$20 million in federal funds to preserve Pennsylvania’s streams, farmland | State

In central Pennsylvania, the Chesapeake Conservancy received about $10 million to restore 18 agriculturally damaged streams. The Conservancy will provide an additional $11.5 million for work targeting Center, Clinton, Huntingdon, Lycoming, Snyder and Union counties.

The stream degradation occurred because of nutrient or sediment issues, said Adrienne Gemberling, senior project manager for the Chesapeake Conservancy.

“From a nutrient standpoint, it’s generally livestock operations, regardless of how the manure is handled or the livestock’s access to the stream,” Gemberling said. “Then the sediment, which can come from erosion in a field or erosion from a stream bank, or also from livestock that have access to the stream.”

In order to restore flows, ground work will focus more on restoration and maintenance.

“When we talk about total farm restoration, we’re talking about manure collection facilities, stream bank fencing for livestock, tree planting along streams, stream bank stabilization — all those types of practices,” Gemberling said.

The work will go on for five years, but overall the stream restoration project is just getting started. Conservation wants to restore 30 streams by 2030. “Ten million is a really big first investment, but it’s going to take a lot more money to actually make it happen,” Gemberling said.

According to pre-pandemic estimates, restoring the flow would cost $60 million. However, taking into account inflation and rising prices for materials, this figure is underestimated.

“Projects cost about one and a half times less than they used to,” Gemberling noted.

The restoration of the stream is part of a broader problem in Pennsylvania that has put the commonwealth at odds with federal regulators over cleaning plan for Chesapeake Bay. Nutrient runoff from Pennsylvania has caused environmental problems in the bay, which could threaten some federal funding.

The USDA also awarded about $8 million to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture for the Farmland Conservation Project. The Commonwealth will provide an additional $12.8 million to improve “soil health practices and systems” and “producer transitions to organic production.”