It’s Your Community

December Moonrise - Susquehanna at Owego, NY
Brian Keeler Studio, www.briankeeler.com

Your future belongs to you. Among the ways in which you can take action are to educate yourself, share information with others, and engage with your elected officials.

Have important dialogues with local people: 

• Fracked-gas industrialization is not the future you envisioned for your municipality and region.  You ask, just because a "resource" is here, what necessitates that it be extracted?  

• Learn about economic “externalities:” Monetary benefits go to the producers/owners; Risk to the environment, quality of life, future economy, and safety, are borne by everyone else. The externalities have both direct and indirect costs (1,2). 

• You have concerns about your local economy being tied to the vagaries of the international commodity market for LNG. 

• What if unprofitable companies walk away? Who will dismantle gas projects, cap wells, and restore land?   What if bankrupt companies walk away and are not sufficiently bonded?  (3)

• Other than a few landowners receiving royalties, not much money will be coming back to your community.

• With the bottom dropping out of the oil and gas markets, you may find yourself practically giving your gas away rather than getting a good price for it. You may end up in a royalty dispute. 

• You don't want to be yanked around by shifting priorities of the federal government. You were not part of the discussion when the current administration’s Department of Energy decided to promote LNG export at your expense (4).  Furthermore, there is growing international resistance to U.S. LNG (5).

• Our community is more than the top of a “supply chain” for sales to foreign markets. 

• Learn about the Clean and Green program to reduce taxes.  The program is administered through the county tax assessment office. With reduced taxes, property owners may rethink fracking (6).

• Your County Planning Commission has documented the wide range of viable businesses in your county. Gas is by no means the only business (7).

• What about jobs (8)? Once you have 50 full time jobs at the Wyalusing LNG plant, how many area jobs will you have lost in tourism, agriculture, viniculture, wood products, and web-based businesses?

• Homes near the plant will lose property value. 

• What will the air quality be like at nearby schools?  As parents fear sending their children to a school near the plant, how many young families will move away?  

• Learn about the health impacts that fracked communities are experiencing in Pennsylvania (9). 

• Your emergency responders will bear the costs of preparedness and risks in the event of an LNG release.  An LNG vapor cloud, once it mixes with the air and encounters a spark, can create an inextinguishable fire necessitating the evacuation of a 1-to-2-mile radius. 

• Should a disaster like that happen, you don't expect your community to ever be compensated or recover to its former self.  A mass tort case will get a few dollars. 

• The purpose of a corporation is to make money for shareholders.  That’s just the way it is. 

• You have a vision to continue to be the iconic "Endless Mountains", an outdoor-focused bucolic region on the Susquehanna River with local agriculture, viniculture, hunting, fishing, river sports, plein-air painting. 

• You have seen pictures of the Louisiana industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It’s dubbed “Cancer Alley” and that is not the future you want. (10) 

• You realize that by welcoming a gas industrial complex, you could be welcoming a monster. You can’t predict how it will morph in five or ten years. By smoothing the way for this industry, you sacrificed too much and you may not know the half of it today. 

• Summon the bravery to say “No” to more fracking and industrialization.  Your municipality and its residents can lead by example.  

• Bring a few copies of the Protect Northern PA Fact Sheet with you to your next meeting. 

• Learn about the Clean and Green program to reduce taxes. The program is administered through the county tax assessment office. With reduced taxes, property owners may rethink fracking (6). And check out the Pennsylvania Agricultural Conservation Easement Purchase Program (11).