DANCING FOR CLEAN WATER
Environmental activists and Native American leaders from across the nation marched through Downtown Pittsburgh on Wednesday morning to highlight threats to area waterways and the climate that are posed by expanding shale gas drilling, pipelines and petrochemical facilities.
About 100 joined the “Defend Our Water — Day of Action” event, which began in Point State Park with a tribal water ceremony at the headwaters of the Ohio River. Members of the Seneca Nation, Ojibwe and Standing Rock Sioux tribes participated in the ceremony, march and rally.
After hiking up Liberty Avenue, the group gathered along the Allegheny River next to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, had just finished telling industry leaders at the Shale Insight 2018 conference that the Trump administration will continue deregulating their industry.
“The insight I have,” Terrie Baumgartner, of Aliquippa, said to the rally outside, “is that this shale gas madness must end.”
Ms. Baumgartner, who lives 6 miles from the petrochemical complex that Shell is building in Potter, Beaver County, and 2½ miles from where the Shell Falcon ethane pipeline exploded last month, said area residents could expect a proliferation of construction problems and health impacts if the petrochemical industry is allowed to continue its buildout.
“It’s about energy independence. It’s about making stuff we don’t need,” said Ms. Baumgartner, a member of the Clean Air Council, an environmental organization. “We’re already drowning in a sea of plastic trash. And microplastics are in our blood, our urine, our embryonic fluid and breast milk.”
John Sutter, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition and Shale Insight organizers, including the Ohio and West Virginia oil and gas associations, issued a statement saying the industry is “very proud of the work we do to benefit and improve the lives of families and communities across our region and the nation.”
According to the statement, “Our conference fosters thoughtful and fact-based discussion around best practices and emerging trends focused on how the industry can continue to move America’s economy and environment forward.”
Guy Jones, a tribal leader of the Standing Rock Sioux who has been fighting pipelines on native land since the 1980s, said the world has a need for “spiritual ecology.”
“We are gathered here today because [the shale gas conference goers] are gathered here … and as
caretakers of the land, we must uplift them,” Mr. Jones said.
“At one time they were leaders, but those leaders have gone away because of corporate greed. But we haven’t gone away. We are still here.”
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto welcomed the Seneca to their ancestral homelands and told the crowd the city will continue to fight for clean water, clean air and the Paris climate accords.
“Nothing is more important to life than clean and abundant water,” Mr. Peduto said. “The city was the first to pass clean air and clean water acts in the 1940s, and the first municipality in the world to ban fracking.
“There are many battles to be fought in the future, and I ask you what will we do to play offense? I look forward to partnering with all of you in all of those battles.”
The day’s events, including a 5 p.m. screening of the film “Defend Our Water” at the Harris Theater on Liberty Avenue, Downtown, was co-sponsored by 20 local environmental and citizens organizations.
Between 4 million and 12 million gallons of water are used to drill and frack each shale gas well.