SAFE is excited to be presenting SSCW Exec. Dir. Barbara Warren speaking on the topic of coastal resiliency at the SSCW headquarters at 12 Federal St., Salem. Audience limited to 30! To reserve your seat email salemSAFE@gmail.com and you will receive an email confirmation.
by Pat Gozemba
Our esteemed co-chair and Salem icon Jeff has left town, but he is not forgotten. Join SAFE in honoring him at the Hawthorne on Nov. 12 from 5:30-7:30. Tickets are available online Honoring Jeff Barz Snell or you can mail a check made out to SAFE to Treasurer David Rowand at 109 Columbus Ave. Salem, MA 01970. Costs on flyer. Please spread the word!
Salem Board of Health Speaks Out on Health Effects of Proposed Gas Infrastructure
by Patricia A. Gozemba
Salem cares about the health and safety effects of gas leaks. The Salem Board of Health on July 10th joined 67 other municipalities in Massachusetts in voting to send a letter to Gov. Charlie Baker making these specific recommendations for state action:
The Sierra Club of Massachusetts is coordinating the campaign to emphasize health and safety as communities like Salem grapple with an inordinate number of gas leaks in our city streets. In 2016, National Grid reported to the MA Department of Public Utilities that Salem had 62 gas leaks but SAFE teamed up with Bob Ackley owner of Gas Safety Inc., who in August 2016 demonstrated that Salem had 232 gas leaks
Part of our concern with gas leaks focused on dead and dying trees and that still is an issue, however, we need to consider how human health is also affected by leaking gas. SAFE will now turn to examining how much of the fugitive gas ends up in our homes and how it affects common illnesses like asthma. Stay tuned.
The following story, authored by SAFE board member Karen Kahn, is reposted from the Nonprofit Quarterly.
Rural Action, an Appalachian Ohio nonprofit, has spent two decades working to clean up a watershed in Southeastern Ohio polluted by old coal mines. Now, the organization and its supporters are fighting the permitting of a new surface mine proposed by Oxford Mining Co.
Rural Action, in partnership with the federal and state governments, universities, and other nonprofits, has invested $9 million to date to clean up the watershed. Of that, nearly $3 million has been spent on Sunday Creek, which is directly threatened by the new mine operation.
The group’s work has had a significant impact on water quality over the years. The west branch of Sunday River Creek had no fish when the work began, and now hosts 17 different species.
At a recent public hearing, Michelle Shively, Rural Action’s Watershed coordinator, said, “We hope that the Ohio EPA and Oxford Mining Co. will take into account the tremendous investment and resulting water quality improvements that have occurred in the Sunday Creek watershed and take the necessary precautions to not endanger the biological communities and quality habitat downstream.”
Andrea Reik, a local resident who spoke at the public hearing, asked a question that must have been on many minds. “Why would we go backward? It makes no sense. It’s crazy, and we need to continue saying no.”
In the face of global climate change, Reik is asking the right question. Why continue to destroy, as she said, “precious resources” with new mining operations that would bring 100 temporary jobs to the area but further risk global collapse? Why not look to new opportunities that will grow jobs for a green energy economy, that build on the work of Rural Action to bring back a diverse, healthy watershed? Jobs in coal mining should not be the only option for the people of the region.
But that’s not the logic of the Trump administration, which campaigned on a promise to bring back coal mining jobs. It’s now working hard to dismantle regulations that make mining less profitable—probably the only reason that Oxford Mining is proposing to reopen mine operations.
One of the administration’s top goals is to roll back the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s climate action plan. The administration announced its plan to repeal the regulations last October and is now in the process of holding public hearings. Three of the four hearings are in coal-friendly areas of the country, but on February 28th, a hearing was held in San Francisco. According to Mother Jones, “dozens of angry Californians filed into the San Francisco Public Library” to oppose the proposal.
“The rescission [of the Clean Power Plan] is a political act to fulfill Trump’s promises to polluting industries,” said Marc Sapir, a family physician and former public health officer at the hearing. “If this EPA cared one iota about the nation’s public health and well-being, it would engage the appeals court in defending the Clean Power Plan.”
Mother Jones reports that an EPA fact sheet removed from the EPA website (along with any references to climate change) reported that the Clean Power Plan would prevent up to 6,600 premature deaths and 150,000 asthma attacks in children in 2030. As the proposal for a new mine in the Sunday Creek watershed makes apparent, the plan also would have reduced mine pollution in our nation’s waterways.
The residents of southeastern Ohio unfortunately won’t be able to count on the federal government to protect their waterways. The administration has already rolled back the “stream protection rule,” which was intended to protect Appalachia’s streams and rivers from being filled with coal mining debris. The EPA has also put a moratorium on the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule, which expanded protections of 20 million acres of wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
These actions come on top of a mass exodus of scientists and other staff at the EPA, as the organization is revamped to prioritize profits over the rights of U.S Citizens to clean air, water, and land.
by Patricia A. Gozemba
Tuesday, March 6 at 7 PM – 9 PM 45 Pauline St, Winthrop, MA
Clean Water Action, Mothers Out Front, and Mass Power Forward are bringing people from the fracking fields of the Marcellus Shale in PA to MA to share their stories of the daily horrors that they live with from the unregulated fracking industry.
The fracking industry is thriving. The people and their communities are not. There continues to be a big push in MA by our utilities to build new pipelines, paid for by ratepayers like us, to get the PA gas to the coast for export. The utilities tell us that the pipelines will secure a supply of gas to heat our homes in the winter. Conservation Law Foundation and a slew of other independent analysts point out that this is hogwash and just an opportunity for utilities to make more money.
