Above Photo:Â Protesters march against fracking. (Photo: Garry Knight/flickr/cc)
Demonstrators protest an executive order that could leave local communities vulnerable to contamination.
The anti-Trump resistance isn’t just about marching on Capitol Hill; it’s about organizing and showing up for your community, every day.
“If you want to figure out what democracy is, if you want to figure out what America, it’s this in a room like this,” documentary filmmaker Josh Fox explained from the Delaware River Basin Commission Public Hearing in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. “Two hundred and fifty people at a hearing in the middle of the day, took off from work, and they decided that [they’re] going to stand up and fight against the oil industry.”
Governors from four states, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, head the Delaware River Basin Commission. Over 15 million people depend on the agency’s regulation of their water supply. The meeting was held in response to President Trump’s gutting of environmental regulations that would expose regions such as northeastern Pennsylvania to drilling and fracking.
The commission shelved discussions on the issue in late 2011.
“There has been little public movement on the issue since. It’s not clear the five-member commission has any appetite to lift the drilling moratorium, which it imposed in 2010, citing the need to develop regulations to protect the environment,” the Morning Call reported on Monday. “But advocates say the situation bears watching.”
At the meeting, Fox spoke fervently about raising awareness of the hazards of pipelines after having just witnessed the Bayou Bridge pipeline explosion earlier this month.
“We have to make sure that our definition of fracking does not stop at the gas pumps,” Fox told the audience. “Our definition of fracking has to include the power plants and the pipelines… because we are under siege from the fossil fuel industry.”
“There are 300 new fracked gas power plants that are being proposed across the United States,” he added. ” What that will do is put much of the East Coast underwater… [and] create millions of new fracking wells across the nation.”
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