The Gallows Run Watershed Association (GRWA) celebrates eleven years of activism and public outreach in support of protecting the watershed’s natural resources. We are proud of our neighbors who came together to support GRWA’s mission and understand the fragility and value of our shared aquifer and ecosystem to the future generations of Upper Bucks. The GRWA has developed a new digital platform that will strengthen our communication with you and all other members. Our newly re-grooved website grwa.wildapricot.org will host the new issue of our venerable newsletter, Upper Bucks Futures (UBF) and help manage our membership. We will continue to aggregate news of local importance, and by utilizing social media like Facebook we will make sure our members stay privy to constant updates involving conservation.  The theme of upcoming  Fall issue of UBF is” Living with Global Weirding in Upper Bucks.” We welcome your stories and photos in response.

Our 8.8 square mile watershed with its naturally reproducing trout population is fighting the impacts of past abuses and new challenges.  Sandy has forced us all to look at our rivers, streams and overhanging tree canopy with new eyes. The Gallows Run has shown its resilience in its ability to bounce back from unforeseen challenges. The global impacts of climate weirding are on display nightly on the news as well, not just in our backyards

The nightly news also features a blitz of advertising for the natural gas industry. Our small watershed became ground zero for blowback to Governor Corbett’s over-reaching Act 13, a blueprint for the industrialization of the  Pennsylvania landscape with no zoning exclusions anywhere.  The GRWA partnered with the Delaware Riverkeeper and Penn Environment to present the realities of the consequences of the gasmen coming to town.  Anyone in the overflow audience at Palisades High School will remember our friends from Dimock telling their stories and displaying their post-drilling wellwater.

Nockamixon Township was among the group of municipalities that first challenged the Act’s abridgement of the Pennsylvania Constitution’s protection of our air and water. Our representatives in Harrisburg responded to the public outcry and moved to pass a moratorium on gas drilling in the Newark Basin.  We have achieved a state of limbo which seems a victory compared to those areas in Marcellus Shale outside of the Delaware Basin that have been gas-boomed. We have continued an active monitoring and archiving of the latest scientific studies of impacts of fracking on our  website grwa.org 

The GRWA has also been in the stream cleaning up storm debris and instituting new stream and aquifer monitoring programs.  We have been in the Middle and High Schools running workshops and at local community days taking orders for rain barrels.  We have been working with our partners in townships, county, and state to conserve valuable open space properties in the watershed.  We have been attending local government meetings to be a continual voice for environmental conservation and stewardship on the township level. Many of our members are active Township volunteers.  We continue to work with our Township partners to implement evidence-based groundwater management.

We look forward to seeing you all at the 5th annual Artists of the Gallows Run Art for Conservation on September 28th and 29th at Rising Sun Farm or at artist’s reception October 7 at Nurture Nature In Easton.  The money raised from our benefits has been used as “seed money” to kick off an exciting project that we look forward to sharing with you over the next year.

And your support, of course, makes all this work possible.                 

by Todd Stone

Letter From the President