Today Linda and I attended a rally in opposition to the PennEast Pipeline in Riegelsville, a small community about eight miles south of Easton. We heard from the Delaware River Keeper, a representative of the Sierra Club, a Lenape Indian, and about eight other speakers, including the president of “Save Carbon County,” a local environmental group that is fighting the pipeline.
That speaker, our very own Linda Christman, noted how Carbon County is still suffering the effects of the last extractive industry–coal. Blighted towns, acid mine drainage, giant culm banks, black lung disease. Now PennEast proposes a pipeline that will actually bring fewer benefits to the county than coal once did, but will add to water pollution, air pollution, declining property values, forest fragmentation, and harm to the tourism industry, all to benefit a few corporations.
The rally was held at a site along the Delaware to stress that people from both states are working to defeat this pipeline. References were made to the fight in South Dakota. The anti-pipeline movement is going national. Actually, it is going international, with groups in Canada fighting pipelines as well.
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