Activist’s 75th Birthday Party Disrupts Spectra Pipeline Construction in CT

August 20th, 2015

NORTH WINDHAM, CT: In cel­e­bra­tion of his 75th birth­day today, Mid­dle­town res­i­dent Vic Lan­cia locked him­self to two giant “birth­day cakes”—actually con­crete-filled bar­rels dec­o­rat­ed with can­dles and frost­ing— on the sole road lead­ing up to a site where Spec­tra Ener­gy stores con­struc­tion equip­ment and mate­ri­als for use across Con­necti­cut. Fed­er­al Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion reports post­ed at capitalismvsclimate.org con­firm what local res­i­dents have seen: Spec­tra trucks reg­u­lar­ly using the facil­i­ty to expand frack­ing infra­struc­ture.

By block­ing Spec­tra work­ers from access­ing the site, Vic aimed to dis­rupt Spectra’s ongo­ing con­struc­tion of it’s “AIM Project”, a bil­lion dol­lar fracked-gas pipeline expan­sion affect­ing com­mu­ni­ties across the State.

“It’s sim­ple,” Vic explained. “Cap­i­tal­ism and the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels are destroy­ing our beloved and beau­ti­ful plan­et, the habi­tat for all human­i­ty and life, all for prof­it and con­ve­nience. Isn’t it time to resist? Do we not care for our chil­dren, the gen­er­a­tions beyond our lives, and for life itself?”

After block­ing the entrance to the site for over two hours – Vic nego­ti­at­ed with the police and unlocked. Vic wasn’t arrest­ed and we got to keep the con­crete “birth­day cakes”.

Vic is a mem­ber of Cap­i­tal­ism vs. the Cli­mate, a hor­i­zon­tal­ly-orga­nized, Con­necti­cut-based group that takes direct action against the root caus­es of the cli­mate cri­sis. About ten oth­er mem­bers and sup­port­ers joined Vic, shar­ing choco­late cake and wav­ing bal­loons. Beneath the fes­tiv­i­ties, how­ev­er, they expressed out­rage at Spectra’s pipeline expan­sion.

“Spectra’s pipeline expan­sion is cat­a­stroph­ic in many ways. It cre­ates incen­tives for frack­ing in the shale fields. It trans­ports high­ly flam­ma­ble gas just one-hun­dred feet from a nuclear pow­er plant in New York, poten­tial­ly endan­ger­ing tens of mil­lions of peo­ple. It accel­er­ates glob­al warm­ing, since fracked gas has an even high­er impact on the cli­mate than coal does,” said Willi­man­tic res­i­dent Roger Ben­ham.

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