Pennsylvania College Students Tell Wolf: No New Pipelines, Green Jobs Now

On Mon­day, stu­dents from 19 Penn­syl­va­nia col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties deliv­ered a state­ment to Gov­er­nor Tom Wolf’s Capi­tol office demand­ing no new nat­ur­al gas pipelines and imme­di­ate invest­ment in green jobs.

The stu­dents are attend­ing Penn­syl­va­nia Stu­dent Pow­er Spring Break near Har­ris­burg, an alter­na­tive spring break pro­gram for stu­dents work­ing on social, eco­nom­ic, and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice issues across the state.

The state­ment deliv­ery at the gov­er­nor’s office was led by 23 year-old Ash­ley Funk, the lead plain­tiff in Funk vs Wolf, a law­suit against the gov­er­nor by cit­i­zens alleg­ing that Penn­syl­va­nia has failed to meet its oblig­a­tion to act on cli­mate change.

Ms. Funk, a West­more­land Coun­ty res­i­dent and envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing stu­dent at Wellesly Col­lege and Olin Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing said, “I grew up play­ing in a waste coal dump behind my house and in a com­mu­ni­ty impact­ed by what the coal indus­try left behind. My sci­ence edu­ca­tion has made me deeply con­cerned that Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling and pipelines to sup­port it are going to lead us down the same dark path. We are here to tell Tom Wolf that our young minds can answer the ques­tion of what’s next for clean ener­gy and green jobs to bring eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty to our com­mu­ni­ties. We don’t want our liveli­hoods to con­tin­ue to be dis­rupt­ed by unsafe water and an unsta­ble climate.”

Funk, whose law­suit is now under con­sid­er­a­tion of the PA Supreme Court, added, “If he does­n’t agree, young peo­ple will take notice, and there will be polit­i­cal consequences.”

Jere­my Grif­fin, a 20 year-old from Philadel­phia, said, “I study envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence at Kutz­town Uni­ver­si­ty to become more respect­ed in the field and I feel as if this is a great issue fornWolf.to show every­one in Penn­syl­va­nia that he under­stands the sci­ence behind cli­mate change and will take action.”

Cur­rent­ly, the final per­mit­ting and con­struc­tion of five major con­tro­ver­sial nat­ur­al gas trans­mis­sion pipelines meant to ship gas out of the state is under­way. All five are seek­ing the use of “quick take” emi­nent domain to seize prop­er­ty from resis­tant landown­ers with­out com­pen­sa­tion until after the project is fin­ished. All five fall under Gov­er­nor Wolf’s juris­dic­tion for water and air per­mits and are meet­ing local opposition.

The Mariner East 2 pipeline would stretch from Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty near Pitts­burgh east to Philadel­phia, where gas liq­uids already arriv­ing via Mariner East 1 are loaded onto boats to be shipped to Nor­way for plas­tics man­u­fac­tur­ing. PA DEP has issued water per­mits for water­body cross­ings, but that has been appealed by envi­ron­men­tal groups to the Envi­ron­men­tal Hear­ing Board.

The North­ern Access Pipeline would begin in McK­ean Coun­ty and deliv­er gas to Cana­da and west­ern New York. The New York Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion has yet to issue final water and air per­mits, but PA DEP has issued theirs.

The Atlantic Sun­rise Pipeline is pro­posed to run from Susque­han­na Coun­ty, where shale gas drilling is the most dense in the state, to Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, ulti­mate­ly ship­ping gas to south­ern states and also to be export­ed from Lus­by, Mary­land to Japan via the Cove Point Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas Ter­mi­nal. PA DEP has issued their water per­mit, but that has been appealed by envi­ron­men­tal groups to the Envi­ron­men­tal Hear­ing Board.

The Rover Pipeline would leave Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty and stretch west through Ohio and into Michigan.

The Ori­on Upgrade of the exist­ing Ten­nessee Pipeline in Pike and Wayne Coun­ties is pro­posed to ship even more gas to the New York met­ro­pol­i­tan area.

