Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition will be tabling at the PASA (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture) this coming weekend, with the Sierra Club.
We’ve prepared a new informational handout about our organization that will be available at the table.
Our Mission
Our Mission is to protect our constitutionally-guaranteed environmental rights as Pennsylvania citizens.
Our Rights and Duties
Article I Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution states:
“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and aesthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
In support of these rights, the citizens of State College Borough and Ferguson Township have amended their home rule charters to include more extensive rights: a Community Bill of Rights adopted in 2011 by State College voters, and an Environmental Bill of Rights adopted in 2012 by Ferguson Township voters.
Our Goals
- Maintain public water purity and abundance
- Prevent urban sprawl to preserve our region’s small town and rural agricultural character, farmland, open space and the beauty of our natural environment
- Build public understanding of our constitutionally-guaranteed environmental rights, and threats to those rights.
- Prevent or mitigate air pollution in the face of global warming
- Prevent or mitigate agricultural soil destruction.
Our Tools
Our tools include public information campaigns, dialog with decision-makers, direct action campaigns against polluters and sprawl developers, and if necessary, litigation against local violations of our environmental rights as Pennsylvania citizens.
Our Subcommittees
The Nittany Valley Water Coalition (NVWC) is a committee of the NVEC. For three years, the NVWC fought Penn State, Ferguson Township and Toll Brothers over the sale of 45 acres of priceless agricultural land perched above the wellfields that provide two-thirds of the drinking water for State College Borough Water Authority’s customers. This sinkhole and karst-filled farmland was sold by Penn State to Toll Brothers in December 2017.
Toll Brothers plan is to develop “luxury student housing” on our watershed.
After three years of activism and lawsuits, Toll Brothers is moving forward with this development, but our actions have raised broad public understanding of water rights, the costs of sprawl to the community, and corporate Penn State’s lack of stewardship of public natural resources. We assert that Penn State should not convert its farmlands to high-density housing, but should use them instead to promote agro-ecological farming.
The NVEC is a 501(c)4 non-profit organization.
Donations are appreciated: Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition, 539 E. Foster Ave., State College PA 16801
Email: nvec2018@gmail.com or visit: https://www.nittanyvalley-eco.org