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| Photo courtesy of FracTracker Pipelines are a necessary component of fracking and petrochemical development. At the 112th and 113th Sustainability Salons this May and June, we'll take a close look at a 98-mile pipeline system being built to feed ethane from fracked gas to the Shell petrochemical facility, and take lessons from other pipelines already operating or in development. The Falcon Pipeline passes beneath the Ohio river and crosses many other sensitive areas including the headwaters of the Ambridge Reservoir and Tappan Lake Reservoir (serving over 30,000 people in a dozen municipalities), as well as regions prone to landslides that can lead to explosions. Whistleblowers have pointed to ways that Shell has been cutting corners during construction of the Falcon Pipeline -- and covering up potential problems. Just during construction, there have been dozens of spills along the Falcon route. Other fracking and pipeline companies, necessary to feed these petrochemical plants, have come under criminal investigation. Pipeline incidents are occurring, on average, more than once a day. Speakers will include: |
Rachel Sica Meyer, environmental educator and resident of Independence Township working with BCMAC (Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community), will help frame the situation as Falcon construction nears completion.
Chemist Randi Poladnik, PhD of OVEC (Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition) will offer a view from the shores of Tappan Lake -- a reservoir serving the town of Cadiz, Ohio, threatened by the pipeline.
What are the stakes? Karen Gdula of the Ivy Lane Alliance has lived through her worst nightmare. In September of 2018, the woods behind her home in Center Township erupted in a fireball as a landslide tore the just-completed Revolution Pipeline apart. Many neighbors barely escaped with their lives.
Next month (very likely June 19th), Attorney Jen Clark of Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services will survey legal issues surrounding the Falcon and other pipelines, and legal approaches for protecting public health. Lois Bower-Bjornson has been fighting the health impacts of fracking and related infrastructure for years. She's spoken out on her family's experience in contexts from the Young Voices for the Planet educator workshops to her own Frackland Tours -- and has helped to pass legislation to control gas development at the township level. Food and Water Watch has been helping other municipalities establish protective ordinances; Southwest Pennsylvania Organizer Robin Martin will share their work. Karen Feridun, a founder of Berks Gas Truth and Better Path Coalition, will talk about the reforms we need at the national level, in the way that FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) works (or doesn't).
In the meantime, a few other items of note:
• Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has been a perennial cheerleader for the fracking and petrochemical industries -- and thus for the dangerous pipelines they require. Please consider signing onto this letter asking him to change his tune.
• May 26th is a nationwide Day of Action for the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. Here's a toolkit for contacting your legislators.
• The Driving PA Forward campaign, which we learned about in March, has a petition and info to call your legislators here.
• Also in March, we talked about the ReImagine Food Systems project; on May 28th there'll be an evening of music to help raise FUNds for these gardens!
• With U.S. Steel stepping back from their promise to improve the Mon Valley Works (choosing instead to spend the money on a newer, non-union plant in Arkansas), there will be a resident-led Town Hall about the future of the Mon Valley on June 9th.
• Mask update: I have distributed all of the Breathe99 masks (featured at November's salon on Pandemics and Air (video), and one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2020) from my bulk orders, but still have some of the new foam liners that address the condensation issue associated with a well-sealed mask, and a few boxes of filters. Please email me with mask in the Subject line if you're interested. If you order your own mask, remember that there's a $10 discount for salongoers (code SUSTAINABILITYSALON)! Also -- with the ongoing crisis in India, Breathe99 is seeking crowdfunding to help send masks to particularly vulnerable people there. Can you help?
• Harvie Farms: Simon Huntley, featured in last month's Food salon, has also offered a special discount to the Sustainability Salon community. Choose your favorite items, help our small farms beat Big Ag, and build a more resilient food system -- members receive weekly or biweekly boxes of local groceries from Pennsylvania farms and artisans. Coupon code MAREN25 will give you 25% off your first box! Sign up here.
Talks and discussion will run from 4 p.m. to 7:30 or so on Zoom (sadly, no potluck supper these days). You're welcome to join the call for informal conversation after 3 p.m., and we aim to start the main program right around 4. If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful. If you RSVP via Eventbrite, you'll receive the Zoom registration link right away. If you're not already on my Eventbrite list, please email me (maren dot cooke at gmail dot com) with salon in the Subject line to be added -- and let me know how you heard about salons!
Past topics have included the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the judiciary and fair elections, consumption, pandemics and air, election law and activism, air quality and environmental justice, social investment, local economies, the economics of energy, mutual aid networks, ocean health, the rise of the radical right, the back end of consumption, approaches to activism on fracking & climate, air quality, technology, and citizen science, single-use plastics, election activism, election law, whether to preserve existing nuclear power plants, advanced nuclear technologies, passenger and freight trains, consumption, plastics, and pollution, air quality, solar power, youth activism, greening business, greenwashing, the petrochemical buildout in our region, climate/nature/people, fracking, health, & action, globalization, ecological ethics, community inclusion, air quality monitoring, informal gatherings that turn out to have lots of speakers, getting STEM into Congress, keeping Pittsburgh's water public, Shell's planned petrochemical plant, visualizing air quality, the City of Pittsburgh's sustainability initiatives, fossil energy infrastructure, getting money out of politics, community solar power and the Solarize Allegheny program, the Paris climate negotiations (before, during, and after), air quality (again, with news on the autism connection), reuse (of things and substances), neighborhood-scale food systems, other forms of green community revitalization, solar power, climate change, environmental art, environmental education (Part I & Part II), community mapping projects, environmental journalism, grassroots action, Marcellus shale development and community rights, green building, air quality, health care, more solar power, trees and park stewardship, alternative energy and climate policy, regional watershed issues, fantastic film screenings and discussions (often led by filmmakers) over the winter with films on Food Systems, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation, Plastic Paradise, Rachel Carson and the Power Of One Voice, Triple Divide on fracking, You've Been Trumped and A Dangerous Game, A Fierce Green Fire, Sustainability Pioneers, films on consumption, Living Downstream, Bidder 70, YERT, Gas Rush Stories, and food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, and more food (a recurrent theme; with California running out of water, we'd better gear up to produce a lot more of our own!).
Coronavirus update: As you know, people in Pittsburgh and around the world are sequestered at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing is still the rule for most Americans. That's a bit of a misnomer, though -- we need physical distancing to flatten the curve, but technology now allows for rich interactions even so! I believe that community is one of our greatest strengths, so in March as events began to be cancelled, I hosted the first virtual Sustainability Salon via Zoom teleconference -- rather than gathering our usual 50-80 people in a contained space. It went quite well (even engaging participants from hundreds of miles away), and we're looking forward to June's salon! Please be sure to RSVP (via email with "salon" in the Subject: line, or via Eventbrite) so you'll receive the sign-on information.
If you haven't been here before, you may enjoy checking out our roof garden and solar installation (and now apiary!) as well as the many other green and interesting things around our place. If interested folks are online and everything is working smoothly by around 3:30, perhaps I can conduct a virtual tour.
And if you like to make music or listen to homemade music, think back to our evening sings -- we typically ran the gamut from Irish fiddle tunes to protest songs to the Beatles, and a fun time was had by all. Folks would bring instruments, and/or pick up one of ours. Conversations would continue through the evening, as well. With a virtual event this is less likely to happen, but we can share music by turns, reminisce, chat online, and look forward to the post-COVID era!
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