Above All Else: A David and Goliath Story

Contact:  Jeremy Alderson, 607-546-2084, nofrackalmanac@yahoo.com

My trial date – for chaining myself to a fence outside Inergy’s gas storage site – is Thursday, May 2nd at 10:00 a.m. in the Reading Town Court, 3914 County Rd 28, Watkins Glen, NY 14891.  The court is inside the town hall, which can be reached at 607-535-7549.   (The day before, on Wednesday, May 1st, at 7 p.m., the last three of the Seneca Lake 12 will be arraigned at the same address.)

Since few things so quicken the mind as the imminent prospect of incarceration, I hope I may be permitted a few personal thoughts.

Because Inergy is threatening us, we have been, so to speak, “drafted” into this fight. The draftees who have gone to jail have, thus far, included a nurse, a massage therapist, an eminent biologist and an organic farmer.

I may be a little different from them, and not only because I probably cannot live up to the example they have set of courage and dignity. I’m probably a little different, because I was drafted into this fight from another fight, and I feel like I’ve seen the monster we’re fighting before in a different guise.

Legendary Cassandra has nothing on us humble homeless advocates when it
comes to being ignored.  We were the ones who warned that an economy
spitting men, women and children out the bottom was going to hurt a lot more
people than just the poor. If anybody had listened to us, there wouldn’t have been a foreclosure crisis or financial meltdown.

Oh well. I just hope it’s not too late for people to understand another of our long-ignored warnings, that the way homeless people are treated is the way the rest of us will be treated too.

All over this country homeless people are being denied the very right to
survive. The authorities don’t really care about their lives, just like no one in authority seems to care about ours.

There’s too little meaningful help provided by the agencies funded to eliminate homelessness, just like there’s too little help for us from the EPA, DEC or other agencies that are supposed to protect the environment. Homeless people can have little hope in our leaders because, for example, in the recent presidential election, Obama and Romney never discussed poverty, just like they never discussed any problem with fracking (except that we weren’t doing it fast enough).

In the Way

Homeless people often have the misfortune of being in the way of other people who want to make money, like property owners or downtown merchants. That’s just like the way we here near Seneca Lake happen to be in the way of Inergy’s dreams of profit, and plenty of other folks around the country are in the way of other financial schemes, involving frack wells, pipelines, mountaintop removals, you name it.

When homeless people get in the way, they are often treated like dangerous animals, without rights, as they are swept from their refuges by armed personnel.

We, too, already feel largely stripped of our rights. That’s why we’re committing civil disobedience and going to jail. I hope we never have to find out what it’s like to be chased from our homes by men with guns, but I’m sure our allies in the Indian nations will tell us that, if it does happen here, it won’t be for the first time.

The point is that, from my perspective, we must reject the notion that we are fighting only Inergy or fracking, a notion that implicitly puts us in some kind of competition with other folks seeking aid for their causes. That’s just the monster playing divide and conquer. We must recognize that the struggles of homeless people and poor people in general — just like the struggles of countless other decent Americans who find the deck stacked against them by monied interests — are our struggles too.

I don’t believe that embracing this understanding will distract us from our goal. I believe that, to make our fight, we’ve got to track this monster and know it for what it is. And I believe that the most effective way to stop it is by restoring the rights of all America’s citizens.

Read the No Frack Almanac at http://www.nofrackalmanac.com

YET ANOTHER PLACE WHERE THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY IS ATTACKING PEACEFUL LANDSCAPES AND COMMUNITIES. NOT ACCEPTABLE!

Here’s an excerpt from a really excellent collaborative report by DeSmogBlog’s Steve Horn and Mint Press News staff writer Trisha Marczak. Link at bottom to the rest of the story. Read it and weep for Iowa — or find yourself even more determined to fight these monsters. — ms

Within immediate vicinity of a central battleground of the Black Hawk War of 1832, land rife with a resource necessary for hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is in the crosshairs of an industry prepared to turn the area into a battle zone once again.

The resource? Frac sand – officially known by the industry as fine-grained silica sand — used as a proppant when blasted thousands of feet down the well during the ecologically volatile fracking process as part of the chemical cocktail that serves as the subject of Josh Fox’s new documentary film, “Gasland 2.”

