Energy Justice Summer: Standing With Communities in the Shalefields

- by Ener­gy Jus­tice Summer

This sum­mer youth have gath­ered in the shale gas region of North­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia to facil­i­tate train­ings, com­pile reports, and to fight for the safe­ty of landown­ers, work­ers, and the environment.

Ener­gy Jus­tice Sum­mer is based in Susque­han­na Coun­ty in order to direct­ly con­nect with the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers impact­ed by shale gas devel­op­ment. The pro­gram con­sists of three work­ing teams: research, edu­ca­tion and out­reach, and com­mu­ni­ty organizing.

Char­lotte Lewis, a research team mem­ber, Scran­ton native and stu­dent at Lack­awan­na Col­lege said, “Rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in Penn­syl­va­nia are chang­ing from farm­land to gas land. When this source of ener­gy is deplet­ed, what indus­try will we have left to sus­tain us?”

Lewis and her team mem­bers have draft­ed a socioe­co­nom­ic impact report focus­ing on pover­ty indi­ca­tors and the decline of farm-relat­ed income in rur­al coun­ties with high-vol­ume drilling.

The pre­lim­i­nary find­ings, based on data from the Nation­al Agri­cul­tur­al Sta­tis­tics Ser­vice, show that coun­ties free of shale gas wells that use at least 15 per­cent of their acreage as oper­at­ing farms earned 13.5 per­cent more from their com­mod­i­ty sales per farm than those in coun­ties with over 100 wells drilled.

The report also explores the rise of free and reduced school lunch eli­gi­bil­i­ty in school dis­tricts with high den­si­ty drilling. For exam­ple, accord­ing to the PA Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, 5 out of 6 school dis­tricts in Susque­han­na Coun­ty have seen an increase in eli­gi­bil­i­ty in the past five years; at the same time, over 950 shale gas wells have been drilled.

Anoth­er series of reports cre­at­ed by the research team includes the his­to­ry of envi­ron­men­tal vio­la­tions com­mit­ted by Shell, a inter­na­tion­al crude oil & gas com­pa­ny. This will be fol­lowed by two more reports focus­ing on Cabot Oil & Gas, and Chesa­peake Energy.

Sari­ta Far­nel­li, edu­ca­tion and out­reach team mem­ber, and a stu­dent who grew up in Dimock, PA said, “Frack­ing made my fam­i­ly’s water undrink­able. I’m still afraid to drink our tap water.”

Events host­ed by the edu­ca­tion and out­reach team have includ­ed a free water qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing work­shop in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Alliance for Aquat­ic Resource Mon­i­tor­ing at Dick­in­son Col­lege at Salt Springs State Park. In addi­tion, train­ings on envi­ron­men­tal vio­la­tions analy­sis, reg­u­la­to­ry appeals, and com­mu­ni­ty organizing.

On top of sched­ul­ing work­shops in Susque­han­na Coun­ty, the com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing team has worked with res­i­dents of Mil­ford Town­ship, PA to halt the com­pres­sor sta­tion planned for NiSource’s East Side Expan­sion Project. The 9,400 horse­pow­er com­pres­sor would con­nect the Ten­nessee and Colum­bia pipelines and is pro­posed to be built in the vicin­i­ty of local homes, schools, and senior centers—despite the threat of res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases or can­cer con­tributed by vent­ing emissions.

When the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion (DEP) and the Fed­er­al Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion (FERC) failed to sched­ule a hear­ing to answer ques­tions and con­cerns of local com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, Ener­gy Jus­tice Sum­mer and Clean Air Coun­cil teamed up to hold a pub­lic hear­ing on July 9th at the Pike Coun­ty Pub­lic Library in Mil­ford. As a result of this suc­cess­ful meet­ing, the DEP planned a hear­ing at 7 pm. on August 18th, at the Delaware Val­ley High School in West­fall Township.

The orga­niz­ing team has also direct­ed their ener­gy to the pro­posed Atlantic Sun­rise pipeline project. The Williams Com­pa­ny Inc. exten­sion would con­nect to the Cove Point Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas export ter­mi­nal and will cross new ter­ri­to­ry in Susque­han­na, Wyoming, Colum­bia, Northum­ber­land, Schuylkill, Lebanon, Lan­cast­er, Clin­ton and Luzerne counties.

Ener­gy Jus­tice Sum­mer Fel­lows have met with landown­ers on the pipeline route to dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion about the FERC reg­u­la­to­ry process and landown­er rights. The team is sched­ul­ing fol­low-up landown­ers’ meet­ings in Sep­tem­ber with res­i­dents who may lose build­ing lots, fruit trees, sug­ar maple groves, tim­ber sales, and pas­ture land if the pipeline is approved.

Spencer John­son, from Lan­cast­er, PA, writer, and grad­u­ate of Franklin and Mar­shall Col­lege said, “There are a lot of sto­ries and arti­cles about frack­ing, but to be here on the front­lines, to be in it…the peo­ple we are work­ing with are our friends, we want our friends to be protected.”

John­son has writ­ten a series of sto­ries based on the tes­ti­mo­ni­als from res­i­dents whose health and liveli­hood have been effect­ed by uncon­ven­tion­al shale gas infra­struc­ture, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er and video­g­ra­ph­er, Max Grudzin­s­ki and Crys­tal Van­der Weit. An inter­ac­tive web project fea­tur­ing the sto­ries, pho­tos, and videos of John­son’s team is cur­rent­ly being designed.

The team of Ener­gy Jus­tice Sum­mer also includes: Adam Hasz, Alex Lotor­to, Alli­son Petryk, Collin Rees, and Maria Lang­holz. Ener­gy Jus­tice Sum­mer is a joint project between Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work and Sus­tai­nUs. Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work is a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing resources to grass­roots orga­niz­ing groups bat­tling envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion through­out the nation. Sus­tai­nUS is an inter­na­tion­al­ly-net­worked non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to offer­ing tools of social and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice to fur­ther young peo­ples’ goals toward sus­tain­able development.