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Letter to Susan Wild (PA-7), regarding environmental initiatives in the Lehigh Valley and across the country.

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Letter to Susan Wild (PA-7), regarding environmental initiatives in the Lehigh Valley and across the country.

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I liked having the opportunity to send a message to my Congressional representative, Susan Wild, of my home, the Lehigh Valley. While I have not yet received a response, I am hopeful that she will eventually respond. I hope that she will be able to answer at least one of my questions, and I would love to learn how government works on their end as well. I have not emailed or messaged a Congressional representative before, and I was initially shocked at how easy it was. I’m not sure if they often reply or not, so I don’t know whether or not to expect a response to my message. However, I did learn about some of Ms. Wild’s environmental policies while browsing through her website, which was quite interesting to learn about. She is the co-chair of the Climate Change Task Force in Congress and is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. I also learned that she has sponsored and worked with many bills which focus on environmental conservation and awareness, including the Great American Outdoors Act, which funds the Land and Water Conservation fund and supports conservation work in Pennsylvania. I asked Ms. Wild some questions about urban planning as well, as I believe that my district (PA-7) is in desperate need of urban planning reform. One reason behind this is that because of the large influx of people who have moved to the area within the last few years, the area’s infrastructure has not had a chance to catch up, and with increased truck traffic from the hundreds of warehouses being built in the Lehigh Valley, the roads are a nightmare to navigate at almost any time of day. I cannot begin to imagine the environmental impact which this increased car and truck traffic has on the environment, and I believe that as the Lehigh Valley grows, the inaction of planners will only cause the situation to become worse. I also asked Ms. Wild broader questions regarding the area and if she has any plans or ideas in order to increase environmental awareness in the area, such as investment in public transit networks to reduce car traffic on the roads, as current public transit options in the area are mediocre at best. One thing I would like to ask her about which I forgot to write was about green energy in the Lehigh Valley. I am unaware as to where the area gets its energy from, and would like to learn more about energy production in the area.

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Dear Congressman Cartwright,

My name is Colin Foley, and I am a Junior currently enrolled at Marywood University. I currently live on campus with my five roommates, and will be moving to the area semi-permanently starting this summer. I am writing this brief message to ask about your environmental initiatives, and more specifically the role you believe that Congress plays in protecting the environment and ensuring that future generations will be able to enjoy the world just as we do today. I also wrote to your colleague Congresswoman Wild, who represents my home district of PA-7 regarding environmental issues as well, and I asked her this same question: Are there any initiatives you have taken to increase and improve current public transportation networks, not just in Lackawanna County, but throughout the country as well?

Thank you for your attention to these issues,

Colin.

I thought that it would also be good to write to Matt Cartwright, the Congressional representative for Lackawanna County, as I will be living in the area for the foreseeable future once I leave the Lehigh Valley. I have not yet received a response from Mr. Cartwright either, but I am eager to see if I will in the near future. However, I will admit that my letter to Mr. Cartwright was not as in-depth as the one which I wrote to Ms. Wild. I had trouble thinking of questions to ask Mr. Cartwright regarding sustainability and the environment, as I have only been in Lackawanna County and Scranton for three years, since starting college, whereas I have lived in the Lehigh Valley for almost my entire life. I still took the opportunity to ask Mr. Cartwright about some questions which I could think of, including what he believes the role of Congress is in protecting the environment and ensuring that future generations will have access to the same resources, and be able to enjoy the same environment which we do today. I asked him about any initiatives he has taken to address the environment in Lackawanna County, and the United States, and asked him a similar question to what I asked Ms. Wild, about public transit in Lackawanna County as a potential method to reduce pollution from cars in the area. After looking on Mr. Cartwright’s website and his environmental policies, I discovered that he believes in finding new uses for older forms of energy production, utilizing natural resources in a responsible manner, and searching for new methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One question which I should have asked Mr. Cartwright is whether he has plans or not to reduce or regulate coal usage at power plants in Pennsylvania, as I understand that Lackawanna County and Northeast Pennsylvania were heavy coal users, and some areas still mine for coal to use in power plants today. I would also like to learn more about whether or not Mr. Cartwright has any plans to promote green energy in PA-8, as I frequently see the wind turbines up on the mountain ridge in between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre but would like to see more forms of green energy being used, such as more wind turbines or nuclear power, and not primarily coal power. I enjoyed having the opportunity to get in contact with Congressional representatives, and will do so again in the future, as I was unaware as to how easy it was.

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My other community engagement choice was to have a discussion about sustainability and the environment with a friend or family member. I chose to have a discussion with my roommate, Levi, who has not taken an environmental science class other than Meteorology last year, with Joe Snedeker, which was not his favorite class. I took the opportunity to discuss various topics with him, including urban planning, green energy, as well as sustainability in general and what it meant to him. I also discussed recycling with him and told him about some of the things which I had learned in the class over the last semester. He initially thought of sustainability in the scope of a single business or organization, and I helped him broaden his scope of sustainability to include the entire planet, as well as preserving these resources for future generations after us. He said that he was very interested in sustainability and wanted to learn more about it, saying that there should be an initiative to clean up the area. He expressed his doubts about Marywood’s recycling initiatives, saying that he’s never actually seen recycling trucks picking up the recycled items from the dumpsters near the woodlands, only garbage trucks. This interested me, and I now want to learn more about Marywood’s recycling programs, as I have also only seen garbage trucks picking up from the recycling dumpsters outside of our apartment, never recycling trucks. He expressed his interest in furthering green energy use, including using hydroelectric power from ocean waves, but also expressed doubts, saying that even these forms of energy create their own footprint. I thought this was interesting, because I remembered discussing a similar topic during the semester, learning about how hydroelectric dams generate methane as a byproduct, similar to how a soda can creates carbon dioxide when opened. He also knew a bit about nuclear power, as his home is close to the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Berwick, PA a nuclear power plant not far from here. He believed it was a coal power plant at first, and believed that it polluted more than it actually did, but was surprised to learn that the only emissions from the powerplant were steam from the cooling towers. We then discussed sustainability in urban planning briefly, and how it can have an effect on human life and activities, and also biomimicry in architecture and aerodynamics, as we are both aviation management majors, and thought it would be interesting to apply sustainable design to our major. I enjoyed having the opportunity to discuss sustainability with Levi, and he gained a valuable insight into sustainability.