Washington, DC - During a major policy address at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, Vice President Al Gore announced that the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna Watershed would be the site of one of six national demonstration projects to highlight the use of new information technologies that help local communities promote economic growth and environmental protection. This announcement follows the Vice President's July 27 announcement that the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna Watershed was being designated one of the nation's fourteen American Heritage Rivers.

Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski (PA-11) remarked, "Under the American Heritage Rivers program, our area submitted a comprehensive plan to clean up our river and waterways, reclaim mine-scarred land, and promote economic development. To implement that plan, we will need a highly sophisticated tool to gather the necessary information, organize it, and make it understandable so that everyone can understand the problems and set priorities to fix them. A geographic information system (GIS) can provide that tool."

The GIS project envisioned for the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna Watershed will include data on sources of acid mine drainage, sites of mine-scarred land, sewer and storm drainage systems, flood plain maps, transportation infrastructure, and many other items. GIS allows massive amounts of disparate data to be stored in computer systems and then processed in such a way that the data is visualized in thematic maps which are easier to understand and interpret.

"A geographic information system can help our area analyze our problems and our opportunities. Our American Heritage River designation will bring the highest level of federal attention to solving those problems and seizing those opportunities; GIS is the tool that will help us at the local level to understand what we need. The key to our success as an American Heritage River is the level of participation we obtain from everyone in the region. I hope that a state-of-the-art GIS system will encourage greater sharing of information among our many local municipalities and private citizens," said Congressman Kanjorski.

Participants in the project will include Wilkes University, the Pennsylvania Marketing and Planning (MAP) Center at King's College, and other interested organizations. The demonstration project will build on the model recently developed by SEDA-COG, a regional development organization in Central Pennsylvania. Tom Sweet, the Chief of SEDA-COG's Information Technologies Group has noted that, "by providing participating counties with local independence in a regionally-coordinated format, SEDA-COG has been highly successful in helping these counties use this new technology to meet their local goals."

Towards the beginning of his address Wednesday, Vice President Gore singled out Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski (PA-11) for his leadership role on issues relating to the use of innovative information technologies, saying, "I want to acknowledge Congressman Paul Kanjorski. I'm going to be talking about information technologies and Paul has been a great leader on that and on other issues."

The Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna Watershed stretches from Thompson in Susquehanna County through Scranton, Pittston, Wilkes-Barre, Kingston, Nanticoke, Hazleton, Berwick, Bloomsburg, and Danville to Northumberland in Northumberland County.