Fwd: [paforcleanlandairwater] LNG Exports no! + "Bidder 70" Premiere + PA News

[alu...@aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Iris Marie Bloom <protectin...@gmail.com>
To: protectingourwaters <protectin...@lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Wed, May 22, 2013 2:28 pm
Subject: [paforcleanlandairwater] LNG Exports no! + "Bidder 70" Premiere + PA News

With so much incredible news in the world of fracking, it's easy to forget exciting upcoming events. Tomorrow's (Thursday May 23rd 7 PM) screening of "Bidder 70" (documentary about the movement sparked by an inspired act of resistance at an auction) provides a time and place for our movement to come together (at Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South Street, Philadelphia). Your invitation, along with an update about our three speakers -- Matthew Armstead, Kevin Starbard, and yours truly -- is below. Invite others using this link and/or with the Facebook event page.    

First, Pennsylvania news and today's Action Faction: 

1. Review of DEP drilling records reveals water damage to at least 161 Pennsylvania homes, farms, businesses; murky testing methods. This is a must-read. Laura Legere of the Times Tribune has dug in with a two-part investigative series showing that many more Pennsylvanians have been impacted by water contamination due to shale gas drilling than DEP's reluctant, incomplete and inconclusive (at best) reporting had previously shown. While residents of PA "shale country" widely believe that PA DEP is actively colluding with the industry, Legere's reporting shows the "devil in the details" of how PA DEP keeps its numbers of "confirmed cases" of shale gas drilling water impacts misleadingly low. Read all about it, and join the discussion, here. 

2. Radioactive waste from gas drilling triggered radioactivity alarms at landfills more than 1,000 times in 2012! Workers also tell us that often the alarms are simply disabled so that landfill operators can do business as usual.  Read all about it here: "Radioactive Gas Drilling Waste Sets off More Radioactivity Alarms" (Protecting Our Waters blog, with links to AP, StateImpact, Shale Reporter, Tribune-Review.) 

3. Action faction

Stopping LNG (liquified natural gas) export facilities is a top national priority for our movement.  More LNG exports means far more fracking, more pollution and more health impacts. Today's action (ok to call all week, sooner better):  Call, email or fax Energy Secretary Moniz. Moniz, freshly sworn in, has promised to review impact studies -- hold him to it! 

Demand he give no LNG export permits until a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) has been done in every state where shale gas development is occurring. Further demand that a life-cycle Cumulative Impact Study (CIS) be done in each shale-gas-impacted state. Insist on not one permit for LNG export!

• E-mail: You can send an email to the Secretary of Energy at The.Se...@hq.doe.gov
• By Phone: 202-586-5000 (Main Switchboard) or use the National Phone Directory for Hearing and/or Speech Impaired: 1-800-877-8339 
• By Fax: 202-586-4403
  

Thanks to Rebecca Roter for developing this action: join her Facebook Event page for this Stop LNG Exports Action.

3. Finally: Your Invitation (yeah, we sent this out last week, but we bet you forgot): 

Philadelphia Premiere of “Bidder 70″: Tim DeChristopher and Peaceful Uprising

What: Protecting Our Waters presents the Philadelphia premiere of the film Bidder 70:

When: Thursday, May 23, 7 pm

Where: Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147

Free and open to the public.  Donations to help fight fracking welcome.

Facebook page for this event here — please like and share.

Speakers: After the film, Matthew Armstead of Earth Quaker Action Team will speak about mountaintop removal; Kevin Starbard of Sea Shepherd and Rising Tide will speak about tar sands extraction; Iris Marie Bloom of Protecting Our Waters will speak about shale gas extraction, processing, and use, aka fracking.  

Tim DeChristopher

Tim DeChristopher just got out of jail after doing 21 months behind bars for an inspired act of protection: protecting land, protecting climate, protecting our future from destructive oil and gas drillers.  While DeChristopher has become a national and international hero for his act of civil disobedience, too little is known about the details of his struggle and the hard, creative work of his supporters. For example, while DeChristopher was behind bars, DeChristopher’s supporters had to mount a successful campaign to prevent him being kept in solitary confinement. He’d written an email “threatening to give money away” — and the feds, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to punish him for that.

