Ned Smith Center to celebrate Pa.’s Environmental Rights Amendment with exhibit, open house
Updated May 13, 2021;
In that book, Kury calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing a right to a healthy environment, like the one he drafted and championed into the Pennsylvania more than 50 years ago, as a newly elected Pennsylvania state senator, drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution.
That amendment was enacted on Earth Day 1970 and ratified by Pennsylvania’s voters one year later. Forward-looking states like Hawaii and Montana followed suit, enacting strong environmental protections in their own state constitutions.
On May 18, 1971, Pennsylvania’s voters by a four-to-one margin ratified what is now Article I, Section 27 of our state constitution– the ERA that provides in part:
The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.
Franklin, over 50 years ago, saw the terrible carnage that the coal industry had visited on our state’s Streams. He conceived of creating an amendment to the constitution which would permanently provide environmental protection in Pennsyvlania.
When we filmed Franklin, I noticed on his kitchen wall copies of Picasso’s paintings of Don Quixote. These remind him that one can overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. He won his legislative seat against overwhelming odds, and he maneuvered this landmark amendment through the legislative process. Now Pennsylvania has been joined by two other states – Montana and Hawaii – in having such amendment in their c