Wet'n'Wild
By Jimmie Turner
At a discount rate, Council 83 members enhance their region's surroundings.
SOMERSET, PENNSYLVANIA
Pro-active public employees from this small, rural township east of Pittsburgh are saving taxpayer dollars and applying their skills to preserve the environment for the region's residents and wildlife. The Department of Transportation (PennDOT) workers — members of Council 83's Locals 1982 and 2125 — are involved in a pilot program to improve eight wetlands in the state's District 9 territory.
When PennDOT or the Pennsylvania Turn-pike Commission starts a highway project, they are required to replace the wetlands lost in the watershed that's affected. In the past, however, the construction projects were completed first, limiting environmentalists' options. "You had to force the wetland into a situation where it shouldn't be," says Local 1982 member Bill Savage, a planner in PennDOT's environmental unit. "It required a lot of excavation. That was done by contract, with really intricate designs, and it all cost a lot of money."
In 1995, the six-county region was chosen as the lead for PennDOT's wetland banking program to help save the state's natural resources. Working with several organizations — including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration — environmentalists in the state agency determined that it would be cheaper to build wetlands on the front end of highway projects.
Now agency employees can go out in advance and target sites. The wetlands then become part of highway projects, compensating for damaged terrain. Staff and management are traveling across Pennsylvania to discuss their successes with other environmentalists who must develop wetlands in their districts.
DAY AT THE 'BEACH.' Just 50 yards from where the Pennsylvania Turnpike slices through Somerset sits the largest project: the Louie-Beach Wetland Restoration Area. The 40-odd-acre site is named for Local 2125 members Louie Orris and Ron Beachy. As the principal equipment operators on the job, they prepared the site using huge bulldozers and other large machinery.
The property was originally a wetland, but about 40 years ago, farmers placed ditches, drain tiles and stone drains to remove the water and plant crops. In the summer of 2000, PennDOT workers, with assistance from the state's game commission, removed all of the drains and constructed berms to hold in water.
Workers planted trees, warm-season grasses and thick, shoulder-high shrubs and brush to attract wildlife. The game commission donated bird, duck and bat "boxes" (houses). Ducks, pheasants, shorebirds, turtles, deer, muskrats and other species are flourishing in their new digs. Outdoor enthusiasts can also spot such predators as coyotes, foxes and an assortment of snakes.
The project cost less than $3,500 per acre to complete. Savage, who oversees the wetland banking program, estimates that taxpayers would have forked over an extra $1.4 million if a contractor had been assigned to do the work: Contractors have been known to do similar jobs for as much as $100,000 an acre.
Says Dain Davis, environmental manager for PennDOT District 9, "Our employees do an outstanding job at a very, very reasonable cost."
Beachy, the Local 2125 president, declares: "You put the materials in our hands, and we'll get the job done." He says that, contrary to what happens with private contractors, preset specifications didn't bog down the work done by PennDOT specialists. If a decision is made to change part of a planned project, contractors have to go back and reconfigure the statement of work, charging more in the process.
"Everything we did out here was strictly freelance. If it looked good, we did it," recalls Beachy. "Nobody was there to tell us you couldn't move this rock or that tree."
In addition, the district saves money when maintaining the wetlands because it gets shrubs, trees and grasses donated by the game commission and other natural resource agencies. "We get the local schools involved, and we plant at no cost to the taxpayer," says Davis. In turn, students come on field trips, giving them an education they wouldn't get in the classroom.
As a Somerset native and an avid hunter, Orris greatly appreciates the Louie-Beach project: "It's the best thing that ever happened around here. Without wetlands, we're not going to have any animals; we're not going to have anything."
Orris pauses and adds, "I want some place for my kids and my grandkids to keep hunting."
