EPCAMR Brings on Elizabeth Rosser, Mountain Top, PA as a Part-time Watershed Outreach Specialist

EPCAMR is busting at the seams so it seems. If you’ve ever heard of the phrase, money coming out of your ears…well, while the grant funds coming out of EPCAMR’s ears might not be in millions, it is in the hundreds of thousands. There sure is enough to cause our growing regional environmental organization to bring on some part-time staff to assist with the increasing number of regional reclamation, watershed restoration, community cleanups, and environmental outreach and education programs that we’re trying to juggle without dropping the projects that we’re supporting across the Commonwealth of PA and throughout the EPCAMR Region. Hence the reason to bring on Elizabeth Rosser, a native to Northeastern PA that has spent the last 5 years in the Philadelphia area, upon graduating from Temple University with a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies in 2012. she is a very bright young woman who graduated Cum Laude and with a Distinction in Major while at Temple University. Since having relocated back home, Elizabeth was having a hard time networking and finding any contacts in the environmental field here in our area, until she reached out to EPCAMR.

Elizabeth Rosser at Glen Onoko Falls on a hike in Jim Thorpe, PA.

EPCAMR only has two full-time positions, 2 seasonal interns coming on board shortly from Bloomsburg University over the Summer and into the Fall 2014, and 4 part-time positions currently, with 3 of them strictly dedicated to the Mine Subsidence Insurance Mapping Program, as GIS Technicians (2-Dave Svab and Samantha Schafer) and a GIS Specialist (Kelsey Biondo). However, this particular grant project is only one of many projects that EPCAMR is currently managing, sponsoring, or administering as a part of it’s annual work plan throughout the EPCAMR Region. Other projects are either in program development, project management, program implementation, under professional service contracts, or being developed internally by the EPCAMR Staff based on needs of the communities in which the organization serves.

EPCAMR is going to bring Elizabeth on part-time to draw down on hours that are dedicated in grants already funded for projects that are just physically impossible for two people to keep up with on the Staff, given our workload and how many hours in a week that we have to dedicate to each project as we divide them up and work on the various projects accordingly. She’ll be coordinating some illegal dump site cleanups throughout the Wyoming Valley and the EPCAMR Region, including a new exciting partnership with the film crew that just recently completed the short documentary on Centralia, led by Joe Sapienza II, who is interested in doing something more in Centralia Borough having seen the devastation, litter, illegal dumping, tires, and trash that litters the now nearly abandoned ghost town. She will be helping out with AMD Tie Dye Workshops over the Summer at Nature Camps at Hillside Farms with the PA American Water and possibly the Carbon County Environmental Education Center that calls on us every year, and maybe even the Green Drinks Professional Group that meets up monthly in the City of Wilkes-Barre to talk eco-shop. She will also help with some stream monitoring in the Solomon Creek Watershed for an upcoming Dam Removal and Trout Stream Habitat Improvement Project in Ashley Borough. As it turns out, she’ll be able to get her hands feet wet pretty quickly with EPCAMR and her hands dirty with mine drainage as she will have to collect iron oxide precipitates from several AMD discharges that we frequent to harvest the iron hydroxide for our AMD Processing to literally sell rust to artists and environmental educators across the country. She will also be reaching out to find recycled clear glass or transparent ornaments for us that will allow us to increase or inventory of eco-ornaments that we’d like to start selling in July for our first “Christmas in July” eco-ornament sale of the year since she has an artistic background as well. Let’s just say, EPCAMR will be keeping her busy part-time and when she has free time to volunteer, we’ll keep her busy then too. She’ll have fun side by side learning with our other two interns Dana Sword, and Cait Dickson, when they come on board next month and the following month thereafter.

Elizabeth has been a lover of the environment for as long as she could remember. She is very fond of the outdoors and loves hiking or walking with her pups. Her recent hobbies include reclaiming and up-cycling “old things” into art or decorations. Her favorite past-time at the moment is drawing masterpieces on old farmhouse windows. A few years back she helped her father build a greenhouse in their backyard out of even more reclaimed windows, it also has a DIY rain barrel attached to it to collect water for her Mom’s ever growing plant obsession! She’s an avid reader and is currently in the midst of reading about the history and importance of bees. She has many summer goals, one is to build a DIY solar panel heater out of recycled soda cans. “Maybe she’ll be able to get some ideas from the EPCAMR AMD Solar Kiln designed by myself and constructed by the EPCAMR Staff and a few previous interns a few years ago”, suggested Robert Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director.

Her passion for taking care of the planet and it’s co-inhabitants only grew stronger when she started College and knew she wanted to make it a career. After graduating with an Environmental Studies degree in May of 2012, from Temple University, she spent a year working in one of Philly’s hardest hit and underserved neighborhoods in New Kensington, as a Sustainable Neighborhoods Coordinator for the New Kensington Community Development Corporation.

There, she managed the Farm to Families site, a low-cost fresh produce program funded by St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children, run by the SHARE Food ,ostProgram. “She has previous experience in grant writing. She’s been a former intern with Clean Water Action in Philadelphia, PA and is familiar with water resource management, gas drilling, fracking, and watershed management. CWA logo

She has coordinated volunteers and that will come in handy as we try to keep up with our daily inquiries from potential EPCAMR Community Service Volunteers that are utilizing our VolunteerMatch portal to find out all of the opportunities that we have to offer, both in the Office, outside the Office, and virtually, online. She also has experience working with Elementary Schools and other community partnerships that will easily help her transition into EPCAMR’s goals and mission in our Coalfield Communities,…How can I not bring her on board?” Robert positively stated. “She is very bright, has a passion and commitment to the environment, is eager to learn, is looking to network, and appreciative of the opportunity to work with EPCAMR, on a limited basis, due to our budgetary limitations at this time. I’m always looking for ways to bring on each of my additional part-time staff to full-time positions with the grants and foundations that we seek to support our mission, projects, and goals. As with any non-profit, and Elizabeth fully understands this well having worked with the NKCDC, operating on a shoe-string budget, having very limited resources, and the short periods in which grant funding is typically provided, often times prevents long-term positions from being created full-time for most projects, however, that won’t stop me from finding the funding to bring all of my Staff up to full-time at every opportunity that I am given to propose the reasons why their positions are warranted and needed in our Coalfield Communities.” Robert passionately emphasized.

Since moving home, she realizes she’s not as up to date on some environmental issues in her own backyard and is excited to learn more about abandoned mine reclamation and become a part of the EPCAMR community. She’s overjoyed for the opportunity she has been given and knows the experience will help her as she hopes to obtain a Master’s in Environmental Management one day. “The realm of Environmental Studies is such an interdisciplinary field, there are so many paths to choose, it’s been hard for me to pick just one! I know my time at EPCAMR will help me in deciding on a more clear career path and give me the hands-on/technical experience needed to refine my skills.” “I’m more than ready to start soaking up all the vast environmental knowledge that Robert and the rest of the staff will offer me given their nearly 20 year history of being one of the most sought after environmental organizations in Northeastern PA that builds coalitions from the ground up and are always finding ways to get their hands dirty, wade into streams of both clean and orange water, and make it their priority to educate community leaders, local government officials, youth, and volunteers alike on the importance of clean water and a sustainable reclaimed landscape for our future!” exclaimed Elizabeth.