Sunoco wants blockade to end
Gas pipeline company asks court to remove protesters who have taken to the treetops
HUNTINGDON, Pa. — Since March, tree sitters on Ellen and Stephen Gerhart’s 27-acre wood lot have been perched on their piney platforms, 50 feet in the air, to protest, oppose and block construction of Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 pipelines.
They might be coming down soon, if Sunoco has its way.
On Tuesday, Sunoco attorney Alan Boynton asked George Zanic, the Huntingdon County Common Pleas president judge, for an injunction that would allow the company to call in county sheriffs to remove the protesters and their intricately roped and connected tree stands along the planned pipeline right-of-way.
Mr. Boynton told the court it is the clear intent of pipeline opponents to block construction.
Rich Raiders, the Gerharts’ attorney, asked the judge to give consideration to a June 20 state
Supreme Court ruling that gave new teeth to environmental protections in Pennsylvania constitution.
“The Supreme Court decision established a new fiduciary duty for all branches of government to enforce the environmental rights amendment in the state constitution,” Mr. Raiders said. “It’s a big deal and this may be the first case in the state where that ruling is a factor. It’s certainly the first time that Judge Zanic will have to think about it. We’ll have to see what happens.”
JudgeZanic said he would rule on the injunction request within 48 hours.
If granted, the injunction would prohibit the Gerharts and their supporters, encamped in what has been dubbed “Camp White Pine,” from interfering with clearcut timbering on the 3.2-acre right-of-way and installation of twin 24-inch pipelines on the easement.
Sunoco acquired the easement through an eminent domain claim against the Gerharts in January 2016 that was also approved by Judge Zanic. The Gerharts have appealed the eminent domain decision to the state Supreme Court, which has not ruled on whether it will hear the case.
Sunoco is building the $2.5 billion, 350-mile-long Mariner East 2 pipelines to carry natural gas liquids to terminals near Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border.Most of the liquids will be exported to Scotland for production of plastics.
Sunoco is a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, Texas, the same company that last year was involved in using dogs, pepper spray and fire hoses on Native American protesters and their supporters blocking the pathway of the Dakota Access Pipeline project near the Standing Rock Sioux reservationin North Dakota.
Sunoco’s 18-page motion for a preliminary injunction, the basis for Tuesday’s hearing, highlights several recent social media postings by pipeline opponents and states, “the encampment, if not actually hijacked by anarchists, and radical eco-terrorists, has certainly taken a broad anti-pipeline, anti-fossil fuel, anti-establishment, and anti-authority bent. . .”
The Gerharts and their supporters, encamped on the family’s property outside the Sunoco easement, have been vocal in their opposition to the pipeline project.
Mrs. Gerhart, a 61-yearold retired special education teacher, has been arrested three times for trying to stop the pipeline from crossing her property, though all charges were eventually dropped. She lives on the property, purchased in 1982, with her 86-year-old husband, Stephen, and daughter Elise, 29, who spent time in the trees last year.
Mrs. Gerhart said the three white pines occupied by protesters are not in Sunoco’s 50foot-wide easement but are in the 25-foot-wide work space alongthe easement.
“We’re doing everything we can to keep from getting arrested, but Sunoco’s legal action calls us eco-terrorists,” she said. “But we did not bring this fight to the company. It came here. There’s no paid protesters here and these are good people, kind people. To be labeled eco-terrorists, well, in our minds it’s Sunoco that’s doing the ecoterorism.”
The Gerharts’ property is 15 miles southeast of the Huntingdon County Courthouse and a bit more than 100 miles east of Pittsburgh.
The recently laid bluegreen Mariner pipelines are snaking over the hill on the farm next door and are visible from the right-of-way cut by Sunoco last year. Along that right-of-way, the treetop platforms are connected to each other and other trees by amaze of ropes and zip lines.
Josh Michener, an Idaho native whose anti-pipeline bonafides were earned in North Dakota, Florida, Texas and in Lancaster County, where another group is fighting against the same Sunoco project, said during a walking tour of the encampment thatthe various pipeline projects are a futile and dangerous attempt to extend the life of fossil fuels in a world rapidlyswitching to renewables.
“They’re not going to provide long-term jobs or help the local economy,” Mr. Michener said. “They’re just trying to get another decade or two out of fossil fuels, make their money, while they run these things through our farm fields, back yardsand schoolyards.”
Asked whether the activists in the tree platforms would come down if the court grants Tuesday’s injunction request, Mr. Michener smiled and offered a quick “No.”
“They’ve been up there for a long time and they’ll stay. It’s going to be up to the guy with the saw, and I don’t think that guy will want to kill someone,” he said.