Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bethany Barry Menkart of Cornwall. She owns property in Leicester,Cornwall and Brandon, as well as a business, and has been active in the fight against the Addison Natural Gas Project. She is involved with Vermont Citizens for the Public Good, Rising Tide, 350VT, and VPIRG.
Sold out. Vermont has been sold out, by our governor, by our politicians, by the Middlebury Select Board – save the one lone, brave and principled dissenter — by the Addison County Regional Planning Commission, and by the Public Service Board, who decided on Dec. 23 to grant a certificate of public good on Phase I of the Addison County gas pipeline to Vermont Gas Systems, owned by Gaz Metro/Valener/Enbridge.
There were over 2,000 comments submitted to the PSB on the fracked gas pipeline through Addison County, more than on any other issue in Vermont’s history, and yet they chose to issue a CPG to Vermont Gas/Gaz Metro, deliberately ignoring the public’s concerns and wishes.
What happens to earth and water when it’s dug up, dislodged, moved or diverted by huge machines? The organic structure, the nutrients, insects and worms, the different layers, the essential oxygenation, all created over many years, and then violently displaced, with a 10-12-inch metal pipeline, filled with gas, inserted with extreme force, raping the earth, changing the soil, the landscape, our values, our lives, and our future, for profit for a series of Canadian corporations. Where is the public good in this? It’s corporate, not public.
Vermont is known for our independence and resourcefulness, our small, interwoven communities, helping each other and coming together to come up with solutions for a sustainable future. Vermonters are creative people, resourceful and hard-working, with families who have been here for generations, working and loving the land, vacationers, college students and faculty, musicians, artists, actors, writers, farmers and flatlanders, who have moved here because of the ideals and beliefs that Vermont stands for: honesty, integrity, prudence, frugality, and standing up for what is right.
Vermont tourism will change when there’s no foliage or skiing, no hunting or fishing, when the woods are filled with deer ticks, the fields covered with poison parsnip, the moose die off from wasting disease, fish die off and songbirds vanish.
There is no “better future” with fossil fuels. They are killing us, and we won’t survive. Nor will our air, water, land, health or economy. Vermont tourism will change when there’s no foliage or skiing, no hunting or fishing, when the woods are filled with deer ticks, the fields covered with poison parsnip, the moose die off from wasting disease, fish die off and songbirds vanish. When the sugar maples are gone, streams filled in by purple loosestrife, lakes choked with milfoil, and the seasons altered permanently. And when the fossil fuel pipeline leaks methane, both at the access point and from the pipe (as they do and already have everywhere else) poorly built, with shoddy materials and lax oversight, what will happen to our air, adding more methane to the already unsustainable rising carbon parts per million? Three hundred fifty is safe, and we’re now at over 400.
What happens when there’s an explosion, in Middlebury, at Agri-Mark or Porter Hospital or Middlebury College, with people hurt or killed, forced evacuations and fires? Or in Buttolph Acres? Or the Lodge? Or Mary Hogan School or MUHS? There have been 250-300 gas explosions per year, and that number is increasing with more pipelines. What happens here, in the middle of an ice storm, when no emergency vehicles can even get to the site of an explosion? Vermont will not be immune, nor is our small rural state prepared. Look at Enbridge’s track record, or ExxonMobil or BP – is that what we want to happen to Vermont?
Where is your conscience, your integrity, Gov. Shumlin? What about your campaign promises, your leadership towards a renewable energy future? Our other elected or appointed officials? Our senators and representatives? Why are you buying the bill of goods being sold by Vermont Gas/Gaz Metro? Fracked gas is like coal, or tobacco, pushed on the public with fear and lies, promising its benefits, and saying nothing of its devastation. Why are you turning a blind eye to the truth? Climate change is here, driven by humans and fossil fuels. Last year was the hottest year on record, and we’ve gone through Irene, severe thunderstorms, ice storms, flooding, snow, torrential rains and now record low temperatures and cryoseisms.
For Vermont – and our planet – we need courageous and honorable leaders to say, “No. We don’t want fracked gas, and we don’t want a pipeline through our towns, streams, farms and fields. We don’t want any part of this, despite all of the blandishments of ‘better, cheaper,cleaner’ fracked gas by Vermont Gas. We know it’s not, and we are not willing to sacrifice everything Vermont stands for.” The long-term cost for us and Vermont is ineluctably devastating. We will all lose.
We don’t want this for Vermont, this poisonous fossil fuel, which contaminates everything it touches, with carcinogens and secrecy, courtesy of Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Millions of gallons of public water used, and polluted, stolen by Big Oil and Gas, destroying communities and towns, the health, air and water of people, farm animals, wildlife, forests and birds. The fracked gas pipeline is an injustice, for short-term profit to international corporations. Sold out. By the Public Service Board, two days before Christmas. Happy New Year indeed.
But we, the public, are not done. We don’t want to move backwards by building the biggest fossil fuel infrastructure in 50 years in Vermont when Scotland is committed to using 100 percent renewable energy by 2020, and Germany thrives on solar power, with 50 percent ownership by the people, not corporations. We want to move forward into a clean, sustainable future, independent, without fracked gas, “selling our souls for a mess of pottage.” We will stand up, speak out for what is right, and just, and use civil disobedience to fight for a sustainable future for Vermont. It is our land, and our future at stake.
