January 10, 2022 - Middletown, PA
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Chesapeake Bay Program Director Jill Whitcomb and State Conservation Commission Executive Secretary Karl Brown joined local officials at Stoney Lawn Farms in Middletown to announce how the state will fully meet its nutrient and sediment pollution reduction goals in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed by 2025. Stoney Lawn, owned by Ron and Adam Kopp, is a 175-cow dairy operation that is completely no till and has put in place many other best practices to protect water quality.Updates to the Phase 3 Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP), first announced in 2019, outline how Pennsylvania will meet 100 percent of its 2025 targets, provided funding support is in place for state, county-level, and sector initiatives and EPA modeling is updated to accurately reflect pollution reduction measures already on the ground. The Phase 3 WIP Amendment submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 31, 2021, quantifies how nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment pollution will be reduced to meet the targets.