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Some of Pennsylvania’s most important wild places and richest natural heritage is found along the streams and rivers that crisscross the state. PennEnvironment is working to convince our state legislators and regulators to take steps to put these open spaces off-limits to encroaching development and destruction.    

How You Can Help

Call Senators Specter and Casey and ask them to support the Clean Water Restoration Act in order to protect our waterways.

Brief Summary

Study after study has shown that encroaching overdevelopment is one of the greatest threats to Pennsylvania’s waterways. Each year, more of our open spaces are covered with miles of pavement and concrete. These newly developed areas collect oil, trash, toxic chemicals and bacteria. Unlike soil and vegetation, which naturally absorb and filter rainwater, our roads and other developments sweep such pollution directly into our waterways.

Paving over these open spaces increases pollution into nearby streams by ten- to twenty-fold. 

Not only do these pollutants degrade our environment, they contaminate the waterways that supply Pennsylvanians with safe drinking water and that help to ease the chronic flooding problems that have become more common in plaguing the state. 

And it only takes a little open space destruction to pollute nearby waterways. A recent study showed that losing only 10-15 percent of the open spaces that border a local stream will degrade the stream’s water quality. 

We need to protect the open spaces that prevent pollution from entering our waterways. This will guarantee clean rivers and streams—for a thriving environment and for protecting public health.

Call senators Casey and Specter and ask them to support the Clean Water Restoration Act to preserve Pennsylvania’s rivers, lakes and streams.