HARRISBURG -- A "green" coalition is criticizing Gov. Ed Rendell for trying to use lease fees from Marcellus shale land to help erase the state's growing budget deficit.

The pro-environmental groups said yesterday that when the state's Oil and Gas Lease Fund was created in 1955, legislators "committed a funding stream to reinvest in the magnificent system of public conservation lands they inherited from their predecessors."

Using oil and natural gas revenue to protect the state's forests, parks and streams "showed respect for the generations yet to come, who deserved to inherit more than just empty gas and oil wells and degraded public lands," the critics said.

This week, Mr. Rendell unveiled a plan to erase a projected $1.6 billion deficit for the fiscal year that ends June 30. Along with cutting state programs, eliminating pay raises, imposing a hiring freeze and seeking additional federal aid, Mr. Rendell proposed using $174 million from the sale of leases to companies that want to drill for natural gas in areas of Marcellus shale.

The fund has total of $190 million.

The Legislature still must adopt the plan, and is likely to tinker with it beforehand.

The state has faced economic downtowns in the past without tapping into the Oil and Gas Lease Fund, the groups said.

"Through seven recessions and more than half a century, the fund has been used to reinvest in Pennsylvania's green infrastructure," they said in a letter to Mr. Rendell. "It would be a great loss for the fund to now be diverted to pay for day-to-day [government] operations."

Chuck Ardo, a spokesman for Mr. Rendell, said tough choices have to be made as state deficits soar.

"I would remind all the single-issue groups that the administration has to make very difficult fiscal decisions. The governor hopes they would understand," Mr. Ardo said.

The unhappy groups include PennFuture, whose former director, John Hanger, is now the state's acting director of environmental protection. Others include 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania; Audubon Pennsylvania; Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds; the state's Sierra Club chapter; the Nature Conservancy; and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

They said the Marcellus shale revenue would better be spent on acid mine drainage cleanup; heavy equipment, radios and computers for state parks bureaus; recreational equipment for the parks; repairing old dams; and improving roads and trails at 22 state parks and 18 forest districts.