Helping Communities Help Themselves

“As Secretary of DEP I had the unique opportunity to see the results of the Growing Greener Program first-hand in all 67 counties. I saw the power local partnerships had to achieve more than any rule or regulation could ever do with volunteers, working side by side with local officials, businesses, state and federal agency staff. I saw people who looked at a stream polluted for 125 years who said, "I can fix this," all because of Growing Greener.” -- David Hess, Former Secretary, DEP, Harrisburg, 4/15/09

Growing Greener fundamentally changed the state's approach to cleaning up our rivers and streams by empowering community-based watershed groups to take their own initiatives to clean up their own watersheds using local partners. Instead of depending on solutions developed in Harrisburg, Growing Greener enabled local communities to design and implement ways of improving their local waterways.

Empowering communities to address their problems was sensible because the mix of pollution sources hurting our streams had changed. Ninety-six percent of the streams in Pennsylvania did not meet water quality standards because of abandoned mine land, farmland and stormwater runoff, not wastewater pipes discharging into our rivers. You could not attack these non-point sources of pollution the same old way. A new grassroots approach was needed and Growing Greener provided the tools to do it.