Preserving Open Spaces

With local communities continuing to feel overwhelmed by proposals for new development projects, township officials were given a much-needed tool to help control sprawling overdevelopment when Governor Rendell signed House Bill 1329 and House Bill 1330, as part of the final budget deal in Harrisburg on July 4th.

HB1329 and HB1330 were introduced by Rep. David Kessler (Berks County) in May, 2007 as a tool for protecting threatened open spaces and family farms, and promoting smart, local land use decisions. Specifically, Mr. Kessler’s two bills will help township officials protect their local zoning ordinances from procedural challenges brought years after adoption of the ordinance. 

PennEnvironment worked side-by-side with Rep. Kessler to ensure that these bills would pass the legislature, giving citizens more tools to protect their local open spaces and threatened family farms, and to fight encroaching overdevelopment in their communities.  

How You Can Help

Email your elected officials and ask them to work to protect our open spaces and natural heritage by clicking here.

Background

The Pennsylvania that we know and love--our state's family farms, the Poconos and historic places like Gettysburg--continues to be threatened by encroaching development. When we destroy these important places we lower our quality of life, lose important habitat for the state's species, and increase air and water pollution.

Pennsylvanians want to protect our open spaces and remaining family farms. Unfortunately, developers are able to do an end-run around the laws and policies established to preserve our most threatened places. Whether it's the fact that they have the power to override our local land use plans or that they don't have to pay their fair share for the environmental and quality of life problems that they create in our communities, it's clear that we need to level the playing field to protect our open spaces.

PennEnvironment has a commonsense vision to preserve the family farms and open spaces that make Pennsylvania special. This includes giving special designation for our most ecologically important open spaces and historic places; giving townships the legal tools to have more control in local land use decisions; stopping the practice of letting local taxpayers foot the bill for overdevelopment; and guaranteeing sustainable and dedicated funding to open space conservation programs.