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Pennsylvania State Senate
07/27/2024 11:55 AM
Pennsylvania State Senate
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?SPick=20190&chamber=S&cosponId=29987
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Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2019 - 2020 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: July 18, 2019 10:14 AM
From: Senator Mike Folmer
To: All Senate members
Subject: Hazardous Emissions/Weather Modification
 
In the near future, I will be introducing legislation to update Pennsylvania’s 1967 WEATHER MODIFICATION - REGULATING RAIN MAKING legislation, which expired in the 1970s. This legislation will reaffirm Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Environmental Rights Amendment, Article 1, §27, codifying the people’s “right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment” by establishing a process and procedure to prohibit hazardous activities that are intended to manipulate the atmosphere and/or the environment at large.

Pennsylvania’s history includes the protection of people’s health and safety, and the environment. However, our State Constitution’s provision in granting such rights under Article 1, §27 has been disregarded by means of various hazardous activities without state consent, causing vast and incalculable losses in health, safety, environmental health, and agricultural integrity and capacity.

Exposing all persons, including the most vulnerable, to hazardous stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), irradiation of several types, and other pollutant emissions, weakens our entire population, our environment and agriculture. Expiration of the PA Statute cited above has led to incalculable suffering and economic losses:
  • The PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center reports high air pollution days exceeding even those in the New York–Newark area in more than a dozen of our state communities; and, citing respiratory and heart problems that result, recommends stronger pollution reduction efforts. The Harrisburg area is in the top ten worst cities in the country for air pollution.

  • Our PA Department of Environmental Protection ties air pollution levels to various illnesses and early deaths, and alerts us to the needs of sensitive individuals, but lacks the means to protect people and the environment from high-atmospheric and other pollutants.

  • Our Attorney General, with other AGs, filed a petition against the EPA in an effort to receive improved federal protections from air pollution, however, the need for protection from intentional atmospheric releases has not been addressed.

  • According to USDA, Pennsylvania is among the six worst states for honeybee colony collapse, attributable to air and electromagnetic pollutants. Aluminum is neurotoxic for bees, and the accumulation of metals in bees’ bodies makes them more vulnerable to electromagnetic pollutants.

  • Excessive rain, possibly caused by weather modification activities, devastates farmers in our state, as does “rapid apple decline;” both result in the urgent need for regenerative agriculture and the prohibition of hazardous weather modification activities.
Please join me in reaffirming and updating Pennsylvania's expired statute on WEATHER MODIFICATION, reinforcing the principles of the Constitutional Environmental Rights Amendment, Article 1, §27, through Hazardous Emissions legislation, so that we can protect all our citizens and visitors, our environment and agriculture from hazardous, polluting emissions.