Come learn about the twists and turns of Tim’s commitment and creativity, and enjoy discussion with brief remarks from three resisters: one confronting fracking, one confronting tar sands, and one confronting mountaintop removal.  Here’s the description of Bidder 70 from the film’s website:

Bidder 70, a non-fiction film, is the story of Tim DeChristopher and his act of peaceful civil disobedience in a time of global climate crisis. It is the story of one person risking ten years of his future to defend the rest of our lives.

On December 19, 2008, Tim, an intelligent, strongly committed environmentalist and University of Utah Economics student, derailed the Bush administration’s last minute, illegitimate Bureau of Land Management Oil and Gas Sale. Raising paddle # 70, Tim bid 1.7 million dollars and won 22,000 acres of Utah’s pristine wilderness with no intention to drill on or pay for the land.

Tim understood the risk he was taking, but felt the environmental damage and climate crisis was a greater threat to his future than prison. Immediately, the news and internet was saturated with accounts of this ingenious “monkey-wrencher,” lauding him as a hero or branding him a terrorist.

On January 20, 2009, new Secretary of the Interior, Salazar, agreed the BLM auction was held without proper review. He nullified the sale and removed Tim’s parcels and others from future lease. Eventually he invalidated the entire lease auction.

Nevertheless, on April Fools Day, 2009, Utah’s U. S. attorney, indicted Tim on two felony counts with penalties of up to ten years in prison and fines of $750,000. His trial was postponed four times [before he did 21 months in jail].

Bidder 70 is Tim’s story: his actions, his trial and his... prison sentence. It’s the scientists, activists, writers, and movements that influence and support him, and the young people who’ve “got his back,” who’ve joined him in “Peaceful Uprising” a grass-roots direct action organization.

Boosting Creativity in the Movement Against Extreme Energy Extraction

Tim gave a great interview to Democracy Now, profiled here as their Earth Day Exclusive, in which he describes his experience in prison and urges the movement on to greater experimentation and creativity. The Democracy Now interview includes the trailer for Bidder 70.  

 

Thanks for all you do,

Iris, Alex, Sandy, Ann, Claudia, abe, Poune, Gerry, Bianca, and all the POWers

--

Iris Marie Bloom

Executive Director
Protecting Our Waters 

Phone: 215.840.6489 

Email: protectin...@gmail.com

Web: Protecting Our Waters; Shale Gas Outrage

Facebook: LIKE us on Facebook

[Luana Cleveland]

I hope all of you get this newsletter, but if not, this is a very important meeting especially considering the second item.

From the RDA newletter:

