for fracing  might contaminate streams.  In 2010, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection cited over 850 violations of Marcellus shale drillers.  These violations include discharge of industrial waste including spills into streams (15 percent), violations of the Clean Stream Law (9 percent) and improper construction of wastewater impoundments (15), among other issues.

Natural gas drilling is here to stay in Pennsylvania.  No matter where you stand on the issue, that much is clear.  So it’s up to everyone to get informed, learn to distinguish the truth from the propaganda, and work to make the industry as clean, safe and environmentally-responsible as it possibly can be. 

For more information on Marcellus shale and fracing, go to: http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/forestry/naturalgasexploration/index.htm

I work for a natural resource organization, yet time and again I see my colleagues carrying around bottles of water.  Sometimes they’re reusing old bottles and filling them up with tap water, which is ok, I guess.  But it still means that they had to have bought a bottle of water at some point.  And I am not 100% innocent in this either – although it’s been years since I’ve spent $ on individual bottles of water I have purchased a gallon or two for camping trips in years past.  It seems like we can’t avoid bottled water. I go to a conference – that’s what’s offered, I eat at a restaurant – that’s what they try to push on me.  Even when we’ve organized events with “sustainability” in their title, the event planners can’t understand why we ask for pitchers of water, rather than bottles.  Because it’s not sustainable, I want to shout!

I could tell you that bottled water is less heavily regulated than tap water, which it is.  I could tell you that many bottled water companies just filter tap water anyway, so you’re paying $2 for what comes almost free out of your tap, which is also true.  Or I could tell you that so much petroleum is needed to create a bottle of water – from making the plastic for the bottle to shipping it to the store – that it’s helping to fuel our addiction to foreign oil, which it is.  But what I am most concerned about our the impacts our addiction to bottled water has on the natural world.

When a bottling company withdraws water in state A, but then ships the water all over the country, the water doesn’t end up back in the watershed from which it was taken (in the form of wastewater treatment effluent from, you guessed it, your toilet).  This can lead to aquifer depletion in state A, because the water is taken out but not replaced at a fast enough rate from precipitation (enhanced by all our black top parking lots and roads that impede infiltration).  Without enough groundwater, not only do local residents have troubled getting enough water out of their tap (forcing them to rely on bottled water!) but the plants and animals that rely on that water are also at a loss (and they can’t go to the grocery store to buy some water). 

Another problem I have with bottled water is the bottle itself.  It’s made of plastic.  Some bottles are recycled, which is good, but most end up in a landfill where they won’t decompose, or worse yet, they get washed into a stream and end up in our oceans.  Eventually the bottles will break down in an oxygen-rich environment, but break down into easily eaten pieces of plastic.  Sea life can’t tell the different between tiny pieces of plastic and their normal food source.  The plastic may or may not kill them.  Companies are experimenting with plant-based plastics and recycling is becoming more common place, but we still have a long way to go.

I’ll get down off my high horse in a second.  Thanks for reading my rant.  If I can leave you with any parting thoughts it’s that I encourage everyone to cut down on their consumption of bottled water (and other beverages in plastic bottles, for that matter).  If you live in the U.S., chances are your tap water is very clean, very tasty, and very cheap in comparison to bottled water.  Buy a reusable stainless steel water bottle, fill it up at your sink, and make a statement that you like saving money and protecting the planet.  It’s not just a tree hugger thing to do, it’s a savvy saver thing to do.  And in this economic climate, who could use a few more dollars in their pocket?!

Water seems to be everywhere, so we don’t look at it as a finite resource.  Lakes, rivers and oceans abound with the wet stuff.  But our consumption of water is increasing, particularly for “non essential” tasks like watering a lawn and filling a pool.  As more people move to dry areas like the southwestern portion of the U.S., the strain on water sources becomes more apparent.  Conflicts between farmers, golf courses, home owners and businesses can get out of hand if precipitation levels are reduced even minutely. 

What can be done to increase our perceived value of water?  We need to recognize that (1) water is essential to all life on earth, (2) potable water is a finite resource, (3) and it belongs to all so we have a responsibility to care for it.  When we realize that water is needed by everything in order to survive, we recognize the value and importance of it.  When we think of clean drinking water as a finite resource, we realize that when we squander it, we deprive it from others.  When we say that water belongs to everyone, we come to the conclusion that we all must do our part to protect the resource for generations to come.  We cannot allow water to fall to the tragedy of commons – when a resource belongs to all, no one takes responsibility for it, thinking “Someone else will do it for me.” 

