Photo courtesy of West Whiteland Residents for Public Safety
Today more friends, acquaintances, and residents will be lending their voices and speaking truth to power over the scourge known as pipelines.
You see, this is day two of public hearings in West Chester that the PUC (Public Utility Commission) is holding on Mariner East. The pipelines are ruining where we call home and putting us ALL at risk. Corporate greed putting lives at risk. We don’t benefit as residents. We only assume risk and for what? So they can rape the land and ship dangerous things below our feet to places like Scotland that can blow us all to kingdom come, destroy our property values, pollute our drinking water wells and more?
Enough. Enough. Enough. It’s well past time to get them out of our communities.
The Philadelphia Inquirer had the best headline in years late yesterday when they went to press with:
The contentious Sunoco Mariner East project once again occupied center stage in a courtroom Wednesday as 10 residents and a homeowners association from the Philadelphia suburbs implored a state agency to halt the cross-state pipeline.
….“It’s not that we’re against the pipeline, it’s that we’re for basic things that are threatened by this project, the first of which is obviously the safety of our communities,” said Eric Friedman, the head of the Andover Homeowners Association in Thornbury Township, Delaware County. He said all of the residents in the 39-home subdivision live in a potential “fatality zone” if the pipeline fails.
The Andover Homeowners Association is among several complainants whose cases are before Administrative Law Judge Elizabeth Barnes. The PUC judge in November declined a request by a group of residents known as the “Safety Seven” to grant an emergency injunction blocking construction of the project and consolidated five cases into one.
So to my Mama Bears and anti-pipeline warriors in West Chester today? Defend What You Love. Defend What We Love.
Photo courtesy of Just The Facts Please
Several Chester, Delaware county residents urge PUC judge to shut down Mariner East pipelines, citing fears of leak or explosion
- Jon Hurdle State Imapct
Seven residents of Chester and Delaware counties took their long-running fight against the Mariner East pipelines to a West Chester court on Wednesday, saying the Public Utility Commission should shut down the lines on the grounds that they are a danger to public safety.
They are urging a PUC administrative law judge to halt the operation and remaining construction of Sunoco’s still-unfinished pipeline project, on the grounds that any leak or explosion of natural gas liquids from the pipelines in densely populated suburbs like the two counties could result in mass casualties.
The plaintiffs are also seeking a court order that would require Sunoco to clarify its instructions on how residents should protect themselves in the event of a pipeline accident….Lawyers for Sunoco repeatedly accused Eric Friedman, a witness for the plaintiffs, of offering expert evidence that he was not qualified to give, but Barnes overruled several of their objections.
Under questioning from the plaintiffs’ attorney, Michael Bomstein, Friedman said a consultant’s projection on the impact of an explosion of NGLs showed that there would be fatalities within a radius of 800 feet…..Dr. Emilie Lonardi, superintendent of the 13,000-student Downingtown School District, told the court that five of her schools are between 300 and 1,425 feet of the pipeline route, and that despite many attempts to get detailed evacuation information from Sunoco, she remains worried about whether her students would be safe in a pipeline emergency.
She said she’s unable to assure parents at one elementary school that their children are safe.
“The hard thing for me is that I cannot look them in the eye and say yes,” she said.
The plaintiffs — Meghan Flynn and Rosemary Fuller of Middletown Township; Michael Walsh of Thornbury Township; Nancy Harkins of Westtown Township; McMullen; Caroline Hughes of East Goshen Township; and Melissa Haines of Aston Township — are pressing a case that has resulted in 11 months of legal filings and more than three years of public meetings, protests and court battles that have also involved the Department of Environmental Protection, local officials, the federal pipeline regulator PHMSA, state lawmakers, school districts, townships, and several environmental nonprofits…..Sunoco admitted in February 2019 that it made mistakes during construction
Read both of these articles. In their entirety. And to my friends in West Chester? Prayers up. #PipelinesOverPeople
Today Thursday is the second day of the hearing at High St and Market St at the historic West Chester courthouse. I have no courtroom information. The hearing should just be getting underway now.
Photo found on Internet. Possible source is Sierra Club