LAST CHANCE !!! The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources  has announced that a public meeting will be held on Marcellus Shale issues in the Loyalsock State Forest, Lycoming County, at Lycoming College in Williamsport.  Monday, June 3, from 4 to 6 p.m.  Wendle Hall, Lycoming College Secretary Richard Allan announced that "DCNR is responding to requests that the public be given the chance to provide the department with information and comments on possible gas development in the Loyalsock, in an area where we do not own the subsurface rights."      Per the announcement, the meeting will begin with a short power-point presentation, followed by a question and answer session with Secretary Allan and Proctor and State Forester Dan Devlin. Following the question and answer session, participants will be offered the opportunity to make comments with a five-minute time limit. If unable to attend the meeting, members of the public can submit written comments by email to loya...@pa.gov    Be sure to express your thoughts either by attending or through email, because the announcement included a sense of finality with this language: "This meeting is the completion of a series of interactions with the public regarding this complicated and long-standing issue, including a local stakeholder meeting and a public web-based information session."  Make it count! Be there to Keep it Wild! For directions to Lycoming College, click here Read the press release here   Rock Run in the Loyalsock State Forest                                     IMAGE: Wendy Lynne Lee   Say No to SEPCO                                                      By Ralph Kisberg Southwestern Energy Production Company (SEPCO) recently applied to the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) to renew two previously approved - but never used - water withdrawals from the Lycoming Creek. One renewal document submitted, "Lycoming Creek Bodines Withdrawal Renewal," was simply dated March 2013. A similar document submitted for SEPCO's Ralston Withdrawal was dated April 2013. Both documents included the following in the Executive Summary:   SRBC granted approval for surface water withdrawals from Lycoming Creek near Bodines (or Ralston) in December 2009. At present, SEPCO has not initiated withdrawals from Lycoming Creek. State and local regulatory restrictions pertaining to SEPCO's leased acreage near the Withdrawal have led to a de facto moratorium on SEPCO's local exploration and production (E&P). Therefore, SEPCO's local demand for water has been delayed, and SEPCO has not initiated withdrawals. However, recent developments indicate that some of the restrictions have been resolved and conditions are more conducive to E&P. As such, SEPCO plans to proceed with E&P activities and therefore has a renewed demand for water from the approved Withdrawal. To this end, SEPCO has finalized the design and permitting of the intake and has begun site construction activities. SEPCO intends to initiate withdrawals by early May 2013.   Construction on the Ralston Water Withdrawal                                                IMAGE: Ralph Kisberg  These withdrawals represent the fourth and fifth gas-related surface withdrawals from Lycoming Creek. SEPCO's applications also conveniently misidentify the creek's water quality classification as merelycold water fishery, instead of the creek's actual and more accurate classification in this area: exceptional value cold water fishery. One  must also realize that these water withdrawal stations are within spitting distance of the Clarence Moore lands of the Loyalsock State Forest; that's  important to know since SEPCO is the lessee of the other fifty percent of the oil and gas rights of the Clarence Moore lands that Anadarko Petroleum Corporation does not own.   SEPCO's statement, "restrictions have been resolved," seems particularly disingenuous, given the April 4 stakeholders meeting at the Loyalsock State Forest Headquarters near Laporte, Sullivan County, where DCNR representatives led by Secretary Allan stated that negotiations on surface use were "not underway now." Allan also answered in regard to an inquiry as to who are the two owners of the subsurface rights that "we believe Southwestern has a lease, but not ownership."   These statements by DCNR are consistent with what was revealed in documents obtained though a Right to Know Law request regarding development of the Clarence Moore tracts in which there were no communications directly with SEPCO. Over all, there was little mention  of SEPCO except in regard to what was repeated at the April 4 meeting. There, the DCNR was asked, "Can Anadarko drill without approval of the other leaseholder?"  A sign marks SEPCO's Ralston Water Withdrawal. IMAGE: Ralph Kisberg     The DCNR representative      replied  that "(I, we) cannot     believe that we would go through  the process and create    agreement... without that    agreement."    SEPCO's Ralston Water     Withdrawal facility appeared to     be almost finished last week.   Its completion leaves yet another  large scar along PA Route 14, a    once premier scenic highway     that is rapidly becoming an                                                                  industrial corridor.   Though SEPCO's Ralston facility appears almost complete, the permit renewals apparently are not. SEPCO's renewal applications are not scheduled for approval at the SRBC's next business meeting in June, so will most likely be scheduled for approval at the SRBC's September business meeting. Before starting to withdraw water, SEPCO will also need water obstruction and   encroachment permits from the Pennsylvania DEP; the company has not yet applied for those permits.    The lack of final approval for the renewal applications provides an opportunity for the public to speak up: the SRBC is currently accepting comment on SEPCO's applications. Make your voice heard!   To comment on the proposed Bodines withdrawal, go to: http://www.srbc.net/wrp/Details.aspx?ID=8780&num=2013-031#   To comment on the proposed Ralston withdrawal, go to: http://www.srbc.net/wrp/Details.aspx?ID=8788&num=2013-034