By Pat Beaudet, Sylvanian Team and Southeastern Pennsylvania Group member
The Kittatinny Group includes two counties in Eastern Pennsylvania: Berks and Schuylkill. These counties were originally part of the Governor Pinchot Group (GVP) formed in 1971, which was based in Berks County. Earth Day 1970 was the inspiration to form the GVP group, which was later broken up into several smaller groups, including the Kittatinny Group.
You can't tell the story of Kittatinny without mentioning Bob Berger, a Berks County Sierra Club member, who was a founder of the group and its first chair. Bob was later part of a dedicated group who in 1972 formed the Pennsylvania Chapter. He remained an influential Chapter leader until his death in 2012. The new group quickly joined with the Delaware River Coalition in a successful effort to prevent the building of a dam on the Delaware River. The rest is history.
Geographically, Berks and Schuylkill counties are linked together by the Schuylkill River, which originates in Schuylkill County in the north and runs all the way through Berks. The word "Kittatinny" means "the endless mountain" in the language of the Lenni-Lenape tribe of Native Americans who inhabited the area. Kittatinny Mountain (a/k/a Kittatinny Ridge) extends from New York across the Delaware Water Gap and into Pennsylvania. It is part of the Ridge and VaIley province of the Appalachian Mountains.
It is a "major migratory superhighway that calls to thousands of bird species to follow its narrow spine along the eastern part of the North American continent....and is globally important as a flyway for 16 different species of raptors and more than 150 species of songbirds. The ridge also includes 160 miles of the Appalachian Trail." (1) In fact, the Appalachian Trail runs along the southern border of Schuylkill County, separating it from Berks County.
The Kittatinny Group has 1,100 members, most of whom live in Berks County. Dave Hemberger, the group's chair, has been a member of Sierra Club since 1987. When he retired in 2011, he made it one of his retirement goals to become more active in the Sierra Club. His first action as an active member was to attend a demonstration at the closing of the Titus power station. In addition to chairing the group, Dave serves as Pennsylvania Chapter Political Chair. The group has a six-member executive committee which meets 4 times a year and, according to Dave, has remained stable for a number of years
Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the group has moved mainly to holding meetings on Zoom, as have many groups and committees in the Chapter. The ease and convenience of Zoom has made it a hard habit to break. Kittatinny hopes to return to meeting in person and having the kinds of programs and activities it enjoyed prior to the pandemic, such as vegetarian dinners, highway cleanups and speaker programs. One activity that has persisted is guided bird walks, not surprising since Berks County is home to the well-known Hawk Mountain Sanctuary which is located in the globally important flyway for raptors and songbirds along the Kittatinny Ridge.
The Kittatinny Group was recently asked to intervene in the building of a large solar farm in northern Berks County, located within 5 miles of the Sanctuary, because it would have negative impacts on the bird migration. It is common these days for this kind of conflict to arise in connection with the shift to renewable energy. The group consulted with the Chapter. The conclusion was that renewable energy is such an important priority that the solar farm did indeed need to be built.
Kittatinny's conservation focus on renewable energy serves it well. Schuylkill County lies in the heart of Pennsylvania coal country. Power plants continue to close due to the new wastewater rules, which make coal production very expensive. Renewable energy production has taken over as a leading industry, particularly wind power.
Executive Committee member Stephanie Andersen spearheaded the "Reading for 100" campaign, a takeoff on Sierra Club's Ready for 100 program, which works to obtain commitments from cities and townships to move to 100% renewable energy by 2050. (Reading is the largest metropolitan area in Berks County and the county seat.) Stephanie helped with the design of Reading's sustainability plan and coordinated its sustainability initiatives. She serves on the Reading Environmental Action Committee's Green Infrastructure sub-committee as well as the Communications group, focused on connecting community members with the development of the Climate Action Plan, which will ultimately put into action the Reading for 100 resolution.
Our thanks go out to the Kittatinny Group for its current efforts and over 50 years of dedicated service to the environment. The following are the officers and members of the Executive Committee:
Dave Hemberger - Chair
Jonathan Day - Vice Chair
Paul Eaken - Secretary
Bruce Watson - Treasurer
Stephanie Andersen
Jess Royer
One open seat
Notes:
This blog was included as part of the November 2023 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!