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Celebrate 20 Years of ESF and Advocate!

This week, the Environmental Stewardship Fund—known as Growing Greener—celebrates 20 years of protecting clean water, reducing flooding, conserving and restoring land, and improving parks and trails.

On December 15, 1999, Governor Ridge signed the bipartisan legislation that established the Environmental Stewardship Fund (ESF) to support projects to improve water quality, reduce flooding, preserve open space and farmland, restore damaged land, and enhance outdoor recreation.

In the 20 years since, ESF grants have improved the lives of millions of Pennsylvanians while revitalizing communities and boosting our state’s economy. As we celebrate this landmark, we can’t lose sight of the fact that there’s much more work to do.There are still more than 19,000 miles of rivers and streams unsafe for drinking, swimming, fishing, and boating.

State parks and forests require nearly $1 billion in necessary repairs.

More than 200,000 acres of abandoned mine lands and thousands of brownfield sites pollute our water and threaten human health and safety.

And the list goes on.

Please contact your state senators and representatives this week in honor of the anniversary, and:

  1. Explain the importance of the ESF to your community. (Find specific ESF projects here.)
  2. Let them know that with the huge problems facing Pennsylvania, and local projects in need of funding, a strong ESF is needed more than ever.
  3. Ask them to increase state environmental investments for 2020–2021, including boosting ESF.
Thank you.

Urgent: Protect Environmental Stewardship Fund

The 2019-2020 state budget that legislative leaders and Governor Wolf are moving to complete in the next few days includes a roughly $10 million diversion of Environmental Stewardship Fund (ESF) project investments to pay for government operations. A $10 million loss for Pennsylvania’s natural resources may not seem so bad to them given the much larger cuts proposed in February’s executive budget. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania shouldn’t be cutting $10 million from the environment when research demonstrates that the state is already underinvesting in environmental needs by $100s of millions each year.

  1. Call Governor Wolf’s office at 717-787-2500. Urge his office to work with legislative leaders to undo this $10 million loss for ESF projects. Thank them for the Governor’s leadership in seeking to boost environmental funding through his Restore PA proposal, but also tell them that present environmental project funding shouldn’t be cut—not at all, that we shouldn’t move backward—while working to get Restore PA passed.
  2. Call your state senator and representative and also tell them to undo the $10 million loss for Environmental Stewardship Fund projects—taking action any way they can. Point out to them that the General Assembly also needs to take leadership in addressing the annual multi-hundred million dollar shortfall in environmental investments. Ask them to take up these issues with their House and Senate leaders.

Resources and Background

Check out today’s Coalition letter to Pennsylvania legislators and Governor Wolf on this subject.

Why act now? Because the House will probably vote today and the Senate will probably vote soon after

See the Growing Greener Coalition’s website, https://pagrowinggreener.org for past Coalition communications and background material.

Visit GrowingGreener.info to learn more about how the projects funded by the Environmental Stewardship Fund benefit communities across Pennsylvania.

Find your legislators here.

Make Your Voice Heard

“Silence is the voice of complicity.” I’m reluctant to use this maxim, knowing that good people face many obstacles to voicing their concerns: shyness, uncertainty as to facts, burnout from years of seemingly talking to brick walls. Nevertheless, in Harrisburg, silence is in effect a position—a tacit endorsement of wherever the status quo is heading.

In the coming weeks, your state legislators will choose whether to build on past constructive efforts to help Pennsylvania communities by restoring waterways to productive life, reducing flooding, repairing parks, and conserving land—or backslide by diverting money from state funds that were established specifically to fund these efforts.

Your state senators and representatives need to hear from you. Silence tells them that you don’t care deeply about conservation of our natural and recreational resources—that they should focus their energies and state monies elsewhere. Don’t let this happen. Reach out and tell them to:

  1. Support the new green investments called for in the Governor’s Restore Pennsylvania proposal; and
  2. Oppose any budget that would divert money from the community and conservation investments made by the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund and the Environmental Stewardship Fund. (More about the budget threats here.)

Also, please distribute this message to your friends, family, and colleagues (or use parts of it as you see fit).

Thanks for caring.

Andrew M. Loza

Executive Committee Member, Growing Greener Coalition

Executive Director, Pennsylvania Land Trust Association

Background and Resources

Find your legislators here

Summary of Restore PA’s conservation and environmental components

Information about budget threats to the Keystone Fund and Environmental Stewardship Fund

Information about the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund

Information about the Environmental Stewardship Fund

Call Now. Tomorrow’s Too Late for Environment.

Please call your state senator today, preferably now, and urge them to support the pending Killion amendment to SB 575: A02156.

First and foremost, the pending Killion amendment will stop the practice of using Environmental Stewardship Fund monies to pay the debt service on the Growing Greener 2 bonds issued during the Rendell administration. This will free up $26 million annually for new projects that can be funded by ESF.

Demand for Environmental Stewardship Fund investments hugely exceeds funding availability. Senator Killion’s pending amendment takes a small but important step in boosting ESF’s ability to fund projects in communities across the commonwealth.

Check out today’s Growing Greener Coalition letter to Pennsylvania Senators on this subject.

Why act today? Because the vote is expected today.

Why a pending amendment? It’s because the amendment hasn’t been formally introduced but is informally available. You can find its content here. (There’s another Killion amendment—officially published—with different content that’s not of consequence, which potentially could cause confusion for some.)

The Killion amendment also makes a few tweaks to the Environmental Stewardship Fund supported by the Coalition: one, ensuring that increased ESF investments channeled through DCNR go to both state parks and forests and community grants on a 50/50 basis; and two, providing a pathway to leverage untapped federal tax incentives and private philanthropy for farmland preservation while increasing funding levels for county programs (by allocating a small portion of ESF to privately initiated agricultural conservation easements).

Find your senator here.