Raging Grannies Blockading Entrances and Exits of WA Department of Ecology

UPDATE: Grannies Unlock After 6‑Hour Block­ade

Cur­rent­ly, sev­en mem­bers of the Seat­tle Rag­ing Grannies are block­ing the entrance to the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy head­quar­ters, stalling traf­fic and pre­vent­ing employ­ees from enter­ing work. The groups are sit­ting in rock­ing chairs chained togeth­er across the Department’s vehi­cle entrance.

They are telling work­ers that the Depart­ment is closed today for a “Work­shop on How to Say No to Big Oil.” Today’s action coin­cides with hear­ings on a con­tro­ver­sial study on the safe­ty of oil trains con­duct­ed by the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy. Hun­dreds are expect­ed in Olympia to express con­cern at the study’s nar­row scope and omis­sion of risks to the envi­ron­ment or treaty rights.

Police and FBI are on the scene try­ing to direct traf­fic, and ecol­o­gy man­age­ment is mak­ing sup­port­ive employ­ees move inside so they can’t talk to the media about their sup­port of the elders.

Dale R Jense, pro­gram man­ag­er for the department’s oil spills safe­ty pro­gram, is cur­rent­ly walk­ing the line and talk­ing to the grannies, who remain in high spir­its and are singing songs. There is a group of sup­port­ers mak­ing sure that the DoE knows that fos­sil fuel ship­ments are unpop­u­lar, dan­ger­ous, and bad for the plan­et.

“We’re here to help the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy learn how to say no to the oil indus­try,” said Beth DeRooy. “After grant­i­ng per­mits to four ille­gal oil train ter­mi­nals and let­ting for­mer BNSF exec­u­tives write their oil study, I was wor­ried the folks over at the Depart­ment nev­er learned how to say no and need­ed a lit­tle help from their grannies.”

Since 2012 the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy has grant­ed per­mits for oil-by-rail ter­mi­nals at four of Washington’s five refiner­ies. Ter­mi­nals in Taco­ma, Ana­cortes and at Cher­ry Point out­side of Belling­ham, have begun tak­ing trains while a fourth is under con­struc­tion at the Phillips 66 refin­ery in Fer­n­dale. Envi­ron­men­tal groups have argued that the these ter­mi­nals are ille­gal under the Mag­nu­son Act, which pro­hibits expan­sions at Wash­ing­ton refiner­ies that may increase the amount of oil they han­dle.

Per­mits for a fifth oil-by-rail ter­mi­nal at Shell’s Puget Sound refin­ery are cur­rent­ly under con­sid­er­a­tion. “Hot on the heels of record wild­fires, Gov­er­nor Inslee’s so-called Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy is going to ignore the envi­ron­ment in this study? They’re act­ing more like the Depart­ment of Oil Trains,” stat­ed Cyn­thia Linet.

Last year Gov­er­nor Inslee direct­ed the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy to con­duct a safe­ty study on the extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial ship­ment of oil by rail. The governor’s study has been crit­i­cized for ignor­ing impacts on the envi­ron­ment, treaty rights and glob­al warm­ing, as well as fail­ing to ques­tion whether they should build oil-train ter­mi­nals in the first place.

The Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy has declared that impacts on the envi­ron­ment, trib­al treaty rights or local economies are “ancil­lary” and not being con­sid­ered. The Depart­ment has also come under fire after rev­e­la­tions that a num­ber of the study’s authors are for­mer BNSF exec­u­tives.

“You’d think bring­ing explod­ing trains to help oil com­pa­nies dev­as­tate Native Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties in North Dako­ta would be easy to say no to, but it looks like the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy needs a stern les­son from their grannies,” said Car­ol McRoberts.

Many of North Dakota’s oil wells are on trib­al lands of the Man­dan, Hidat­sa and Arikara nations. In addi­tion to spills and oth­er local pol­lu­tion, the oil boom has brought tremen­dous social costs to the com­mu­ni­ties. Deaths from auto acci­dents, drug abuse and vio­lent crime have explod­ed; hous­ing short­ages force many to live in sub­stan­dard con­di­tions; and sex­u­al vio­lence such as rape and sex traf­fick­ing have become preva­lent in a once small com­mu­ni­ty.

“My daugh­ter is 15 months old and my heart aches that I do not even want her to be at home for fear of what she’d be exposed to,” said Kan­di Mos­sett, a mem­ber of the Man­dan, Hidat­sa and Arikara nations who sub­mit­ted writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny to today’s oil train hear­ings. “This oil boom using frack­ing has been dev­as­tat­ing for us and no amount of mon­ey can ever give us back what’s being lost.”

Pro­tes­tors hand­ed out dough­nuts and cof­fee as they turned away employ­ees’ cars. They also hand­ed out a fli­er explain­ing “How to Say No To Fos­sil Fuels.” The fli­er calls on the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy to reject all new fos­sil fuel projects pro­posed for Wash­ing­ton and to explic­it­ly link their rejec­tion to con­cerns about glob­al warm­ing.

Cli­mate jus­tice activists point out that if all pro­posed fos­sil fuel ter­mi­nals are built, the North­west will be trans­port­ing five times more car­bon than the Key­stone XL Pipeline.

“It’s grandma’s com­mon sense – we need to keep car­bon in the ground to stop cat­a­stroph­ic glob­al warm­ing, and if they can’t ship it, they have to leave it in the ground,” said Rosy Betz-Zall. But while he has been wide­ly hailed as one of the green­est gov­er­nors in Amer­i­ca, Inslee has yet to out­right reject a major fos­sil fuel project, or even declare a mora­to­ri­um on projects that would increase dan­ger­ous ship­ments of explo­sive oil.

“Gov­er­nor Inslee talks about being a cli­mate cham­pi­on, but he keeps say­ing ‘maybe’ to new fos­sil fuel projects, when what we need is a sol­id ‘NO’,” said Dee­jah Sher­man-Peter­son.

“Take it from your granny: if you want to say yes to some­thing good – a just, clean ener­gy future – you have start by say­ing NO to some­thing bad – build­ing more fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture.”

Today’s protest fol­lows an intense wave of oppo­si­tion to oil-by-rail across the North­west this sum­mer with pro­tes­tors lock­ing them­selves to bar­rels of con­crete and sit­ting atop tripods to block­ade rail­road tracks across Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon.