Celebrating Safe Drinking Water for Erie, PA Students
This month, Jill Ryan, the Executive Director of Freshwater Future, visited local partners in Erie, PA, and attended Zurn Elkay Water Solutions’ 125th anniversary celebration to commemorate the company’s donation of new filtered bottle filling stations to Erie Public Schools, ensuring students have access to clean, safe water.
Stand with Protect the Porkies: No Taxpayer Dollars for the Copperwood Mine – Again!
Your voice is needed again to take action against a sulfide mining project that threatens to disrupt the beloved Porcupine Mountains State Park and pollute Lake Superior. With your support and the efforts of Protect the Porkies, we successfully stopped this taxpayer-funded grant not once, but twice in 2024! The state legislature is considering a $50 million corporate handout disguised as a “community benefit” grant for local Wakefield Township to start up copper mining next to and beneath the State Park. Send a quick message to the Michigan Legislative Appropriations Committees about why this project doesn’t deserve our tax dollars.
Tell Your Elected Officials: Michigan Residents Deserve Meaningful Public Engagement
Once every three years, Michigan reviews its criteria and definition to determine which overburdened communities qualify for drinking water project funds. Unfortunately, little to nothing has been done to inform rate-paying residents and engage in a public comment process on the review of the criteria. Improvements to the criteria are needed to ensure drinking water funding gets to the communities that need it the most. Please help by sending messages to your Michigan State Senator and Representative and the EGLE Division Director, to tell them: Bill-paying constituents deserve to be treated as stakeholders during the State Revolving Fund’s process to improve the definition of “overburdened communities.”
Work Proceeds to Stop Invasive Carp
Ongoing work to protect the Great Lakes from highly invasive carp can proceed with a recent land deal at the Brandon Road lock. A three-phase U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project, this most recent land transfer from a private company to the State of Illinois completes phase one and allows construction work to proceed on schedule. This project aims to prevent these fish from entering the Great Lakes, where without natural predators, invasive carp could grow uncontrollably, threatening the native ecosystems and water-based recreation like fishing and boating. Freshwater Future and our supporters and partners have been advocating for effective solutions, like the Brandon Road lock, for over a decade.
Pittsburgh Residents Overwhelmingly Vote to Keep their Water System Public
Last week, nearly 80% of Pittsburgh voters approved a referendum question that prohibits the lease or sale of the municipal water and sewer utility to a private, for-profit corporation. After years of leasing its water system to a private company, Pittsburgh residents had had enough of its focus on profits over safe and affordable water. This action to amend the city’s home rule charter is a direct rebuke of the private interests that are aggressively buying up Pennsylvania’s and other states’ public water systems.
