Pennsylvania’s New Environmental Regulations

Yesterday news broke that the Pennsylvania State Environmental Advisory Board passed a new set of regulations for waterways deemed “high quality”.  The rigorous standards have been set in advance of any Marcellus Shale drilling in the state, in order to help ameliorate the environmental damage such drilling would create.

Here in Allentown, as we are not on the Marcellus Shale, these regulations also include guidelines for the protection of “high quality” waterways with the use of natural vegetative buffers.  This is the part of the new regulation which most directly concerns us. 

As it stands, the Lehigh County Conservation District classifies Trout Creek, The Little Lehigh Creek and Cedar Creek as High Quality streams.   Which would mean that in our parks, the creeks should be buffered with significant areas of vegetation. 

There are no such buffers anywhere in our parks, save a few small places in Trexler Park.

None of this is news to any of you who have been reading my blog for a long time.  I have been the town crier of riparian buffers for almost the entirety of my time as the author of Remember.  Now, with these new state regulations in place, has the time finally arrived when we will see such buffers implemented throughout or park system?

I certainly hope so.