Welcome to the EAC home page
Current Events

PUBLIC NOTICE:
IESI Bethlehem Landfill will be discussing a proposed landfill expansion at the scheduled Planning Commission Meeting on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 7:00pm. The meeting is held at Lower Saucon Town Hall, 3700 Old Philadelphia Pike, Bethlehem, PA. NOTE: There may possibly be a quorum of Lower Saucon Township Council members as well as Environmental Advisory Council members at this meeting.

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EAC - Open Positions
We currently have open seats on the EAC. Interested residents can email a letter of interest to the township manager, Jack Cahalan or send it to the township offices at 3700 Old Philadelphia Pike, Bethlehem, Pa 18015.

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Adopt-A-Road

The Township Adopt-A-Road program kicked off in 2010 with ten organizations and/or families adopting Township roads and periodically conducting litter pick-ups along these roads. The program will establish partnerships between Saucon Valley volunteers and the Township to help control litter along Township roads and maintain a clean environment.

Interested organizations/persons can select from a list of designated roads and must commit to a 2-year period for the road adoption. The Township will supply the organization's
volunteers with safety equipment and trash bags and the volunteers will conduct litter pick-ups at least two (2) times per year along the road. The Township will be responsible for the collection and disposal of trash bags along the road. In recognition of these volunteer efforts, the Township will erect permanent signs along the roadway with the organization's name.

A total of twenty-seven (27) Township roads are available for adoption by organizations, families or individuals. If you or your organization are interested in becoming
involved with this Township program please contact Township at 610-865-3291.

Quick Tips

Fill an empty soda bottle (or two) with water and place it in the toilet tank away from the operating mechanisms. This will save water with every flush, by reducing the amount of water it takes to refill your tank. (This is meant for older toilets, not new high-efficiency ones.)

Connect your PC, monitor, fax machine, and computer peripherals to a single power strip that can be turned off when they're not in use. This will end "leakage" from devices that drain power even when they aren't turned on. This technique can also be used for your home entertainment components.

Still paying your bills the old-fashioned way? Consider switching to electronic statements. If all American households received and paid their bills online, it would eliminate more than 800,000 tons of waste each year.

If every U.S. household replaced one roll of regular paper towels with 100 percent recycled ones, we’d save 544,000 trees. Check out NRDC's shopping guide to find better brands.

Change a light, change the world: If every U.S. household replaced its most commonly used incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, we'd cut our electricity use for lighting in half -- and lower our annual CO2 emissions by about 62.5 million tons.

Just one small change can make a big difference !

Paper Recycling Program
Paper retrieval bins have been placed in the Saucon Valley area as a fundraiser for the Lower Saucon Township Historical Society. The bright yellow and green bins are located at:

Lower Saucon Township Municipal Complex (near the playground), behind Hellertown Borough Hall, all around the Saucon Valley School District Campus, the Dewey Fire Company, Society Hill, Hellertown Water Authority offices on Front St., Hellertown, and at Hellertown's municipal parking lot (across from the post office).

Please Drop off ALL Your: Junk mail, Magazines, Shopping catalogs, Newspaper, Office and school papers.

Please do NOT include: Plastic, Glass, Metal, Cardboard Phone books, Trash

This is a great way to support the community & environment by reducing the amount of waste sent to the landfill.

The different types of paper do not have to be separated and you do not even have to remove staples! You may collect and deposit your recyclables using paper or plastic grocery bags; however if you use plastic, please do not tie them shut as this causes problems with the shredding equipment.

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Studies have shown that preserving open space by purchasing conservation easement rights
costs less than the costs a community bears when a new home is built.
To learn more see our Conservation Page.

Our Open Space Committee is hard at work learning about the conservation easment process and coming up with a means to rank properties that the township could consider for preservation.

Who we are:The Environmental Advisory Council (EAC) of Lower Saucon Township is an official township and state entity that is comprised of an twelve (12) person volunteer board, seven (7) of whom are voting Members and five (5) who are Associates, or non-voting members. In addition, one (1) high school student also serves as a Junior Council Member. Members serve three (3) year terms; Associates serve one (1) year terms as well as our junior member who serves one (1) year and are appointed by the Township Manager and Council.

