This page was last updated on February 21, 2012.
Health in danger; Celia M. Janosik; Beaver County Times; February 19, 2012.
As background, Ms. Janosik signed an online petition to impeach Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett less than two months after he took office.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject opinion piece.
“When Gov. Corbett signed HB 1950, he endangered the healthy development of children and the unborn due to endocrine disruption caused by pollution.”
[RWC] I advise you to read the bill yourself rather than accept Ms. Janosik’s representation of its content and effect.
I don’t know how much – if any – of what Ms. Janosik wrote is correct and for once I’m not going to spend my time to do the necessary research. That said, my experience with researching letters like this is not good for the authors.
I don’t know Ms. Janosik, but my experience is letters like this tend to be red herrings and are really about the religion of manmade global warming. Knowing the manmade global warming myth is increasingly falling on deaf ears, followers of this faith now try to use safety, water quality, etc. as backdoors to stop drilling and production of Marcellus natural gas. You can find examples here.
“We already are at the mercy of bad air in the region, so the drilling of many gas wells, construction of condensation tanks, frac pits, compression stations, flaring, the leaking of methane while drilling, and leaky pipelines will produce many health problems that for some people will last the remainder of their lives.
“In the bill, doctors who treat patients exposed to drilling chemicals, have to request the chemical lists in writing, but the doctor must sign a non-disclosure in all instances. Drillers will not reveal the compounds formed when the above mentioned chemicals mix with the materials from underground, and they do not have to report exposure to heavy metals, radioactive substances, etc.
“The impact fee and the word ‘jobs’ were used to appease us, and for many people it was sufficient. Our state is now giving our tax money away to encourage the building of a refinery or ‘cracker plant’ in Aliquippa that will be a source of jobs, but at the expense of everyone’s health.
“All these activities can happen anywhere at the industry’s discretion, not according to your local zoning ordinance. We have no control.”
[RWC] In the “I told you so” category is the following tongue-in-cheek piece I posted on January 17th on the Facebook version of “The Bird’s Eye View.” The piece was in reference to a BCT article entitled “Shell may be considering Beaver County for new plant.”
“This needs to be nipped in the bud. The plant would poison our air and water, make manmade global warming worse, and add traffic on our roads/rivers. Inevitably, billions of cubic feet of ethane and ethylene would escape during transport and kill untold numbers of us. And let’s not forget all the damage caused by extracting the gas from the Marcellus formation to feed the plant. The plant would likely be a big electricity consumer. Since most of that electricity would likely come from coal-fired and nuclear power plants, that’s even more pollution and could trigger a Japanese-style meltdown at the Beaver Valley Power Station. And what about the products made from the ethylene? I’m sure those products won’t be biodegradable and will be stuck in our ecosystem for millions of years, but only after most of our wildlife dies from getting entwined in the litter and/or ingesting the discarded products. Are we that greedy that we would risk the health of our children, the elderly, and our wildlife just for a couple of jobs? Heck, I’m sure the reason Sen. Casey is so gung ho on the project is that he lives about 250 miles away in northeast Pennsylvania and wouldn’t have to endure all the hardship the facility would surely bring. Even worse, if we’re not careful we could add jobs; students in our schools; economic activity in other businesses/industries; business travel through our airports; broaden our state and local tax bases which could lower tax rates; cut the number of people on food stamps, welfare, unemployment compensation; et cetera. The economic, environmental, and health consequences of this plant on Beaver County will be beyond our wildest imagination if we don’t act immediately.
“If Shell or anyone else wants to build something here, we need to demand the plant be nonprofit; build windmills; employ only Beaver County natives; employ at least twice as many people as required; compensate those employees far more than the economic value of their jobs; do neither outsourcing nor offshoring; buy all goods and services only from Beaver County businesses that produce their products in Beaver County, are nonprofit, employ only Beaver County natives, and compensate those employees far more than the economic value of their jobs; be able to withstand major earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes with zero damage; and pay sufficient property taxes to allow the elimination of county and school district residential property taxes. If those measures don’t kill the project, we’ll need to take more drastic action via taxes and regulations at the commonwealth level. We need to stop this madness now!
“Oh, and what about the proposed location? Look at the demographics and you’ll find the real reason has nothing to do with suitability of the Aliquippa site vs. places like Beaver, just like when Beaver wouldn’t tolerate the “new” jail. According to the 2010 census, Beaver’s population is only 4% nonwhite while Aliquippa’s population is 42% nonwhite. It’s fairly clear Aliquippa is the preferred site not because of things like utilities and transportation accessibility, but because of racism and poverty relative to rich, white locations.”
© 2004-2012 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.