Interim report LANCASTER Lov6 Canal, PCB’s, contaminated wells, polluted streams and municipal sewer bans are all current issues facing water quality and public health. These issues are ad dressed in a recently prepared water quality management plan which aims to clean up present problems and prevent them from reoccumng in the future. For the past five years, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources, the engineering firm of Gannett, Fleming, Corddry & Carpenter, Inc., Capitol Region Planning and Development Agency and issued on hundreds of concerned citizens, industries, county and municipal officials, and environmental and agricultural groups have been developing a draft Comprehensive Water Quality Management Plan for the Lower Susquehanna River Basin. This Study Area consists of Adams, Cumberland, Dauphm, Lancaster, Perry and York Counties as well as portions of Franklin, Lebanon and Schuylkill Counties. The Lower Susquehanna River Basin is one of nine such Study Areas initiated by DER across the Commonwealth. During these five years, considerable information has been compiled and alternative solutions have been proposed. At this point in the study, more public input is needed to help select the solutions that will form the basis of a recommended Comprehensive Water Quality Management Plan. Upon adoption, this plan will have great impacts both locally and state-wide. These impacts will include the protection of high-quality water management streams and agricultural land, the future needs for municipal and industrial waste treatment, the levels of governments to be responsible for managing water quality functions and the methods of paying for new or expanded municipal sewage treatment plants. In order to obtain more information from local citizens and officials, an interim report has been prepared by Capitol Region Planning and Development Agency entitled “Plans and Choices.” This forty-page booklet presents, in understandable terms, the information that has been gathered and the alternatives available for consideration. It discusses existing problems and potential needs in water quality management along with the management, financial, institutional and physical system alternatives that can be applied to these problems. Eight public workshops will be held throughout the Lower Susquehanna River Basin during January in an effort to stimulate and Lancaster Farming, Saturday, February 9 t 1910— PS receive more citizen input. These workshops will be co sponsored by Lancaster County Planning Com mission, Capitol Region Planning and Development Agency and the Department of Environmental Resources. To receive a copy of PLANS & CHOICES or more No-till less HARRISBURG - “If farmers want to hold fuel costs down, their best bet is less tillage,” says John Spitzer, agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Con servation Service in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Figures compiled October 15, 1979, by the Department show that the price of diesel fuel delivered to farms rose 77 percent during the last year and gasoline went up 51 percent. Conventional.. .or “clean”...tillage, which most famers use today, requires an average of 7.4 gallons of fuel for each acre plan information about the up coming workshops, contact Lancaster County Planning Commission, 50 North Duke Street, Lancaster, Penn sylvania 17604, phone (717) 299-6333, or Capitol Region Planning and Development Agency, Suite 124, 4751 Lindle Road, Harrisburg, PA 17111, phone 939-7827. means fuel cultivated. In conventional tillage, the moldboard plowing, disking, and other operations require many trips over the same field. A no-till system, in which the soil is not touched until planting time and residues from earlier crops are left m the field, requires only about 1.25 gallons of gasoline per acre. “There is no doubt about it,” said Spitzer, “Con servation tillage not only reduces oil consumption to about one-sixth of that required for ordinary tillage operations, it also reduces soil erosion 50 to 90 percent.”
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