Hear the folks who live in the fracking fields tell their story.
You’re Invited to “We’re In This Together: Battling for Clean Energy and Fighting Fracking from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts.”
Join with concerned environmentalists on Tuesday March 6th from 7-9 pm at the Lyceum Room in the Edward B. Newton School for an evening with community leaders from the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania. They live at the other end of the fracked gas pipelines that connect to Massachusetts. Speakers sharing their powerful stories will include Lois Bjornson, Craig Leland Stevens, Brian Latkanich and Jane Worthington whose communities are surrounded by fracking wells and facilities. This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by Clean Water Action, Friends of Belle Isle Marsh, Mothers Out Front and the Mass Power Forward coalition.
Join us on Groundhog Day in Salem, for the first of two screenings and community discussions of the award winning and hopeful documentary film, Tomorrow. On February 2 we will watch part one, and February 9 part two.
Tomorrow depends on the human race living more sustainably. Come and hear stories about people doing just that, today.
A free screening sponsored by Citizen’s Climate Lobby North Shore, Team Tomorrow, and SAFE.
Dates: Watched over two succeeding Friday nights:
February 2 & February 9, from 6:45 – 8:45 pm each night (Snow date: February 16)
Venue: First Church in Salem, UU 316 Essex Street Salem, MA
http://www.firstchurchinsalem.org
Contacts: Jeff Barz-Snell, jeffreysnell@comcast.netJim Mulloy, jcmulloy@gmail.com
Background:
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
In 2012, “Nature” published a study led by more than 20 researchers from the top scientific institutions in the world predicting that humankind could disappear between 2040 and 2100. It also said that it could be avoided by drastically changing our way of life and take appropriate measures.
Two film makers travel the world in search of solutions that can help save the next generations. The result is Tomorrow, an inspiring documentary that presents concrete solutions implemented throughout the world by hundreds of communities.
From the US to the UK and through Finland and India, together they traveled to 10 countries to visit permaculture farms, urban agriculture projects and community-owned renewable initiatives to highlight people making a difference in the fields of food, energy, finance, democracy, and education.
Their common ideas and examples make Tomorrow one of the most essential and unexpectedly inspirational viewing experiences of our time.
TODAY, we sometimes feel powerless in front of the various crises of our times.
TODAY, we know that answers lie in a wide mobilization of the human race.
Over the course of a century, our dream of progress commonly called “the American Dream”, fundamentally changed the way we live and continues to inspire many developing countries. We are now aware of the setbacks and limits of such development policies. We urgently need to focus our efforts on changing our dreams before something irreversible happens to our planet.
TODAY, we need a new direction, objective… A new dream! The documentary Tomorrow sets out to showcase alternative and creative ways of viewing agriculture, economics, energy and education.
It offers constructive solutions to act on a local level to make a difference on a global level. So far, no other documentary has gone down such an optimistic road…
TOMORROW is not just a film, it is the beginning of a movement seeking to encourage local communities around the world to change the way they live for the sake of our planet.
How many dangerous gas leaks lurk under the streets of Salem, MA, is a question of debate. But SAFE knows that there are many gas leaks and we’re concerned because 95% of gas is methane—a potent force in climate change. Additionally, methane leaks kill trees, are potentially explosive, hurt human health, and cost ratepayers.
On six days of observation in August and September of 2016, SAFE working with nationally recognized experts on gas leaks–Bob Ackley, President of Gas Safety Inc., and Professor Nathan Phillips of the Department of Earth and Environment of Boston University–surveyed the 93 miles of roadway in our city with cutting edge technology, a Picarro Gas Analyzer , a data collection device.
In a SAFE sponsored public forum on November 28, 2017, THE HIDDEN COSTS OF SALEM’S GAS LEAKS, we shared our timeline, process, and further questions regarding gas leaks in our city. Mayor Kim Driscoll explained her experience of being with Ackley and Phillips as they collected data. Phillips explained the threats of methane’s contributions to climate change, Ackley detailed the safety challenges of gas leaks, and SSU Prof. Marcos Luna briefly described his process of analysis and shared maps of the entire city locating all of the points of gas leak detection.
In October, 2016, Phillips reported that he and Ackley had reviewed the raw data and had found evidence of hundreds of methane leaks.
As required by state law, National Grid in December of 2016 reported to the MA Department of Public Utilities all of the gas leaks in each municipality that it serves. HEET mapped those reports. Salem had 62 unrepaired gas leaks .
How would SAFE reconcile the widely varying reports of methane leaks?
In an act of professional generosity, Ackley and Phillips shared their data with SAFE which then enlisted Professor Marcos Luna of Salem State University, Chair of the Graduate Program in Geographic Information Services, to analyze the data and plot it for SAFE and the city of Salem. By early fall of 2017, Luna estimated that conservatively speaking there were 232 leaks of the size that NGRID typically reports to DPU and upwards of 1,000 leaks of varying sizes.
SAFE is grateful for the generosity of the experts who are collaborating with us in working to solve the problem of identifying and hopefully remediating the methane leaks in Salem. We invite you to view the above video of the forum and send questions or comments to SalemSAFE@gmail.com. You may also post your questions and comments to www.facebook.com/groups/SalemSAFE
–Patricia A. Gozemba, Co-Chair of SAFE
