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Land Use
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Keystone Principles
1: To focus investment of public funds on attracting new
private sector investment, creating jobs, fostering
business growth, and protecting the environment.
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While Pennsylvania has one of the slowest growing populations, it
also has one of the highest rates of per capita land consumption,
according to " Better
Models for Development in Pennsylvania"  by Edward McMahon and Shelley Mastran. Between 1982
and 1997 population grew by only 1.4% while development consumed
over 1.2 million acres. The Brookings Institute stressed the same
issue in its report,
Back to Prosperity; A Cooperative Agenda for Renewing
Pennsylvania and recommended that "Pennsylvania create a
statewide vision for economic competitiveness and land use and
get serious about planning and coordination."
One response was executive order 2004-9,
under which the Governor's Policy Office and the Governor's
Center for Local Government Services reconvened and co-chaired
the Commonwealth's 23 member Interagency Land Use Team. Last year
the group undertook two major initiatives.
- At the statewide level, the Team worked to integrate state
agency decision-making more effectively with the planning
processes of local governmental jurisdictions. Pennsylvania's
unusually large number of local government entities, from
counties through townships, complicates district and regional
planning, which is further hampered by the fragmentation of
permitting and other activities within individual
 state agencies. Last year,
the Team developed a consistent policy for all state agencies
to use in fully implementing their authority to review, and
rely upon, local and county comprehensive plans and zoning
ordinances when making funding and permitting decisions for
infrastructure and facilities. The policy applies in those
municipalities that have adopted the appropriate land use
laws. It requires state agencies to consider local planning and
zoning when reviewing proposed projects and allows them to make
decisions supportive of local zoning and planning. It also
encourages municipalities and counties to modify their zoning
and planning to benefit from the more rational land use
established by multi-municipal planning.
- At the state government level, the team finalized the
Keystone Principles for Growth, Investment & Resource
Conservation, a comprehensive set of criteria to be used by
state agencies to focus investment of public funds on
attracting new private sector investment, creating jobs,
fostering business growth, and protecting the environment. The
feasibility of applying a common set of criteria across the
full spectrum of Commonwealth funding programs was tested
successfully in selected programs. Agencies then identified how
they would apply the criteria to major programs and the
Interagency Team is now starting a process of individual agency
meetings to assess progress. The range of applications is
broad.
- The Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority will
(PennVEST) only fund infill projects and projects on
brownfield sites.
 Projects not consistent with
agricultural preservation efforts will also not be
funded.
- The Department of Environmental Protection incorporated
the principles into its
2006 Energy Harvest and
Growing Greener grant solicitations.
- The Department of Transportation will consider impact on
environmentally sensitive areas, consistency with local
comprehensive vision and with county or multi-municipal
plans, use of brownfields or previously developed sites, and
proximity to existing or planned public transportation when
scoring applications for the
Home Town Streets/Safe Routes to School Program and
Transportation/Land Use Coordination
Initiative.
- The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission will
apply the Principles to both the
Keystone Historic Preservation Grant Program and the
Pennsylvania
History and Museum Grant Program.
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Construction of the
Fish and Boat Commission's
effluent treatment facility at the Tylersville Fish
Hatchery
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The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission will
apply the Principles to:
- The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources will
now assess applications for its Community
Conservation and Partnerships Grant program on additional
criteria, including brownfield development, reuse of existing
buildings, promotion of efficient infrastructure, provision
of sidewalks and green trails, design and installation of
storm water facilities which promote reduced runoff and
increased on-site groundwater recharge, support for
sustainable business, restores and enhances the environment
and consistency with county and multi-municipal planning.
- The Department of Environmental Protection's
Land Recycling and Cleanup program is responsible for
managing a nationally known land-recycling program which
supports the voluntary cleanup and reuse of contaminated
commercial and industrial sites,
 promoting redevelopment of
sites with existing roads, sewers, water lines and utilities
rather than pristine tracts of land. In 2004, Pennsylvania's
voluntary cleanup program approved 246 remediation
applications. Six sites were processed through the
Special Industrial Area process, which encourages redevelopment of land located
within an Enterprise
or Keystone
Opportunity Zone and of property where no financially
viable responsible entity exists. These programs bring the
total number of approved remediations to 2,194 and affect
approximately 25,000 acres of land. One such brownfield in
Fairless Hills is the site of three new plants being built by
the Spanish wind-energy company
Gamesa to produce wind turbine blades, towers and
housings. This expansion represents an investment of more than
$34 million, creating 300 new jobs, and promoting the use of
clean, renewable wind power.