Current Lower Saucon Township EAC Board:
Sandra Yerger, Chairman, Term expires: 12/31/2014
Tom Maxfield, Vice Chairman, Term expires: 12/31/2014
Laura Ray, Secretary, Term expires: 12/31/2013
Vacant seat (non-voting), Term expires: 12/31/2014
Dru Germanoski (non-voting), Term expires: 12/31/2014
Tom McCormick, Term expires: 12/31/2013
Allan Johnson, Term expires: 12/31/2014
Ted Beardsley, Term expires: 12/31/2012
Glen Kaye (non-voting), Term expires: 12/31/2014
Colin Guerra, Term expires: 12/31/2012
Vacant seat (non-voting), Term expires: 12/31/2014
Vacant seat (non-voting), Term expires: 12/31/2014
Vacant seat, Junior EAC Member
Terry Boos, Hellertown Borough Liaison

Monthly meetings are usually held on the first Tuesday each month at 7:00 pm at the Lower Saucon Township Town Hall Building.The public is welcome to come share their ideas, concerns, etc.

Our 2012 schedule is:

Tuesday January 10, 2012
Tuesday February 14, 2012
Tuesday March 13, 2012
Tuesday April 10, 2012
Tuesday May 8, 2012
Tuesday June 12, 2012
Tuesday July 10, 2012
Tuesday August 14, 2012
Tuesday September 11, 2012
Tuesday October 9, 2012
Tuesday November 13, 2012
Tuesday December 11, 2012

What we do:

The formation of the group came in response to directives contained in the 2000 update of Lower Saucon's Comprehensive Plan and the township's Natural Resource Inventory of the same year. Recognition of the need for environmental protections entered the public's consciousness shortly after residential development began to exert pressure on our community and our disappearing natural areas. This prompted public officials to work together with the public to institute programs and ordinances that would preserve our resources, our natural beauty and the rural character of large parts of our community.

The job of the EAC encompasses involvement in local and regional environmental issues on many levels. We meet monthly and discuss a variety of environmental issues facing the township and provide advice and recommendations to council. Regular duties include plan review, public education, research, promotion of programs such as preservation of natural areas and water quality, and planning for a viable approach to natural resource protection.

Recent Meeting Minutes:

October 2011 Minutes
September 2011 Minutes
August 2011 Minutes
July 2011 - No meeting was held
June 2011 Minutes
May 2011 Minutes
April 2011 Minutes
March 2011 Minutes
February 2011 Minutes
January 2011 - No meeting was held

More Information about EAC's

The following is a reprint of an article written by Jeanne Barrett Ortiz, which appeared in the Lehigh Valley Audubon Society's newsletter.

Our beautiful rural and wild landscapes of northeastern Pennsylvania are becoming increasingly fragmented by unplanned sprawl.  The Kittatinny Ridge, threatened by such development pressure, is a particularly important landscape and wildlife habitat area, which not only protects a major part of the Appalachian Trail through the state, but also is the source of drinking water for tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians.  People want their elected officials to do what they can to protect the beauty and health of their communities, but often, small - communities struggle to keep up with pressing issues and their day-to-day workload.  In response, Audubon Pennsylvania has teamed up with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) to help municipalities along the Kittatinny Ridge protect their natural resources.  One of our efforts is to promote the creation of municipal Environmental Advisory Councils (EAC).
 
Through the legislature, Pennsylvania has chosen to delegate much of its power to regulate land to the local government. As a result, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has 2,565 local governing bodies. The decisions these governing bodies make on a variety of issues, from land use designations to stream corridor protection, have direct impacts on natural resources within individual municipalities and beyond. EACs, as part of local government, work directly with municipal officials to help them make environmentally sound decisions - and protect the health and quality of life of our communities.
 
An EAC is a group of community residents appointed by elected officials to provide advice and assistance on matters dealing with the protection, management, and use of natural resources within the municipality.  An EAC is formed by local ordinance in accordance with Act 177 of 1996, originally Act 148 of 1973.  Under this legislation, EACs are authorized to:

• Identify environmental problems and recommend plans and programs to protect
   and improve the quality of the environment;
• Make recommendations about the use of open land;
• Promote a community environmental program;
• Keep an index of all open space areas to determine the proper use of such areas;
• Review plans, conduct site visits, and prepare reports for municipal officials; and
• Advise local government agencies about the acquisition of property.
 
EAC members are citizens who volunteer their time and energy to provide elected officials, the planning commission, and the park and recreation board with the information they need to make sound environmental decisions.  Members are typically environmental and other professionals and interested residents.  Projects that EACs undertake include natural resource inventories, natural resource ordinance development, determining the environmental impacts of land development, conserving water and open space resources, habitat protection and restoration, greenways and trails, promoting alternative energy, ag preservation, and many other activities.