We Are Seneca Lake continues fight against LNG storage
The Town of Hector became the 28th municipality to formally oppose gas storage at Seneca Lake.
Meanwhile, across the lake:
At its monthly board meeting on June 10, the Town of Reading was presented with 128 signatures on a petition expressing concerns about gas storage. Nineteen Reading residents spoke during the public comment period. Eighteen expressed their opposition to gas storage. The nineteenth, David Crea, Crestwood employee, spoke in favor. In the end, the board decided it was not “ready" to write a letter of concern to the DEC.
The surprise guest was the presence of Reading Town attorney, Thomas Bowes, who played an active role in the meeting—at one point even instructing a concerned citizen, who had been given the floor to speak, to take his seat. Both during the public meeting and in private comments to Reading residents after the meeting, Bowes defended Crestwood as Reading’s largest taxpayer, and signaled that names on petitions were of little interest. The message received was that the rights of citizenship cannot compare with money. Listen to the exchange here.
THIS WEEK’S ACTION ITEM: READING CANVASS CONTINUES THROUGH THE END OF JUNE
by Gabe Shapiro
Hello folks,
You are receiving this message because we need your help in protecting the future of Seneca Lake and the communities that love it dearly.
In Reading, NY, a company called Crestwood continues to build an expansion on its fracked gas storage facility. Crestwood aims to turn Seneca Lake into a central hub for storage and export, serving many of the big players in the Marcellus shale formation. They want to use unstable underground salt caverns to store liquified petroleum gas, right next to the lake! The impacts of this facility could be detrimental to the entire region.
To learn more, visit: http://wearesenecalake.sitemandala.com/A4224F44ADC481134
The Reading Town Board heard from it’s citizens on June 10th at their monthly board meeting. They were presented with the signatures from the canvassing effort up to this point, and they heard personal opinions from dozens of concerned Reading residents.
The Board still would not agree to send a letter of concern to the DEC.
We are continuing to canvas Reading throughout the month of June to get signatures from over half the number of residents who showed up for the last general election. That means we need a few hundred more signatures, and we need your help getting them!!
If the Board still doesn’t care about this number at their July meeting, we will take it straight to the DEC. If over half the regular voters in Reading have concerns about this project, that’s a strong case for the DEC to hold back approval of the project.
We need canvassers out on every weeknight and Saturday, and we need folks tabling at the Reading dump on Saturdays as well.
The Reading Town Board and their smug attorney claim that these signatures can make no difference at all, but we still believe in the power of democracy and the will of the people. Please help Seneca Lake and the town of Reading by canvassing with us, and also by spreading the word about this effort! We need the powerful grassroots of this movement to show up, and that happens when you tell your friends and they tell their friends!
This is a decisive moment for Seneca Lake and all the Finger Lakes, and it’s up to us to show those in power which vision of the future we are willing to fight for.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“New York State, through its Public Service Commission, is launching the REV (Reforming the Energy Vision) process, by which our state will move rapidly into the new era of renewable energy. Now is not the time to build dangerous and polluting fossil fuel storage that will look, down the road just a few years, like promoting a buggy-whip factory while competitors introduced the automobile. Renewable energy is the future -- and the companies and cooperatives making renewable energy available to us can create many, many more jobs in our state than fossil fuels do. For the jobs, for the safety of our residents and businesses, and for Seneca Lake, we need to ramp up renewables as we ramp DOWN fossil fuels.”
—Krys Cail, 60, resident of Ulysses and Seneca Lake defender, arrested May 13, 2015
x p Envir&Energy