The spring break pro­gram is spon­sored by Penn­syl­va­nia Stu­dent Pow­er Net­work, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, and Pow­er­shift Net­work with a grant by the Heinz Foundation.

Gov­er­nor Wolf,

We are mem­bers of the Penn­syl­va­nia Stu­dent Pow­er Net­work, a grow­ing net­work of youth who are com­mit­ted to fight­ing for social, eco­nom­ic, and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice across the Com­mon­wealth. We come from com­mu­ni­ty col­leges, state sys­tem uni­ver­si­ties, pri­vate col­leges, and state relat­ed uni­ver­si­ties. This past week, 50 stu­dents from 19 dif­fer­ent schools par­tic­i­pat­ed in an alter­na­tive spring break pro­gram to hone our skills and learn from each oth­er about the many issues we face on our cam­pus­es and in our com­mu­ni­ties. The cul­mi­na­tion of our expe­ri­ence is this state­ment we are deliv­er­ing to you to sup­port our peers work­ing across Pennsylvania.

We Sup­port Envi­ron­men­tal Justice

As of 2017, Penn­syl­va­nia has drilled over 10,000 shale gas wells in just over ten years. In that time, the PA DEP has issued 284 deter­mi­na­tion let­ters noti­fy­ing landown­ers that drilling or frack­ing activ­i­ty has caused the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of their drink­ing water.

The glut of gas has dri­ven a demand for new pipelines and the use of emi­nent domain to seize ease­ments from resis­tant prop­er­ty own­ers. Hun­dreds of com­pres­sor sta­tions have been built with­out using ade­quate emis­sion reduc­tion tech­nolo­gies, putting rur­al res­i­dents’ health at seri­ous risk due to air pol­lu­tion. Most impor­tant­ly, mega nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants and the build­out of Philadelphia’s gas hub have been pro­posed and are under con­struc­tion, against the will of local res­i­dents who don’t wish to live in the shad­ow of smoke stacks.

It’s time for Penn­syl­va­nia to make the tran­si­tion to clean ener­gy. We are call­ing for a com­mon­wealth econ­o­my that hires work­ers into the imple­men­ta­tion of solar, wind, geot­her­mal, green con­struc­tion stan­dards. We call for zero waste goals for trash and recy­cling, and weath­er­iz­ing homes and busi­ness­es. We call for direct invest­ment in coal­field and shale­field com­mu­ni­ties to replace water sup­plies, retrain work­ers, and devel­op a resilient rur­al econ­o­my that doesn’t rely on dirty energy.

Most urgent­ly, we demand an imme­di­ate stop to con­struc­tion of new trans­mis­sion pipelines to ship gas out of Penn­syl­va­nia includ­ing the Mariner East Pipeline, Atlantic Sun­rise Pipeline, expan­sion of the Ten­nessee Pipeline, the Rover Pipeline, and North­ern Access Pipeline. These projects are just anoth­er his­toric abuse by big indus­try of work­ing fam­i­lies in Penn­syl­va­nia and of our environment.

Arti­cle 1 Sec­tion 27 of the Penn­syl­va­nia Con­sti­tu­tion reads, “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. Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s pub­lic nat­ur­al resources are the com­mon prop­er­ty of all the peo­ple, includ­ing gen­er­a­tions yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Com­mon­wealth shall con­serve and main­tain them for the ben­e­fit of all the people.”

We are your con­stituents, and it is your respon­si­bil­i­ty to uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion on our behalves. We remind you that it is in your pow­er to per­mit or deny the build­ing of pipelines in the com­mon­wealth. Your deci­sion on this mat­ter will affect your polit­i­cal lega­cy, and deter­mine whether you receive the sup­port of stu­dents statewide in the upcom­ing elec­tion cycle.

As stu­dents who will inher­it the world you leave behind, we demand no new pipelines!