Kathy McGlone, CCBOR hero and letter-to-the-editor writer
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A letter to all of you ... |
from our very dear Bob Krasen. Bob is our CCBOR core member who is highly active in SPAN Ohio, working diligently to enact blanket health insurance coverage for all Ohioans.
Bob's letter is attached to the newsletter email in a word document for you to read!
Here is an excerpt:
So far, our State Government has taken strong steps to mitigate COVID-19, steps with which few can disagree. However, as this crisis runs on the weeks and months ahead, we much keep our eyes focused on the Governor for action which oversteps. We must watch the Legislature for bills that are promoted as “necessary during the crisis” or bills that seemingly “appear out of nowhere” and are on a “fast track” to passage, that limit personal and community rights, especially on the environment.
We now have  .
Please consider an online donation!
Thank you!
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Read Kathy's Dispatch letter
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You can read Kathy McGlone's letter-to-the-editor that was published in the Columbus Dispatch on April 11th, 2020, by clicking on the Dispatch logo below
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Columbus Community Rights Coalition
has been created to help educate our community
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We have created 'Columbus Community Rights Coaltion, Inc.' (CCRC), as an Ohio nonprofit corporation. This is the educational wing of our initiative, to help the central Ohio public understand our issues better, so that we can promote participatory representative democracy more meaningfully.
CCRC's purpose: to advocate for and educate Columbus residents about community rights and rights of nature to support healthy and democratic neighborhoods.
CCRC will work hand-in-hand with Columbus Community Bill of RIghts to help the public understand why we need good local laws that people are engaged with, for the protection of our resources in the region.
We look forward to working with the local public, especially as COVID-19 begins to let up and we all can breathe in public spaces again. In the mean time, be smart, stay safe and protect your families.
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Nature Scores a Big Win Against Fracking
in a Small Pennsylvania Town
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Grant Township, Pennsylvania
Mike Belleme for Rolling Stone
At play in Grant Township was whether a corporation had the right to inject fracking waste in a resistant community, or whether the community -- and its streams, soils, and species -- had the right to block the corporation from depositing its waste. In the course of the fight, Grant adopted an ordinance that established its right to local self-government, and later a home-rule charter, made possible by a 1972 state act that sought to give more power to municipal governments. According to their charter, injection wells are illegal -- and nature has rights.
The DEP's decision to revoke the injection well permit was laid out in a March19th letter to Pennsylvania General Energy, the company that had originally applied for the permit. "Operation of the injection well...would violate a local law that is in effect," the DEP letter stated, citing the charter enacted by Grant Township that banned "the injection of oil and gas waste fluids." In 2017, the DEP sued Grant over this charter's language, so the decision to suddenly accept the terms of the charter was significant. When asked by Rolling Stone to explain the agency's shift in tone, DEP spokesperson Neil Shader stated, "DEP cannot comment substantively regarding a matter in litigation."
Click HERE or on the image above or to read the full article in Rolling Stone Magazine.
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Standing Rock Tribe Wins in Court
After Years of Perseverance
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Tribes and allies gathered to defend Standing Rock Sioux territory from the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. After years of litigation, a court struck down the pipeline's water permits on March 25, 2020. Scott Olson / Getty Images
[Excerpt:]
A federal judge struck down permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline, even after COVID-19 precautions led to an unconventional day in court.
On March 25, the Tribe gained a significant victory after a federal court struck down a permit to route the pipeline under the Missouri River, finding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to consider the health and environmental impacts to the Tribe in the event of an oil spill. The court ordered the Corps to complete a full environmental review, and it also asked each side to weigh in on whether the pipeline should be shut down in the meantime.
Click HERE or on the image above to read the full article in EarthJustice.
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When your neighborhood landfill goes radioactive!
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Hakes and Chemung Landfills in upper New York State have become a toxic legacy since they became dumping grounds for radioactive drill cuttings from oil and gas wells. This is what we want to avoid at all costs in Columbus, and the Hakes landfill is an extremely troubling example of why we have to keep this waste away from our city.
The image above is from a webinar put on by Sierra Club, People for a Healthy Environment, and Concerned Citizens of Allegany County.
It shows relationships between a study (Walter et al.) done supported by National Institutes of Health, compared with radon gas testing at the landfill. It is showing that leachate samples taken from Hakes landfill had radium levels that, even with using improper methodologies of testing for radium, were extremely high. This is based on radon levels that were accurately measured, and from the radon they can extrapolate how much radium is in the landfill.
