Greening Pennsylvania's Economy - PennFuture

Pennsylvania’s reserves of coal were integral to the
industrial economy, but the legacy of that coal mining
has meant thousands of miles of streams destroyed,
land left blighted and piles of waste coal left throughout
the state, leaching toxins into our water. Over 2,400 miles
of streams are sterile and unusable and more than 250,000
acres of abandoned mines need to be reclaimed in 45 of
Pennsylvania's 67 counties
PennFuture led the fight for Pennsylvania’s Growing Greener
Program, which provides grants to community groups and
environmental organizations to help clean up this coal legacy.
Thanks to Growing Greener, Pennsylvania has made significant
progress cleaning up thousands of acres of abandoned mines
and hundreds of miles of streams.
PennFuture’s leadership was also crucial in creating a new energy law,
the Advanced Energy Portfolio Standard, which helps create a market
for both renewable energy, and for eliminating the tons of waste
coal by using new technology to convert that waste to energy.
But Pennsylvania still has coal reserves, and PennFuture has
served as a watchdog to ensure that current coal mining is done
in the least environmentally harmful way. When a coal operator
destroyed streams through longwall mining, PennFuture went to
court to make the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection guarantee that
future coal mining be done
without harming streams. And
when Pittsburgh’s Mayor
announced a plan to allow
strip mining of the city’s
largest undeveloped piece of
land, PennFuture sounded the
alarm and helped local
residents and other environmental
organizations organize
against the plan.