O Beautiful for Spacious Skies…

America is beautiful, from the widespread, grassy plains of the Midwest, to the thick woodlands of the Northeast, and the vast canyons of the Southwest. There is so much natural wonder in our lands, yet most people don’t know that in our current times we are struggling to take care of it. Luckily, there are thousands of environmental groups across the nation helping to raise awareness about our environment. One of them is a locally based group, the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds. This group works to help ensure the protection of healthy, natural water sources across the state, as well as nurse polluted waterways back to health.

The Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds (FPW) is a grant-making foundation that invests in environmental projects conducted by small and large environmental groups across the commonwealth. They currently service all projects from the Ohio border to the Susquehanna River in Eastern Pennsylvania. Essentially, they are given proposals for environmental projects by numerous organizations and then select a number of them to provide funding for. The organization has granted upwards of five million dollars directly to projects and leveraged another eighty million dollars indirectly for over 150 environmental groups working on nature conservation and pollution control projects all over Pennsylvania.

The task of keeping Pennsylvania’s watershed safe is certainly no walk in the park, considering Pennsylvania has the most miles of rivers and streams of any of the forty eight contiguous states. These environmental groups have to fight against pollution from numerous sources, including runoffs from numerous factories, refineries, waste treatment plants that produce fluids with varying levels of risk directly into natural water sources. In the United States as well as most other developed countries, these practices are regulated by the government; however, this doesn't entirely prevent pollutants from making their way into these waters. Other indirect sources of water pollution include toxins that penetrate the water supply from soil and groundwater systems that hold the remains of agriculturally used chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides, as well as improperly disposed of industrial waste. Contaminants from the atmosphere, such as carbon emissions from vehicles, factories and even bakeries, all of which are created by human practices, enter the water sources by way of rain water.

With all these dangers that are presented to the health of the water sources in our state, we need more organizations like the FPW to step up and take action to care for our environment. No matter how big or small the effort, everyone can make a difference and help to protect the earth as we know it.