PennFuture President One Year In, Looks Ahead

December 5, 2014

A year into Cindy Dunn's term as president of PennFuture, or Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, the state's largest environmental advocacy group, she spoke with The Allegheny Front in her Harrisburg office, just across the state Capitol.

Earlier in the day, PennFuture held a post-election forum that, Dunn says, gathered more than 100 people, who heard from politicians, pollsters, and journalists. There were a few key takeaways, she says. 

"Polls show that the majority of Pennsylvanians do support gas drilling in Pennsylvania. The majority also supports strong regulation and reduction of environmental impacts," Dunn says. "Ourselves as well as other environmental groups have been saying and been defending public lands against additional leasing." 

Dunn says GOP Rep. Kate Harper told the forum audience that there's support among Republicans for a severance tax. 

"Some of the nuances of that discussion are that the impact fee put in place by Governor Corbett does support local interest and some statewide interest," Dunn says. "So, the question is, in setting up a severance tax, 'Would it take away from existing interest?' What I would say to that question is it's too soon to tell. It's a kind of negotiation that goes back and forth, especially when it comes to money, that I think would be worked out later."

Dunn has been with PennFuture for one year. She says the organization's greatest accomplishments during this time have been two major legal victories. 

"One was a negotiated settlement with (the Department of Environmental Protection) on the way they regulate stormwater," she says. "While stormwater's not such a sexy topic, polluted runoff from developed areas is a major source of pollution in Pennsylvania's streams and rivers. So this negotiated settlement will improve the permit process for municipal storm water. And that was a huge success, I think going forward there's a much better pathway for cleaning up our waterways."

And then, just under a year ago, a state Supreme Court justice made an important decision that surprised many, striking down key zoning regulations of the state's Act 13 law that regulates oil and gas development.

That allowed PennFuture to help keep drilling out of one residential community, Dunn says.

Dunn cites some important issues emerging in 2015. One is the integrity of the Allegheny Front. Not the news program (and website you're reading now), but the place it's named after. The Turnpike Commission wants to slice into this piece of the Allegheny Mountains. 

Dunn calls it, "an important landscape in Pennsylvania, one of the biggest environmental features in the state."

"And it divides the ridge and valley province with the plateau province," she continues. "So if you're going out the Turnpike heading west from, say, Bedford, that big curving uphill drive and into a tunnel is the Allegheny Front. The Turnpike is looking at alternatives to replace the tunnel. And some of those alternatives involve cutting a big notch in the mountain. Instead of fixing or expanding the tunnel. This would have a devastating environmental consequence. It'd be removing a big piece of the mountain. We're working with the local hunting and fishing club there whose land would be destroyed. We think this has important value to biodiversity. And these mountaintop ridges are important migratory pathways…plants need ways to expand, mountaintop plants. It's all the more important in the face of things like climate change where norther migration of all biology could be really important." 

To hear Dunn speaking of biology is common. It's her first and lasting career love.

"I'm a biologist by training. I was one of those lucky kids that had parents who really got me outdoors early," she says. "I lived in the country at the time, really had free range of a valley that I lived in. I could go mountaintop to mountaintop. All I had to do was be home for supper. So I explored a lot as a young kid. I was interested in nature. My only real interest by the time I got to college was biology. So it was the only thing that made sense for me to study. And my goal was really to be a researcher. But…I got close to the issues and realized it was more important to be an advocate and an educator. So I spent some of my career being an educator…and some of it being an advocate in conservation, recreation and the environment."

Dunn is originally from Fishing Creek Valley, north of Harrisburg.

And true to the name, she says she is an angler.

"Not too successfully all the time," she says with a laugh.

Inset Photo: Cindy Dunn, at left, leads PennFuture forum on energy and environment. At the table, from left, are PennFuture Director of Outreach Andrew Sharp, Harrisburg Patriot-News Opinions Editor John L. Micek, State Rep. Kate Harper, and Rep. Greg Vitali. Photo courtesy of PennFuture/Elaine Labalme