Today, a Unitarian minister, two students native to western Maryland, and another local resident engaged in a peaceful sit-in outside the Allegany County Courthouse in Cumberland to protest Cove Point. This massive $3.8 billion project, proposed by Virginia-based Dominion, would take nearly a billion cubic feet of gas per day from fracking wells across the Appalachian region, liquefy it on the Chesapeake Bay, and export it to Asia.
The four Maryland citizens were arrested after blocking the courthouse entrance to demand justice in the controversial federal handling of Cove Point. Despite the potentially region-transforming fracking, pollution, and climate impacts of Dominion’s plan, federal regulators have thus far refused to conduct a full and fair Environmental Impact Statement — the type of review most protective of public health and safety and customary for a polluting facility as huge as Cove Point.
In the following statements, the protesters explain why Cove Point matters to Western Marylanders, and why they engaged in peaceful civil disobedience to stop it. (Click here for a PDF of their full statements.)
Cove Point is a moral wrong: Why I got arrested as a minister today in Cumberland
Terence Holliday Ellen
Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church, Cumberland, MD
Resident: Pikesville, Maryland
I am here today as both a citizen of this beautiful state and as a minister deeply concerned about what we are doing to the gorgeous creation we have been given. It is inconceivable to me that new gas lines and compressor stations and fracking drilling sites would be slated to go through this whole region to support the proposed Cove Point liquid natural gas exporting facility. It is inconceivable to me that the huge proposed $3.8 billion Cove Point facility would not receive a full Environmental Impact Statement before construction would be permitted. I call on Governor Martin O’Malley and Maryland’s members of Congress to demand such a full impact statement in order to protect the health and welfare of Marylanders, the Bay, and the land and air.
This proposed Cove Point expansion would take us in exactly the wrong direction. Our state has worked to upgrade its renewable energy portfolio, approve off-shore wind development, and enact other laws to make it one of the most progressive energy states in the nation. But now Dominion Power proposes a facility which will, when emissions from extraction to burning are counted, trigger more greenhouse gases than all our Maryland coal-fired power plants combined.
… And, beyond the vicinity of Cove Point, this facility and the concomitant pipelines through Western Maryland will further encourage the extreme extraction process of fracking in nearby states and pressure Maryland to do so as well. … Further, the Department of Energy has released a report which shows exporting natural gas is bad for every single sector of our economy except the profits of the gas companies. Surely our Maryland gas rates will go up as the gas goes overseas. Only Dominion gains long-term from this project.
This Cove Point facility and its attendant fracking and gas-lines is a horrible way to go. Scientists confirm that we can only burn a quarter to a third of the fossil fuel reserves already discovered or we will go past the 2 degree Celsius warming barrier that the nations of the earth together have declared the upper limit for preserving a climate anything like the one in which civilization has developed. It has been repeatedly shown that we already have the existing conservation, efficiency, and sustainable energy resources we need to power our lives and not destroy the planet as we now are doing with our over-reliance on fossil fuels. This insanity must stop.
So Cove Point, and all that it entails, must stop.
Cove Point: Why I choose civil disobedience today in Cumberland, Maryland
Desiree Bullard, Cumberland, MD
My name is Desiree Bullard. I am a resident of Cumberland, MD and a graduate student at Frostburg State University. My identity is rooted in my love for the natural world and belief that societies should exist to protect it. We cannot live without a clean environment in which to grow our food, collect our water, and provide the green spaces we require for optimum health.
That is why I am willing to participate in civil disobedience to publicly oppose the proposed Cove Point LNG export facility. Our state leaders MUST demand an EIS be conducted to assess the full impacts of the export facility. It is inconceivable that an EIS is not already underway.
An export facility at Cove Point would simply be another addition to a model that has drastically failed us. Fossil fuels are destroying our atmosphere and catapulting life as we know it toward a tragic end. The time to act is now. It is our responsibility to ensure future generations live in a world on the path to recovery, not one devastated beyond repair. They don’t deserve to live with the consequences of our irresponsibility.
In my act of civil disobedience, I stand with those who have come before me. Everyone from those arrested protesting and blocking Keystone XL, to the indigenous peoples all over the world fighting to protect their homes. We are all in this together, and I thank you for paving the way.
