No Shale by Rail: Maine Activists Block Fracked-Oil Train

28 June 2013 A great two-for-one action against frack­ing and oil-by-rail trans­port!

From Com­mon Dreams:

Six Maine res­i­dents were arrest­ed late Thurs­day night after a larg­er group of cli­mate activists block­ad­ed a set of tracks pass­ing through the small town of Fair­field in order to pre­vent a train car­ry­ing 70,000 bar­rels of “fracked” oil head­ed to a refin­ery in neigh­bor­ing New Brunswick, Cana­da.

Asso­ci­at­ing them­selves with a grow­ing nation­al cam­paign of direct action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try called “Fear­less Sum­mer,” the pro­test­ers at the scene erect­ed a large scaf­fold over the tracks and held signs read­ing “Trains for peo­ple, not for oil” and “This train’s bound for Gory” (pun intend­ed).

Police arrived, and after sev­er­al warn­ings for the pro­test­ers to dis­perse, the six who refused were arrest­ed as the scaf­fold­ing was destroyed with a chain saw.

Local media report­ed a sur­pris­ing­ly large law enforce­ment response with police from numer­ous towns show­ing up at the scene, includ­ing troop­ers from the State Police.

350 Maine*, the statewide group asso­ci­at­ed but inde­pen­dent from inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion 350.org that led the action, said the goal was to draw atten­tion to the “fracked oil” that is qui­et­ly pass­ing through the state on a reg­u­lar basis. Local mem­bers of Earth First also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the action.

The groups say that the trains run­ning through Maine car­ry crude from the Bakken oil fields of North Dako­ta and are espe­cial­ly tox­ic because “fracked oil” is extract­ed by blast­ing a high pres­sure tox­ic cock­tail deep into the ground to release the oil from shale rock, pol­lut­ing air and water in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

 

“Peo­ple say that this new oil boom in the US will make us ener­gy secure,” said Meaghan LaSala, stu­dent at Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Maine and an organzi­er with 350 Maine. “But there is noth­ing secure about run­away cli­mate change. This is our moment to change our tra­jec­to­ry before it’s too late.”

One of those arrest­ed, 63-year old Read Brug­ger from the town of Free­dom, was clear about his moti­va­tions.

“We feel there has not been enough aware­ness about the mil­lions of gal­lons of crude shell oil that shipped across Maine each month,” Brug­ger told the local Ban­gor Dai­ly News. “We feel need to move beyond fos­sil fuels and get away from the poi­so­nous ways oil is being extract­ed.”

The BDN, which report­ed that many at the scene “said they did not know that fracked oil was being trans­port­ed through Maine,” made it seem like the action, at least on local lev­el, may have had the desired result.

But the cam­paign­ers acknowl­edged their con­cerns go beyond even the dire threats faced by Maine com­mu­ni­ties if one of these trains rerails or a spill occurs.

“We believe the moment we’re in, in terms of cli­mate change, is a dra­mat­ic one and it calls for dra­mat­ic action,” said LaSala in an inter­view with the Morn­ing Sen­tinel.

“We oppose the con­tin­ued extrac­tion of fos­sil fuels, but we also oppose its trans­porta­tion over thou­sands of miles of envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive areas,” added Sarah Lin­nekin, a stu­dent at Maine’s Uni­ty Col­lege. “Since my num­ber one job is to pro­tect my chil­dren, I feel an oblig­a­tion to take action.”

[*Full dis­clo­sure: This writer is a some­times vol­un­teer for 350 Maine, though had no involve­ment with this action.]