Dear Penn America: Nobody wants your LNG Terminal
By Jodine Mayberry, Delaware County Environmental Clearinghouse
“In Louisiana, we say LNG stands for Lies ‘N Greed,” said James Hiatt who came all the way from Lake Charles, Louisiana, to testify before the Pennsylvania House Environmental and Natural Resources Protection Committee.
The public hearing at Chester City Hall Nov. 5 was focused on a proposed liquid natural gas export terminal that its sponsors want to build somewhere along the Delaware River between the Port of Philadelphia and Marcus Hook.
Hiatt, the founder of A Better Bayou, told the audience of more than 70 people at Chester City Hall that the LNG export terminals already operating in Louisiana get tax exemptions from the state but offer nothing to surrounding communities.
“These projects were sold to us as engines of prosperity. Instead, they have brought suffering in the forms of air pollution, damaged histories and destroyed wetlands,” the third-generation oil and gas worker said.
The committee, chaired by Rep. Greg Vitali D. Haverford), heard from several experts and community leaders, all opposed to an LNG terminal anywhere in southeast Pennsylvania. several proponents were invited to speak but none accepted and none raised any questions during the two-hour hearing.
Watch the hearing here
Is it happening out of public view?
In opening remarks, Vitali said he called the hearing because of “the fear that the project will proceed under the radar without sufficient public scrutiny and without considering, first and foremost, the health and safety issues of the people living along the river communities.”
While there has been no discernible overt activity, Vitali noted that U.S. Senator Dave McCormick published an opinion piece in April discussing the Building Trades Council’s $7 billion project to build a terminal in the Philadelphia area. In June a meeting took place at the White House with Penn America CEO Franc James and on Oct. 7, participants on a podcast discussed putting a terminal in Eddystone.
“This is a real issue we need to be concerned about,” Vitali said.
Chester Mayor Stefan Roots said his community “strongly and emphatically says no to LNG in or near our city. LNG is simply not welcome here.”
Speaking of Chester’s 35,000 residents, numerous homes, schools, businesses and churches, Roots said there was no room for an LNG terminal with its air pollution and risk of explosion.
“We are not out to accommodate a blast zone. An LNG terminal simply does not belong in a densely populated center,” he said.
A Climate Disaster
Robert Howarth, Ph. D, a climate scientist speaking remotely from the Center for Sustainability at Cornell University, said that fracking gas is methane, the gas that is liquified for shipment and sale overseas.
Methane is a short-lived but an incredibly potent component of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute significantly to global warming, he said.
There has been a global increase in natural gas production “driven entirely by what we have been doing in the U.S., he said. “It is overwhelmingly driven by fracked shale gas production.”
Howarth said that his research was used in part by the Biden administration when Biden put a moratorium on NLG export terminals. Biden ordered a Department of Energy (DOE) study that confirmed Howarth’s research showing that “LNG is really bad for the climate and really bad for the economy.” President Donald Trump has since lifted the moratorium.
Pollution and explosion risks
Tracy Carlucci, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeepers Network, detailed the “enormous, long-lived negative impact in the region, statewide, nationally and internationally” of LNG pollution of the air and water, and the risk of an explosion that could destroy a one- to two-mile radius and cause fatal burns to humans instantly.
“The public will never accept an LNG export terminal in the Delaware River watershed anywhere,” she said, including on the New Jersey side of the river.
Cancer risk factors
Lauren Minsky, Ph. D, a professor of health studies at Haverford University, spoke of the increased cancer risks associated with pollutants spewed by the already existing two dozen toxic industries located all along the river. She has done extensive research on the environmental risks of various types of cancer.
Her research has shown that the risks of various kinds of cancer increase in proximity to the polluting industries along the Delaware River industrial corridor, Minsky said. See The People’s Cancer Incidence Tracking Tool here.
She noted that two hospitals in and near Chester had recently gone bankrupt and closed, including Chester-Crozer, which had a world-renown burn unit.
“If we have an explosion, where are you going to take all those people with burns?” she asked.
Electric rates will skyrocket
Liz Marx, executive director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, said that transforming Marcellus shale gas from a domestic product to a product on the international market would drive up consumer costs for electricity because Pennsylvania gas would then be competing on the world market, not providing cheap gas to consumers here at home as the fracking industry had promised.
Sixty percent of Pennsylvania power plants use shale gas and exporting natural gas will drive up their operating costs, she said. “The DOE makes the case that because exporting gas is good for the market, it is good for consumers. It is not.”
What about the community?
Finally, Zulene Mayfield, chair of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, cried as she disclosed the recent death of a 33-year-old CRCQL member from a rare form of cancer, just five months after his son was born.
“It’s environmental genocide, she said. “They are killing our young men.”
CRCQL has fought against polluting industries along the waterfront for decades and is now raising the alarm about the proposed LNG export terminal throughout Delaware County.
“They’ll talk about prosperity. It’s jobs, jobs, jobs – jobs for which we don’t qualify becausae they require five years experience in the industry. They will send people who don’t live in our community to do those jobs. The jobs will be temporary, but the deaths are forever.
“How many times do we have to say no? How many times do we have to fight against everything,” she asked.
Photo: Two members of CRCQL express their opinion on a proposed LNGexport terminal. Photo/Roberta Winters.