Why I got arrested in Western Maryland today protesting the Cove Point gas export plan
Ben Brown, Frostburg, MD
I was arrested today in opposition to the ridiculous Cove Point LNG proposal and the pressure it would place on my home counties, and the mid-Atlantic at large, to frack for natural gas. I cannot remain idle as the places and things I love are exploited. I will place myself in opposition to anything that threatens fishing with my father, hiking with my friends, and the serenity of morning’s first breath in the splendor of these mountains.
Simply because an activity lends itself to financial gain and job creation does not make it morally permissible. There are countless pursuits in which money could be made but only in the production of foul ethical and environmental consequences – including the Cove Point LNG. I stand and demand change with those things – human and otherwise – which are the economic externalities and sacrifices of industrialized energy extraction and its implications – global climate change. If we don’t care about this issue, those with deeper pockets and unsympathetic agendas will. I ask of my family and friends – bring your passion to the table so we can stop this injustice.
We must demand a full Environmental Impact Statement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the proposed Cove Point LNG facility – because it will affect western Maryland, the mid-Atlantic region, and the world. We must demand a continued moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in Maryland until its consequences are fully understood. I give up my temporary freedom in the hope that all leaders of our communities including the local mayors, The County Commissioners of Allegany and Garrett Counties, my representatives in Congress, Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski, Governor Martin O’Malley, President Barack Obama, and even those at Dominion Resources – will recognize this caricature of sustainability and rise to protect the people and our collective future.
Why Cove Point Should Matter to Western Maryland: An Explanation of My Arrest
Gabriel Adam Echeverri, Frostburg, MD
Perhaps without quite knowing what they were getting me, and themselves, into, my parents gave me quite a thing to live up to when they gave me my name. You see, my parents named me Gabriel Adam, which, translated directly from its Hebrew origins, means “Messenger of the Earth”, or “Strong Man of the Soil”. As I said, quite a calling. Writing this now, I do not claim to speak for others, but want to make it very clear that I stand with the earth, with the living, with my brothers and sisters in Creation whose voices have, for far too long, been drowned out by the incessant grinding and wailing and sawing and chopping and drilling and digging and looting and raping and slashing and burning and fracking and noise noise noise noise… So much noise and bread and circuses to distract us all from what is really going on in this world that we call home, on this earth that we came from and to which we will ultimately return.
So, why have I chosen to get arrested, as an act of civil and peaceful disobedience, today? I could walk the path of brevity and tell you that it is all because of the liquified natural gas export facility that dominion resources (dominion with a little “d”, has no power over me) is proposing to build at Cove Point, MD, but the issue is so much bigger than that. The issue is so much bigger than the fact that a liquified natural gas export facility built in the state of Maryland would almost certainly mean the introduction of fracking into these beautiful mountains that I have come to call home. The issue outweighs the fact that people, a stone’s throw away from the city I was born in (Dallas, Tx), can light their tap water on fire. The issue is bigger than me … it is daunting, it is disheartening, it is very terrifying, and it is very, very real.
I did not come to these mountains to lead a quiet life of solitude and contemplation away from the horrors and discomforts of the world we live in. As the old song goes, “I went up to the mountains boys, and there I made my stand.” These mountains hold stories of a rich history of resistance, human and otherwise. … I stand in solidarity with the residents of Cove Point, human and otherwise. … I stand in solidarity with residents of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Ohio, and anyone else unfortunate enough to have found their homes so inconveniently located on top of something that those with the money and the power would use to line their pockets and climb the social ladder. I stand in solidarity with my neighbors, especially those who I know would love nothing more than to be standing with us here today. I stand in solidarity with the coyote, the raccoon, the white tailed deer, the black bear, the skunk, the salamander, the brook trout, the tamarack, the sassafras tree, the pink lady slippers and the ginseng. I stand in solidarity with our indigenous brothers and sisters fighting the Keystone XL pipeline (and fighting the encroachment of our immensely destructive society for long before that). … In short, I stand in solidarity with the living, and all those who stand in opposition to any society, corporation, organization or person that would take all for profit and leave nothing for progeny.
You can keep your rhetoric concerning best business practices, safe drilling techniques, economic benefits, jobs, domestic energy, gross domestic product, money, green this and green that, clean this and clean that, because what it really comes down to, for me, is this: The way they are treating this earth, even given that ideal business and ecological practices would materialize magically in some utopian reality (which, as a thorough Environmental Impact Statement would undoubtedly prove, they most certainly will not), fracking, drilling, killing, extracting… resources resources resources, this is STILL not how I want to live in and with the place that I call home. … Stand with the living; hope and fight against despair for the justice that is the birthright of Creation.
