Michael Sauers

May 2,2025

It is difficult to watch the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth regarding the PP&L Electric Utilities proposed 500kV double-circuit transmission line scheduled to run through the “Valley”. Up until now, the Valley has remained oblivious and unscarred by the helter-skelter industrial development perpetrated on the area by pseudo industrial development folks. The vast majority of Valley residents have ignored and dismissed the environmental nightmares relating to the Black Creek and Nescopeck Creek. Both of these Creeks had/have a significant impact on the Susquehanna River and, subsequently, the Chesepeake Bay. One might say, “out of sight, out of mind”. The GCWF has written about both and probably will again.

Several decades ago a group of area individuals and civic organizations formed a group, Greenfire Coalition, to address some of the very same issues you are confronted with. Greenfire Coalition took on CANDO at public meetings and picketed their headquarters, sued Hazle Township Zoning Board, helped keep New Jersey Steel out of Humboldt Industrial Park, helped keep a mega-landfill out of Foster Township, confronted the Greater Hazleton Joint Sewer Authority about pollution of the Nescopek Creek via the Black Creek, educated communities about a score of Superfund sites including the Hazleton City Landfill, called out the high cancer rates, etc., etc., etc.. The complete list is lengthy. Other groups, including Citizens Against Hazardous and Nuclear Waste, S.U.F.F.E.R and others also participated.

We got significant pushback from area communities including the Valley. We were too negative, too “in your face”. We were right! At that time many of the movers and shakers lived in the Valley.

Since that time the barn door has been left wide open for gigantic industrial parks that have decimated 1000’s of acres of wildlife habitat (globally rare heath and pitch pine barrens), lousy jobs, corporate welfare corporations and a future dependent on speculative “warehousing’.

All of this is nicely documented on Newspapers.com and Greenfire Coalition Writers’ Forum.

Good luck with your effort.