(USA) Hudson Valley Earth First! Continue to Resist Fracking in New York

Res­i­dents in west­ern Orange Coun­ty began fight­ing the project over a year ago, and have tak­en every legal step pos­si­ble. FERC (the Fed­er­al Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion) approved the project with a 3 to 2 vote, unprece­dent­ed in their his­to­ry as a rub­ber stamp­ing revolv­ing door for indus­try. The split deci­sion was the result of an alter­na­tive site pro­posed by res­i­dents, which would involve the expan­sion of an already exist­ing com­pres­sion facil­i­ty. With their deci­sion, FERC con­firmed what we already knew, that when the inter­ests of indus­try come up against com­mu­ni­ty, the gov­ern­ment is no ally. The gas indus­try has plans to turn Min­isink and West­ern Orange Coun­ty into a hub for oper­a­tions, with anoth­er com­pres­sion sta­tion and an $800 mil­lion dol­lar nat­ur­al gas pow­er plant already in the ear­ly stages of reg­u­la­to­ry approval.

 

The com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, has no plans to bow to indus­try or FERC. They have respond­ed with a promise for dai­ly action. On day 1, the site was suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed for over half the day, and only one res­i­dent was arrest­ed (he was released with­in 2 hours with a tick­et for dis­or­der­ly con­duct). On day 2, there were numer­ous work stop­pages as a result of soft block­ades (one brave indi­vid­ual was arrest­ed), vehic­u­lar inter­ven­tion, and the actions of one res­i­dent who jumped on top of a piece of heavy machin­ery (and amaz­ing­ly man­aged to avoid arrest). On day 3, around 75 peo­ple, includ­ing many chil­dren and local fam­i­lies marched from the site through town and back again to con­tin­ue to spread aware­ness about the tox­ic com­pres­sor sta­tion and strength­en resolve. On Day 4, a flash mob stopped traf­fic to the site for about an hour, with CBS news com­ing to cov­er the sto­ry. As we approach the 5th day, it remains to be seen how this cam­paign will esca­late in the near future.

One thing is cer­tain; no one in this area saw resis­tance of this mag­ni­tude com­ing. Hope­ful­ly this sig­nals a sea change in the way things have been in the Hud­son Val­ley. This bio-region has suf­fered enough sub­ur­ban­iza­tion, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, pol­lu­tion, and down­right dirty deal­ing. From Indi­an point (the nuclear plant with no evac­u­a­tion plan) to PCBs, nat­ur­al gas infra­struc­ture to green-washed incin­er­a­tor projects, we are here to let it be known that the hey­day of indus­try is over. No com­pres­sor sta­tion! No com­pro­mise! Long live the Indi­ana Bat!

The next day of action is this Sat­ur­day (10/6/12) with anoth­er march, fol­lowed by a direct action train­ing pre­sent­ed by Hud­son Val­ley Earth First!