The rolling hills of Northeastern Iowa’s Allamakee County defy the state’s stereotypical flat-land geography, and local residents boast of the serene beauty and rich geological history. Yet those same bluffs also play host to robust reservoirs of frac sand.

In order to extract the frac sand, mining corporations have adopted a method of newfangled mountaintop removal of sorts, blasting away entire hills laced with this frac sand to access this new “prize.” While devastating the landscape, it’s justified by Big Oil as necessary because the Midwest’s unparalleled geological characteristics have transformed it into a “New Saudi Arabia for frac sand.”

The Ominous Situation in Allamakee 

Frac sand extraction is temporarily on hiatus in Allamakee, where the County Board issued an 18-month moratorium in February 2013. Despite this legislative move, concerned residents living in the county see the writing on the wall. That’s because permits are already being issued for frac sand-centric rail construction loading zones. Citizens see it as a question not of “if” but of “when.”

Allamakee County residents don’t have to look far to see evidence the industry is creeping in.

Less than 30 miles away, one of Pattison Sand Company’s mines located south of McGregor, Iowa, is already churning out frac sand, blasting away whole sections of ancient bluffs to obtain it. A quaint 150-foot bluff that stood near the mine just two years ago has now been replaced by barren land.

“This is why we’re fighting this,” Allamakee County resident Jeff Abbas told us while standing near Pattison’s mine, located feet away from what used to be the enormous bluff. “It took hundreds of thousands of years to build this landscape the way it is.”

Like his neighbors, Abbas’s motive for opposing frac sand mining in his County has numerous rationales, yet at the core is his appreciation for the land’s historical significance and beauty.

“It’s incredibly fragile, it’s incredibly rare … and now, it’s incredibly gone,” he said. “It will never be replaced in our lifetime … in anybody’s lifetime.”

The landscape is an issue that tugs on the heartstrings of locals, yet it’s just one concern on a long list of objections.

The silica-rich land of Allamakee County sits atop the Jordan Aquifer, a source of water for 300,000 Iowans not expected to last much longer with current usage rates. Areas of the aquifer are already expected to reach depletion in the next 50 years, according to an Iowa Geological and Water Survey.

The health impacts of frac sand exposure are also alarming for residents and workers, as recently documented in a June 2012 Occupational Safety and Health Administration bulletin, which highlighted that fine-grained silica exposure causes silicosis which can lead to lung cancer. This sordid scientific reality is also acknowledged in Pattison Sand Company’s own literature.

Pattison’s Political Connections to the Powerful

Pattison Sand is a Clayton, Iowa-based multi-tentacled corporation incorporated in 2005 and is co-owned by the “Pattison Brothers”: Jeff and Bernard. It has financial ties to the highest levels of Iowa’s state- and federal-level government.

The brothers also own Pattison Brothers Mississippi River Terminal, Inc., incorporated in 1970. This tentacle predominantly barges fertilizers, grains and other commodities to market along the Mississippi River on behalf of Iowa’s multinational agribusiness corporations. Soon, this wing of the corporation could also barge frac sand to key markets throughout the U.S. along the Mississippi, as well.

Bernard has donated a generous $35,375 toward Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad’s campaign dating back to before he won his November 2010 electoral race, according to the state’s campaign finance database.

Branstad is one of the founding members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and winner of its “Pioneer Award” in 1996. ALEC is a corporate-funded “bill mill”and “dating service” that brings together corporate lobbyists and legislators to vote on “model bills” that end up disseminated in statehouses nationwide.

Bernard gave another $5,000 toward Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s recall election effort, another state run by governor with deep ALEC ties and one where Pattison Sand has a frac sand mine proposal set to sit in Bridgeport, Wis. His brother Kyle gave Walker an additional $1,100 toward his recall campaign effort.

The lobbyist and registered agent for Pattison Sand and Pattison Brothers Mississippi River Terminal is Steven Schoenbaum, who is also registered to lobby on behalf of agribusiness behemoths Dow AgroSciences and Syngenta.

Read more.