Central Pennsylvania SBDCs Hire Environmental Specialist to Help Small Businesses

February 7, 2001

University Park, Pa. --- Small business owners in central Pennsylvania don’t have to travel far for environmental assistance. A new environmental specialist, working through six Small Business Development Centers in central Pennsylvania, is now available to help businesses tackle issues such as pollution prevention, waste minimization, and energy efficiency.

Heather Fennessey, the new specialist based at the Penn State University Park campus, will provide free and confidential on-site consulting and workshops for small business owners in the counties covered by the following college and university SBDCs: Penn State, Bucknell, Lock Haven, St. Francis, Scranton, and Clarion.

Fennessey will also act as an intermediary between business owners and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. "Businesses can come to me if they have questions about environmental regulations," she says. "I’ll also answer questions about OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards."

Before joining the SBDCs, Fennessey worked as an environmental consultant for MTS Technologies Inc., a small consulting firm in Johnstown, Pa. She is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Pennsylvania, and she has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a minor in environmental engineering from Penn State.

Environmental specialists can help small businesses "achieve environmental compliance while reducing operating costs," says Christopher Lynch, director of the Environmental Management Assistance Program (EMAP) at the Pennsylvania SBDC office in Philadelphia. Lynch ran EMAP by himself until last year, when the program received additional funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. The money allowed EMAP to expand, and six new specialists, including Fennessey, were hired to meet the needs of businesses throughout the state, Lynch says.

The Pennsylvania SBDCs are a network of 16 college- and university-based centers dedicated to helping Pennsylvania entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. The Environmental Management Assistance Program, launched in 1997, is also supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

For more information about EMAP at the SBDCs in central Pennsylvania, contact Heather Fennessey, (814) 863-4293, hxm103@psu.edu. The Pennsylvania SBDC also publishes a quarterly environmental newsletter that can be read online at www.pasbdc.org.

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Dana Bauer (814) 865-3477 danabauer@psu.edu

Barbara Hale (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 238-0997 (h) bah@psu.edu