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You have the power to help adopt and implement local ordinances to protect your watershed. Vote for stormwater management practices, open space policies for vegetation, riparian buffer ordinances, limits on development and impervious surface construction, promotion of wetland habitat as natural filters, and the implementation of good home owner practices.
Environmental
Regulations In
Place To Protect
Watersheds What is a permit? A permit (or license) is like permission to do something. Your parents have a drivers license to drive. And if you have a discharge permit, then you have permission to dump extra material into the water. Although you have a permit, you still need a limit. Pollution, of course, is very bad for our environment. Yet sometimes it is permitted. Such as when factories are allowed to dump a certain amount of their chemicals into the river, but it must be checked first, and only a very small amount. Many wish to amend the Administrative Code to require DER to provide municipalities with air, water allocation, water obstruction, water quality and solid waste permits. The Clean Streams Law established the basic authority Pennsylvania needed to protect streams from pollution and the effects of surface coal mining. The Pennsylvania Solid Waste Management Act are trying to prevent pollution from the disposal of solid waste. There are obviously many laws for keeping our streams clean and healthy. Most of them involve making sure that no factories are permitted to dump in great masses of their chemicals, that no coal mining companies should have their coal polluting the streams, and of course, no one is allowed to dump their waste and trash or any types of pollution into the water. Agriculture and this type of land use might not be the most environmentally friendly thing, so acts have established a loan program to implement farming practices that reduce nutrient run off. There was a voter approval of a 100 million- dollar bond issue to preserve farmland. Legislation has made it illegal to discharge anthracite or any refuse, into streams. Many acts are trying to provide 500 million dollars to finance the reclamation of mined lands. Dams might be destined only to help, yet there still need to be laws for them. An approval by the voters was that a 300 million dollar bond issue would finance all unsafe dams. Also that owners of run-of-the-river type dams must post warning signs on the bank as well as buoys above and below the dam. Other laws are that they must limit the liability of landowners from opening their land to cave exploration. That the Phosphate Banning Act banned the use of laundry detergents containing phosphates as an aide to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. There was a voter approval of a 100 million bond issue to preserve farmland. Click here to learn more about Pennsylvania's State Government System or
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