This is urgent — We are writing to ask you to contact your state senator and ask them to vote against a dangerous senate bill (SB 286) that seeks to gut Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law, which was enacted in 1937 to protect our abundant water resources.
The “Spill Bill” just passed out of the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee today. It’s now on the Senate’s calendar for a vote TOMORROW.
WHY IT’S BAD:
It undermines dangerous chemical spill reporting.
Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law, 25 Pa. Code § 91.33(a), requires any polluter who spills a substance that could endanger downstream users to report the spill to DEP immediately.
Remember in March when the Trinseo plant spilled 8,000 gallons of latex polymer into the Delaware River tributary and the City of Philadelphia panicked rushing to get bottled water?
If this bill passes… Trinseo would not have to report such chemical spills in the drinking water.
WHO BENEFITS:
This legislation would serve only to make life easier for polluters by letting the polluters themselves decide when and how much of a chemical is a problem.
The bill does this by hiding behind the “numeric water quality criteria” established by the state while conveniently ignoring that (as the Inquirer reported) the industry has been resisting any new chemicals added to water quality criteria for decades.
YOU NEED TO ACT NOW:
Simply put, SB 286 allows polluters to pollute more without notifying anyone or without consequence and egregiously takes away our rights to know when a spill or discharge is impacting public health and local businesses.
SB 286 is NOT in the best interest of Pennsylvanians as it erodes our water protections and gives the responsibility of reporting spills to those who caused the spill.
Please contact your state senator today and ask them to vote NO on SB 286!
Thank you,
Adam Nagel
Director of Government Affairs