BUT.... you need to hold onto your seats, because the radon levels were incredibly high. Radon-222 measured 1 million picocuries/liter in the landfill gas, and 250,000 picocuries/liter in the leachate samples. The limit for discharging in a New York landfill is 25 picocuries/liter. That would put the leachate above the limit by a factor of 10,000, and the landfill gas by a factor of 40,000! Radon-222 has a half-life of just over 3 minutes, so the gas that escapes is probably not going to harm the people who live a ways downwind. But what about the people who work at the landfill? Radium is continually producing radon gas as it decays. If your basement shows more than 4 picocuries/liter of radon gas, it has to be remediated. What would a breathful of 1 million picocuries/liter in radon do to your future health?
It gets WORSE...
Radon is created as radium decays. The radiation detectors as trucks drive into the landfill are incapable of detecting close to the 25 picocuries limit for radium. Most of the trucks have been successful at disposing of their drill cuttings over the years, and radium testing seems to have been abysmally inaccurate. The diagram above shows that 1 million picocuries/liter of radon gas actually measured in the landfill gas extrapolates to anywhere between 2,500 and 175,000 picocuries/gram of radium in the landfill "dirt" - that is the level of radium present that it should take to produce that much radon gas.
In Ohio, the combined limit for radium-226/228 is 120 picocuries/gram. The levels suspected at the Hakes landfill in New York state would be between 20 and 1,458 times the Ohio EPA environmental discharge limit.
KEEP OIL AND GAS SHALE WELL DRILL CUTTINGS OUT OF COLUMBUS LANDFILLS!! We would like to see EPA rescind their 2013 authorization for Ohio Soil Recycling to cap their Alum Creek landfill with cuttings. We think this is a terrrible idea, and is a legacy of the horrible 2013 Ohio budget bill that snuck language in that deregulated the radioactive content of shale drill cuttings so that they can be disposed of in Ohio landfills like any non-radioactive waste is disposed of.
You can read more about the Hakes landfill situation on our website.
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3 States Pass Anti-Pipeline Bills in Two Weeks
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Protesters face off against security during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
ROBYN BECK / AFP / Getty Images
[Excerpt:]
Since 2015, bills have been introduced that target particular movement tactics like boycotts, strikes and traffic blockage and increase the penalties for already-illegal activities.
In the case of anti-pipeline protests, the laws have sold themselves as protecting "critical infrastructure" but follow a very specific playbook.
Click HERE or on the image above to read the full article in EarthWorks.
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Why Some Financial Analysts are Questioning
Viability of the Appalachian Plastics Hub
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[Excerpt:]
Sanzillo said right now, the plant just doesn't look like a good investment.
In February, Moody's bond credit rating businesses, which is used by investors to decide where to put their money, raised doubts about the project.
Moody's predicted that this year PTTGC would, quote, "not embark on any new capacity expansion plan until margins improve on a sustained basis."
And our partners at InsideClimateNews reported that IHS Markit had removed the proposed plant from its long-range plastics supply forecast.
Click HERE or on the image above to read the full article in StateImpactPennsylvania.
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Spain becomes the latest country to ban fracking!
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[Excerpt:]
Article 8 of the proposed new law will impose limites and restrictions on all exploration and investigation activities related to extraction of hydrocarbons, and it will become impossible for licences to be granted for fracking either on land or in Spanish territorial waters.
Click HERE to read the article in Murcia Today.
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GrassRootsOhio - Oil & Gas BRINE
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Carolyn Harding with Greg Pace and Teresa Mills, regarding oil & gas brine, and why we should not use this on our roads for ice or dust! Also, they explain the current status of HR 545, the "brine bill".
Click on the image above to listen to the radio show broadcast on 3/13/20.
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Other Great Resources Online
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LC Concerned Citizens newsletter.
To subscribe, click HERE and follow the instructions on their website, located in the right-hand sidebar to email them and ask to subscribe.
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Click on the image above to watch our video 'We're All Downstream'
Please share this video by copying this link and sending:
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Remember, this is OUR
Participatory Representative Democracy
If we don't use it, we lose it
Toxic Radioactive Waste Doesn’t Belong Here
Protect our Home, our Families, our Rights!
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