Protecting Pennsylvania’s Water: Finishing the Job
Your Water, Your Bill, Your Rights: Part 7 of 7
I started this seven-part series talking about a fire hydrant in the Philadelphia neighborhood I grew up in. And I want to end it by talking about what I want for my own children, and for all future generations.
I want my kids to be able to turn on a tap 20 years from now and get clean, safe water. I want them to be able to safely fish in Brandywine Creek. I want all the families in Chester County and across the commonwealth to have access to clean, safe, affordable water and to know that the General Assembly watched out for them as corporate consolidation and data center water use threatened our water bills and our water supply.
So how do we ensure that future, and what does finishing the job look like, from a policy standpoint? We have several of the pieces in place, but we have more work to be done to complete the whole puzzle.
This week, I introduced the Pennsylvania Water Resource Act (HB 2682), which would assess a fee on extraordinary water users like data center operators, with higher fees for consumptive uses like evaporative cooling, where the water withdrawn is never returned to the source. The fees collected would be used for the protection, conservation, and remediation of our watersheds and freshwater sources.
In April, the House passed HB 2150, the Data Center Energy and Water Reporting Act, and HB 2246, Water Usage Reporting Requirements for Data Centers. These bills would create disclosure and reporting requirements around data center water consumption. Both await consideration in the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee.
As discussed at more length in Part 5 of this series, Pennsylvania must complete the stressed watershed designations required under the 2002 Water Resources Planning Act. Four watersheds were identified as candidates fifteen years ago, but not one has been formally designated. Completing those designations and requiring heightened review for large water withdrawals in stressed areas would allow us to complete work already on the books, using authority already granted by the legislature.
We must also update our groundwater law so that communities have legal standing to protect their water before a well goes dry, not after. Right now, the remedy is a lawsuit funded by taxpayers, fought against corporations with far greater legal resources. We can do better.
None of these proposals are radical; instead, they allow us to set the terms under which growth happens, terms that protect the people of our commonwealth and uphold the constitutional right to pure water that our General Assembly has an obligation to defend.
Pennsylvania has a long, expensive history of boom and bust, and of allowing extractive industry to drive environmental and economic policy to the detriment of our communities, our environment, and our public health. If we allow the same history to repeat itself with regard to our water, there may be no coming back from that.
The good news is that we still have time to write a different ending. All it takes is the political will to act.
Rep. Danielle Friel Otten represents Chester County’s 155th District and serves as Chair of the PA Legislative Climate Caucus. This is Part 7 of a 7-part series on Pennsylvania water policy.