Nastassja Noell. Natural Gas Drilling Threatens Communities in Northeastern United States. 28 Sep 2009. Philly Independent Media Center.
This week while protesters at the G-20 are getting beaten by police and soaking their bandannas in vinegar to protect their lungs from tear gas, some folks in neighboring counties and states are putting spikes in roads to stop the drilling trucks, and taking down street signs so that truck drivers can’t find their way to drilling sites. Others are documenting ecological devastation, and raising their voices in unison against the officials who purport to protect them.
In Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and New York folks struggle with local officials and corporate media, bringing national attention to the victims of peak-energy’s destructive frenzy. Numerous incidents involving road accidents, water contamination, and unresponsive government officials have pushed Pittsburgh’s neighbors in Wetzel County, West Virginia to place spike strips along RT 89, a road heavily trafficked by Chesapeake Energy’s trucks traveling to drilling sites.
Joanne Fiorito, acting as the eyes of the DEP, recently discovered a waste spill at a drilling site just off RT 29 and upon reporting the spill was warned not to trespass.
“If the DEP can’t monitor these sites on their own,” said Ms.Joanne Fiorito “and then the DEP tells us that we cannot trespass after we found a spill on the Grimsley well pad site that wasn’t reported to
the DEP by Cabot, well then, where does this leave the citizens of PA who are dependent on the DEP doing its job?
It has gotten to the point where I and others will have to do it ourselves, and I personally don’t care if they arrest me for civil disobedience, because this land, air and water is what keeps us all alive.”
Nastassja Noell. Natural Gas Drilling Threatens Communities in Northeastern United States. 28 Sep 2009. Philly Independent Media Center.
See also: Don Hopey. Sudden death of ecosystem ravages long creek. 20 Sep 2009. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
People Feel Threatened, ‘Everything is being killed’
Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports that 161 species found killed along 38 miles of Dunkard Creek — “Sudden death of ecosystem ravages long creek 161 aquatic species have died along Dunkard Creek” by Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; September 20, 2009.
Verna Presley covers her nose to block out the smell of rotting fish as she walks along Dunkard Creek with her husband, Ed, on their property near the village of Brave in Greene County. So far, 161 species of fish, mussels, salamanders, crayfish and aquatic insects have been wiped out along the creek.
Just 20 days ago, Dunkard Creek, which meanders lazily back and forth across the border of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, was one of the most ecologically diverse streams in both states, containing freshwater mussels, mudpuppy salamanders and a host of fish species from minnows to 3-foot-long muskies.
Generations of families picnicked along its sycamore-lined banks and swam in its warm water. Fishermen plied its green, slow-moving pools with lures and bait in hopes of catching lunker bass.
But today, the 38-mile creek is all but dead, its 161 species of fish, mussels, salamanders, crayfish and aquatic insects killed by mysterious pollutants coming from sources state and federal agencies have yet to pinpoint despite aggressive field work.
“We’ve just been decimated down here. Everything is being killed almost from the headwaters of the creek to where it flows into the Monongahela River,” said Betty Wiley, president of the Dunkard Creek Watershed Association. “It’s such a tragedy for the creek. An ecosystem has been destroyed.”
See also: Don Hopey. Sudden death of ecosystem ravages long creek. 20 Sep 2009. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
See: Civil Disobedience
See: Criminalising Civil Disobedience
See: The Yes Men | Climate Pledge of Resistance
See: DEC Fracks NYC & Josh Fox of Water Under Attack’s Responds
See: Tree spiker : from Earth First! to lowbagging: my struggles in radical environmental action
See: Climate Ground Zero
See: The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels
See: Drill, Baby, Drill!: The chant of the political naif
See: Action Center | Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP America)
See: Art of the common-place: the agrarian essays of Wendell Berry
See: Coal River
