Stand With Steingraber: Demand EPA Protect Seneca Lake

The fracking industry’s threat to New York’s Seneca and Finger Lakes is serious. So serious, in fact, that esteemed environmentalist and professor Sandra Steingraber was willing to go to jail in protest.

Although, she told the press, civil disobedience for her is an action of “last resort,” she felt that she and others had exhausted every legal avenue to prevent the Missouri-based Inergy's plant on Seneca's west bank. They knew, she said, that the plant would be a major health and environmental hazard. 

She says the group was repeatedly blocked from participating in the decision-making process, even while Inergy hid crucial research data from the public. So the group met at the plant last month, locking arms to block access to the site. For refusing to pay the trespassing fine, Steingraber and two others are now in jail.

But Steingraber says nothing will stop her from speakng loudly and defiantly about the wrongs being committed and EPA allowing them. It shouldn't stop us, either.

Join Steingraber’s protest and demand that the EPA protect Seneca Lake.

We, the undersigned, expect the Environmental Protection Agency to do its job and protect the Finger Lakes Region from the fracking industry’s and Inergy’s pollution.


Steingraber explains that it’s a mistake to allow “the industrialization of the pristine Finger Lakes region, a magnet for tourism, known for its beauty, serenity, vineyards, lakes, and farms.” According to Alternet, Inergy has built a gas storage and transportation project, called a compressor station, in the Town of Reading and on the bank of Seneca Lake, which is the source of water to roughly 100,000 people.


Along with setting up the site as a transportation and storage hub for fossil fuel gases, Inergy plans to compress and bury explosive gases in salt caverns near and under the lake. However, geological research done on these caverns is being withheld from public scrutiny by Inergy, claiming proprietary rights. Therefore "much of the basic science on the structural integrity of the salt caverns is hidden from view.“says Steingraber.


Steingraber notes that her “small non-violent trespass” pales in comparison to Inergy’s violent “toxic trespass… the trespass of hazardous chemicals into water and air and thereby into our bodies."


All of what Inergy is doing is “wrong,” adds Steingraber, and it’s also wrong for regulatory agencies to allow Inergy to fast-track FERC approval of its projects and for EPA to turn a blind eye to Inergy’s repeated violations of the Clean Water Act.


We stand with Steingraber and others' protest of Inergy’s Seneca lake projects and insist that EPA do its job and protect Seneca and the Finger Lakes of New York from all sources of pollution.


Thanks for your time.

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