As we near World Water Day, I will continue to blog about water issues and their importance, from the enigma that is bottled water to the impact of natural gas fracing on drinking water.

New year’s resolutions are always easy to keep initially; much harder to do so long term.  But some resolutions are so important that every effort should be made to make sure they come true.  If the environment could make a few resolutions for 2011, what would they be?  Taking some liberties and pretending to be Mother Earth for a few moments, here are the top five new year’s resolutions for the environment this year:

5.) Let Fall stick around a little longer; none of this jumping from Summer straight to Winter!

4.) Send out an insect plague to devour all the Japanese knotweed and Kudzu in the U.S.

3.) Put out some extra wind near turbines to keep that alternative energy flowing.

2.) Improve rainforest habitat so that a few species can come back from the brink of extinction.

1.) Show more clear-cut signs that the climate is indeed warming so that deniers have nothing to say.

The environment, unfortunately, cannot speak for itself and cannot purposefully make any of these resolutions come true.  But hopefully through the actions of concerned and curious conservationists, some of these objectives can be reached.

I did a lot of research for that article and even visited a few drill sites.  I will be honest, they were not as horrible as I imagined they would be, using my preconceived notions formed from watching “Gas Land” and reading various articles and non-profit organization websites.  But they still weren’t what I’d ideally like to see in a forest.  A lot of trees are cut down to build the pad site, the area is graded with heavy machinery, which will compact the soil (and once soil is compacted it is difficult to fix), and there were a lot of vehicles coming and going through the area.  It’s not a “natural” site, to be sure, and one that shouldn’t be built willy-nilly throughout the Commonwealth.

Friends ask me whether I am for or against drilling for natural gas.  That’s a tough question for me to answer.  The part of me that is a pure conservationist screams, “No! I am NOT for it!”, but the more practical side of me pauses and thinks, “Well, we need energy to power our daily lives. The natural gas question isn’t going away any time soon. Basically, it’s complicated!”  Do I wish we could put solar panels on every roof in the state and grow native grasses for biofuel? YES! In a perfect world we could make much of our energy using alternative sources.  If Germany and other European countries can do it, why not us?!  But in our current democrat fighting with republican world, that isn’t likely to happen, so what else can we do?  Does this mean we must drill for natural gas?  In the short-term, I think the answer is yes.  Is that the answer I like? No, not really, but unless we’re all willing to go back to lighting our homes with beeswax candles and taking a horse-drawn buggy to the general store (ask your kids if they’d be willing to give up their video game systems and tell me how that works!), we have to find some sort of energy source in the U.S. and in the short-term that probably means natural gas.

Am I a bad environmentalist for saying that? Perhaps. I’ve participated in a protest or two in my life but generally I’m not that hard-core and prefer to make change in a more constructive manner.  The Greenpeace-types of the world deserve big kudos for the difficult and sometimes dangerous work they do, but that’s definitely not my style.  I’m the kind of person that watches “Whale Wars” and thinks that sometimes the people are doing more harm than good when they sabotage the Japanese whaling ships, but I digress…

Back to Marcellus. Conservation of our natural resources is, in my opinion, the most important thing we as conscientious human beings can do.  Yes, we have to make money so we don’t starve, but once our basic needs are taken care of I think we have a responsibility to protect our natural world because it’s the only planet we have, our very health depends on it, and once something is destroyed or exterminated we can’t bring it back.  If companies are going to continue to drill for natural gas in Pennsylvania and elsewhere it needs to be done in a very cautious, science-based, enlightened way that takes into consideration the health of our forests, waters, wildlife, plants and people.  This is happening now, but in a piecemeal fashion.  We need more people, not fewer, out there inspecting sites, making sure companies are doing what they’re supposed to. 

So those people who wrote angry or concerned letters about the article, I hear you. I understand where you’re coming from in terms of your fears and worries. Pennsylvania was manipulated and trashed by industries in the past – think turn of the century loggers and coal mining, just to name a couple – and you can’t blame people for expecting the worst.  We need to have those people out there with very strong opinions and keen eyes to keep everyone in line, doing the right things.  I may not be allowed to picket a drill site (unless I want to lose my job), nor would I necessarily want to, but it comforts me to know that there are folks out there who are making sure our resource extraction – not just of natural gas, but of other energy sources and minerals – does as little damage to the environment as possible, until we reach the day when we can power our homes, vehicles and lives with something that does little to impact the Earth.  Keep up the good fight!