Pennsylvanians have learned that our Federal and State governments cannot be relied on to protect us from the oil and gas industry. Donald Trump is moving the Federal government out of the oil and gas industry’s way, and Governor Tom Wolf has shown an unwillingness to stand up for Pennsylvanians, permitting thousands of new fracking wells and pushing for tens of thousands of miles of new pipelines.

Meanwhile groups working at the local level are springing up around Pennsylvania, pursuing strategies such as pressuring the municipal governments and carrying out nonviolent direct actions targeting specific infrastructure projects. Here, you will find some of the local and regional campaigns going on in our state.

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Lancaster Against Pipelines

LAP is a grassroots movement (501c3) helping local PA communities resist fracked gas pipelines. We’re currently fighting construction of the Atlantic Sunrise export pipeline across Lancaster County. Given the failure of our lawmakers, regulatory agencies, and courts to protect Pennsylvanians from gas industry harms, we engage in non-violent mass actions designed to expose corporate exploitation and demand systemic change. Check out our Facebook page, or visit us at www.wearelancastercounty.org

Why we fight: “Corporate destruction of our communities and the earth can only be stopped through fearless, creative, non-violent, mass action. No one is going to do this for us: not our elected officials, not the regulatory agencies, not the courts. That is why we fight.”

-Mark Clatterbuck, leader with Lancaster Against Pipelines

Camp White Pine: Resisting Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 Pipeline

February 13, 2018 marked the one-year anniversary of Camp White Pine. The Gerhart family and their supporters have been bravely resisting the construction of the Mariner East Pipeline, both physically with tree-sits and legally with in courts of law. As is happening in many places in Pennsylvania, a big corporation, Sunoco Pipeline LLP, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners is using a perversion of eminent domain to take the property of Pennsylvanian families in the pretense that it serves the public good. It is in fact to serve the profit seeking of a rapacious industry, to create the infrastructure to move product to be exported to overseas markets. Protesters such as the courageous individuals occupying tree sits at Camp White Pine in the pathway of Mariner East construction shine a light on corporate encroachment of Pennsylvanians’ rights for the sake of corporate profits and a political establishment that has ceased to represent the people of this state. It makes transparent a wrong-headed plan for a Pennsylvania future that is in reality a sink hole where a dinosaur, planet-destroying energy source gasps its dying breaths and will leave Pennsylvania behind in a clean energy future. Visit the Camp White Pine on Facebook. You can donate to their efforts here.

Why we fight: “This is what I have to say to Sunoco—We will not be intimidated. We will not give up. We will continue to resist.” Statement of Ellen Gerhart at Stop the Madness march and rally, Pittsburgh, June 20, 2017.

Stopping the Ohio River Valley Petrochemical Build-Out

One of the most critical fracking-related threats in Western Pennsylvania comes from the Shell ethylene “cracker” plant, now under construction on the Ohio River at Monaca, PA.  In addition to the direct public health and climate impacts of the facility itself, the Shell plant will require ethane feedstock from hundreds of new Marcellus and Utica wells per year.  (Some estimates run as high as 10,000 new wells per year!)  Industry boosters are lobbying for construction of as many as four additional “cracker” facilities, of comparable size to Shell’s, plus other gas infrastructure which would dominate the Ohio River valley from Pittsburgh to Kentucky.  Grassroots groups and other environmental advocacy efforts are springing up rapidly all along the path of this threatened petrochemical build-out. Currently, local groups are fighting the Falcon pipeline, which would deliver ethane to the Monaca facility. For current information, and opportunities to become involved, contact [email protected].

Fighting Fracking at the Local Level in Allegheny County

Groups: Food & Water Watch, Sustainable Monroeville, Citizens to Protect Oakmont

Overview: Communities around Pennsylvania are standing up to the fracking industry and working in their municipalities to stop fracking and fracking infrastructure. In July 2017, Oakmont Borough blocked an attempt by fracking firm Huntley & Huntley to conduct seismic testing in the community. Now, Food & Water Watch is working with elected officials and community leaders in Southwest Pennsylvania communities like Oakmont, Monroeville, and elsewhere in Southwest Pennsylvania to pass ordinances to protect families from fracking, seismic testing. Learn more about the campaign here.

Why we fight: “The Citizens to Protect Oakmont is working to educate and organize a stronger independent grassroots movement to challenge the threats to the health and safety of our town and surrounding communities by the oil and gas industry.  The Pennsylvania constitution gives us the right to safe and healthy communities. We must organize to make it a reality.”

–Oakmont resident Ed Grystar

Contact: Doug Shields at Food & Water Watch, [email protected]

Berks County’s Fight Against the Birdsboro Plant and DTE Pipeline

Birdsboro Power, LLC, is proposing to construct and operate a 485 megawatt (MW) natural gas combined cycle power plant along the banks of the Schuylkill River in the Borough of Birdsboro and Union Township, Berks County. To supply the proposed plant, DTE Midstream Appalachia, LLC, (DTE) is set to build a new 13.2 mile natural gas pipeline from Texas Eastern Transmission Company (TETCO) pipeline in Rockland Township, through Oley, Amity, and Union Township, and ending at the power plant in Birdsboro. The proposed site is located in the floodplain and it must be filled before construction can take place, exacerbating the potential for future flooding in the area. Also being built to accommodate the site is a new 4 mile electric transmission line and substation to tie into the existing grid, both of which may cause increased flooding. No hydrologic and hydraulic report has been prepared to assess the impacts of the proposed power plant, yet permitting of the plant and its supplementary structures are being rapidly advanced. There are unresolved questions regarding contamination of the site, which was a former military weapons site, among other uses. The proposed power plant, to be located 500 feet from occupied homes, harms residents of Birdsboro as well other Berks County communities, and negatively impacts the first waterway in Pennsylvania to be designated a Scenic River.

To get involved or find out more contact: Karen Feridun, Berks Gas Truth, [email protected], 610-678-7726.