People’s Department Of Environmental Justice Serves Eminent Domain

By Douglas Smith and Henry Harris, www.popularresistance.org

May 26, 2016
Resist!

Above photo: All photos from Youtube video.

DPS Commissioner Served Eminent Domain Notice, Home property “Hydro Fracked”

Randolph, VT – Early this morning, members of the People’s Department of Environmental Justice (PDEJ) served notice of eminent domain at the home of VT Public Service Department Commissioner Chris Recchia.

Just before 7:00 am PDEJ Members, dressed in hard hats and high visibility vests approached Recchia with a Notice of Eminent Domain. The notice stated, “the land belonging Commissioner Recchia is now under the legal jurisdiction of those most severely impacted by the permitting of the VGS Fracked Gas pipeline project.” It continued, “If Recchia will not take any accountability for his role in rubber stamping extreme energy projects that accelerate the climate crisis, exploit first nations communities and harass the public here in Vermont, the People’s Department of Environmental Justice will continue ongoing education development projects on this property.”

While Recchia contemplated the Notice, a dozen PDEJ members surveyed the yard, flagged off major sections, erected a 20-foot tall mock Hydro-Fracking drill rig and performed a ground breaking ceremony. As the ribbon was cut PDEJ member Douglas Smith made a speech about the need for a re-allocation of funds. “The investment that should be going into renewables is going into a 50 year commitment to fossil fuel infrastructure for fracked gas, and that’s just no good.”

The groups stated efforts aimed to draw Recchia’s attention to the personal damages he has caused residents along the controversial VT Gas System’s Fracked Gas Pipeline project that his Department permitted. “Chris Recchia has stubbornly stuck to his original notion that fracked gas is good for VT, but it’s not true and it never has been true. The Department of Public Service is aware of new science that spells out clearly that fracked gas, so called “natural gas”, is having a massive warming impact on our global climate, as well as other harmful affects on drinking water, the natural environment and those living in extraction areas.” Says Douglas Smith.

Recchia stated that he is “happy to have civil dialogue with anyone at anytime” concerning the issue and the PDEJ look forward to taking Recchia up on this offer. “We encourage others to join us in taking the commissioner up on his offer to meet with anyone at anytime concerning his complicity with the fracked gas pipeline.”

The People’s Department of Environmental Justice is a citizen group committed to working for a healthy environment and livable planet where everyone has access to the decision-making processes that affect them. Members are looking forward to the upcoming Rising Tide action camp being held in opposition to the fracked gas pipeline.

Another PDEJ member, Geoffrey Gardner summed up the event. “This morning for one half hour, the Commissioner of the state’s Department of Public Service (DPS) suffered a good humored and harmless parody of what dozens of Vermont homeowners have suffered for real under threat of eminent domain taking of their land so that Vermont Gas Systems –aided and abetted by DPS and its Commissioner— can build its fracked gas pipeline from Addison to Chittenden counties. The difference is these homeowners, unlike Commissioner Recchia, have not seen “work” at their homes end after a half hour. Their trees have really been cut down and their land really has been disfigured. And they will live for decades with the risk of gas leaks and the danger of explosion. And all this comes to them in order to create a market for fracked gas from Alberta at the cost, there in Alberta, of polluted water, destroyed land and the potential for earthquakes as well as the tremendous increase everywhere in climate change caused by fracking and the leaking of fracked gas. It’s nothing short of demented to imagine, as Recchia does, that any of this serves any public good at all. Maybe his half hour with a little theater this morning will help clear his head.”