September 1 DEP News Now Available

The September 1 edition of DEP News is now available from the Department of Environmental Protection featuring articles on--

-- Commonwealth Court Upholds DEP’s Authority To Protect Public Resources In Well Permits

-- DEP To Offer In-Person Training On Updated Oil & Gas Well Regulations

-- DEP Fines Pipeline Companies $174K For Changing Plans Without Approval

-- Energy Efficiency, Economic Benefits Highlights In 2015 PA Climate Change Plan Update

-- DEP To Review Compliance Of Selected Farms In Chesapeake Bay Watershed

-- Northcentral PA Partners, DEP Restoring Streams For 7th Consecutive Year

-- DEP Names Jim Miller New Northwest Office Regional Director

-- Pollution Prevention/Energy Efficiency Roundtable Learns About New Technologies

-- Boswell Reclamation Project To Improve Water Quality, Eliminate Hazards In Somerset

-- Register Now For 2016 PA Brownfields Conference Oct. 26-28 In Lancaster

-- DEP Among Winners Of The 2016 Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Awards

The federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement recently announced the winners of the 2016 Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Awards that honor the highest quality projects across the nation to reclaim abandoned coal mines.  

DEP won the Appalachian Region Award for it's project to reclaim a company town in Morgan Township, Greene County.

DEP's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will receive the award at the National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs annual conference in Bozeman, Montana later this month.

Part of OSMRE’s mission is to ensure that coal mines are reclaimed after mining is complete, including the reclamation of mines abandoned before Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA).    

Only projects that are funded wholly or in part by Abandoned Mine Land funds and completed by approved state or tribal regulatory programs, are eligible to win an Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Award.  

A panel of judges, composed of directors of state reclamation programs and OSMRE managers, voted to determine the winners.

-- DEP Among State Agencies Honored For Innovation And Efficiency

State employees from a dozen agencies including DEP were recently recognized by the Governor’s Office of Transformation, Innovation, Management and Efficiency (GO-TIME) for their work on projects to save money, increase efficiency and improve programs and services.

These efforts helped the commonwealth to achieve over $156 million in savings during the 2015/16 fiscal year.

Among the efforts recognized was DEP's development of an electronic bidding system for projects.  

As part of a larger agency-wide information technology and business process modernization effort, Eric Cavazza, Director of  DEP's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation suggested the idea of creating an eBidding system to replace the inefficient, paper and labor intensive way DEP processed project bids from vendors.  

Soon after his suggestion, DEP’s Bureau of Information Technology began development of the eBidding project system that went live in April 2016.

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