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The Allegheny Defense Project needs your help NOW to challenge the rampant oil and gas development currently devastating Pennsylvania's only National Forest. And now is an excellent opportunity to double your contribution. With the help of an anonymous donor, your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar. As shown in the photos below your help is needed now more than ever.

Both of the above photos depict the Allegheny National Forest.  The photo on the left shows Tracy Ridge, a National Recreation Area and Roadless Area worthy of stringent protection, while the one on the right illustrates a portion of the once remote Salmon Creek watershed, where a major oil and gas development has irreparably altered the landscape with new roads, oil storage tanks, pipelines, brine pits, and rock pits – all contributing to the severe fragmentation the forest. While ADP views places like Tracy Ridge as an irreplaceable treasure, the Forest Service and oil and gas interests currently identify this area as an oil and gas field like Salmon Creek.

YOUR CONTRIBUTION IS URGENTLY NEEDED TO CONTINUE ADP’S COMMITMENT TOWARDS KEEPING THE ALLGHENY NATIONAL FOREST FROM THE RAVAGES OF THE TIMBER, AND OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY…REMEMBER FOR A SHORT TIME YOUR DONATION WILL BE MATCHED!

For sixteen years, ADP has been the only organization focused on protecting and restoring the Allegheny from commercial exploitation and the only group working to protect proposed Wilderness and other special areas from oil and gas drilling projects.  We’ve brought the issue of oil and gas drilling in the Allegheny to a national audience through our partnership with LightHawk, documenting with aerial photos the devastating damage being done to Pennsylvania’s only National Forest.  

ADP is making progress in pushing the Forest Service to do more to regulate private oil and gas drilling on the Allegheny. The Forest Service's Washington Office agreed with ADP's claims that the agency has the “responsibility to ensure surface resources are protected” from the damaging impacts of oil and gas drilling and that the cumulative effects of oil and gas drilling on local and regional air quality must be considered.  However, it remains an uphill battle.  

ADP is committed to not allowing the Forest Service to sacrifice the Allegheny to the oil and gas industry. To that end, ADP is actively engaged in protecting the Allegheny through litigation.  In 2008, ADP with the National Sierra Club, and Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics sued the Forest Service for failing to apply the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to private oil and gas developments that disturb National Forest lands. The Forest Service settled, agreeing to apply NEPA to future developments on the ANF.

However, in December of 2009 U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin decision enjoined a settlement that we had reached with the Forest Service in Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, Allegheny Defense Project, Sierra Club v. U.S. Forest Service (POGAM and AFA - defendant-intervenors). The settlement agreement required the Forest Service to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by conducting environmental analysis of proposed oil and gas drilling in order to mitigate impacts to the public’s (surface) resources and by providing public notice, and opportunity for comment and appeal. 



Judge McLaughlin’s decision, however, effectively bars the Forest Service and the public from having any meaningful input into decisions regarding surface disturbance related to oil and gas drilling on the Allegheny (e.g., logging, road building, tank batteries, 3D seismic testing using explosives, Marcellus Shale well water impoundments, and wastewater pits, etc). 

In January 2010, Allegheny Defense Project, Sierra Club, and FSEEE appealed the December 2009 decision in Minard Run Oil Company, POGAM v. U.S. Forest Service, Attorney General Eric Holder, FSEEE, ADP, and Sierra Club to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals because the decision fails to recognize the Forest Service as a federal agency that has proper authority to regulate oil and gas drilling on federal public land.

Please help the Allegheny at this critical time, and thank you!

Donations can be made by sending check or money order to ADP 117 West Wood Lane Kane, PA 16735 or by donating on-line at www.alleghenydefense.org “DONATE NOW!”