The Blair County Board of Commissioners Tuesday entered into an agreement that might prevent situations like that which happened with the baseball fields in Snyder Township last year.
\nAfter a single season of base hits, catches over the fence and youngsters sliding into home, the state Department of Environmental Protection intervened and told league officials at the Bald Eagle baseball fields that the land they were playing on was protected because it was a wetland. Those who built the fields didn\u2019t know that.
\nBut with the agreement signed Tuesday, those hoping to develop environmentally-sensitive land have the opportunity to view a document and know exactly what endangered animal or plant species thrive there or what natural resource could be disturbed.
\nAccording to Steve Putt, director of the Blair County Conservation District, the Natural Heritage Inventory, being conducted by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, will identify endangered species and \u201cspecies of special concern\u201d and the habitats of those groups.
\n\u201cThey identify the locations of these species from maps and documents and they will indicate ways to protect those areas and the species found in those environments,\u201d said Putt. \u201cIt will be a public document that will be available to both municipalities and the general public. It\u2019s going to be an important and much-used document for anyone wanting to develop land in Blair County.\u201d
\nPutt said anyone considering developing an area of land in Blair County will use the document during the planning stages of development.
\n\u201cAnyone considering developing an area can refer to this document and find out what is there before they invest a whole lot of money or a whole lot of time in the project if there will be a problem with endangered species or something of that sort,\u201d said Putt. \u201cA lot of times, a developer will buy a piece of land based on location or other criteria and not realize what may be involved in the permitting stage or on the environmental end.
\n\u201cThis will give a heads up for anything that\u2019s there.\u201d
\nBlair County Commissioner Donna Gority agreed with Putt.
\n\u201cThis makes it a lot easier to protect precious property,\u201d said Blair County Commissioner Donna Gority. \u201cThis program will begin sometime at the beginning of the year and from what I understand, it\u2019s going to be a lengthy process. But hopefully, when it\u2019s finished, developers can save a lot of time and money when searching for property to build on.\u201d
\nPutt said the inventory will take about two years to complete.
\nThe entire western part of Pennsylvania is being handled by the WPS, while the eastern part is being inventoried by the Nature Conservancy. Thus far, 32 of the 67 counties have been identified, nine more are underway and should be completed soon, and two have signed on to begin in 2003.
\nCambria County will also be inventoried at the same time as Blair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Blair County Board of Commissioners Tuesday entered into an agreement that might prevent situations like that which happened with the baseball fields in Snyder Township last year. After a single season of base hits, catches over the fence and youngsters sliding into home, the state Department of Environmental Protection intervened and told league officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}