In addition to these centralized programs, agencies are taking
individual actions.
- The State System of Higher Education actively encourages its
Universities to adopt sound land-use policies. Examples
include:
- Previously used sites will be redeveloped for new
construction at Clarion University.
- Edinboro University is leasing a building in Meadville,
formerly a locomotive repair shop, located on a
brownfield. The university is also using bio-retention cells
or rain gardens to manage storm water in its newly
constructed parking lots.
- Under West Chester University's
Grounds Initiative a professional landscaping design
team is developing a campus-wide standard with the long
range goal of increasing open green spaces, establishing
stands of more long-lived trees and creating pods of native
plant material throughout the campus, reducing impervious
surfaces and promoting increased on-site storm water
infiltration. The University recently converted one of its
hockey fields to an artificial turf system which
incorporates a multi-level subsurface infiltration system
designed to recharge groundwater. Water that formerly lay
stagnant on the field's surface is now collected by a
series of underground, perforated, pipes and filtered
through layers of sand, schist and stone to remove
contaminants before returning to groundwater.
- Cheyney University recently demolished water tower and
old classroom building creating new green space.
- Shippensburg University's Grounds Department planted 101
trees and 522 shrubs on campus last year.
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Nature Conservancy
environmentalists confer with
National Guard personnel
on conservation initiatives at the
National Guard Training Facility
at Ft. Indiantown Gap
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- The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs continues to
improve on its award winning land management program.
- This year it updated its five year
Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan at the National Guard Training Facility at Ft.
Indiantown Gap.
- The Department continues its collaboration with the
Pennsylvania Game Commission, the Fish and Boat Commission,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in designing and
implementing its Natural Resources Management Program. This
partnership provides for many divergent disciplines of
ecosystem and wildlife management to be channeled into an
integrated plan for the management of over 18,000 acres of
training land at the National Guard Training Center.
- Ninety-nine staff in Dauphin, Lebanon and Schuylkill
counties volunteered in an installation-wide cleanup,
contributing over a ton of scrap metal and more than a
hundred bags of trash to the
Great Pennsylvania Cleanup.
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Riparian Buffer zones
reduce runoff to waters
of the Commonwealth
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- Under a grant from the
Chesapeake Bay Targeted Watersheds program, the
Pennsylvania State Police will partner with the Susquehanna
River Basin and Paxton Creek Watershed and Education
Association to provide bio-retention beds and riparian buffer
zones between streams and open lands at their headquarters in
Harrisburg to intercept and filter stormwater runoff from
parking lots and building downspouts.
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Hazardous waste, identified
during a site investigation
at the Department of Public
Welfare's Laurelton Center,
is packaged for disposal
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The Department of Public Welfare continues its program
of environmental site investigations prior to closing
facilities to identify and mitigate hazard conditions. An
investigation at the Laurelton Center resulted in proper
disposition of old roof tar and adhesive, oil based and latex
paints, mercury, silver, aluminum and waste oil. At
Embreeville, spent hydraulic fluids, lubricating oils, vehicle
batteries and corrosive water treatment chemicals were
removed. Other projects include erosion control at the Clarks
Summit State Hospital to prevent surface water from affecting
the potable water supply and reducing impacts to Falls
Creek.
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 The Department of Agriculture continues
to lead the nation in
farmland preservation. To date it has preserved over 2,800
farms totaling more than 320,000 acres. This year, the Growing Greener II grant
program helped provide over $100 million in state funding
for farmland preservation. This is the single largest
commitment of funds in the program's history. Currently
Pennsylvania has 7.7 million acres of farmland representing 27
percent of the state's land base and contributing $45 billion
to the economy annually.
- The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources'
TreeVitalize program aims to restore tree cover in the
 five-county Philadelphia region by
planting 20,000 shade trees over a four-year period in older
cities, townships and boroughs where tree cover is below 25
percent. To date it has provided more than 3,000 trees with
nearly half planted in 21 neighborhoods this past year.
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