Today, one week following a peaceful sit-in by four activists in Cumberland, four central Maryland residents were arrested outside the Frederick County Courthouse protesting the proposed Cove Point fracked gas export facility. The four protesters—including a county commission candidate, an asthma sufferer, a mother, and a Frederick resident who grew up playing baseball in Cove Point Park—blocked the courthouse entrance to demand a full and fair federal environmental impact review of Dominion’s controversial $3.8 billion plan.
In Frederick County, the citizens of Myersville are fighting Dominion over a 16,000 horsepower gas compressor that the company wants to build–despite unanimous opposition from the town council — less than a mile from the only elementary school. The Myersville compressor station is part of the web of fossil fuel infrastructure that Dominion could use to pipe gas from fracking wells across Appalachia to southern Maryland, where the gas would be liquefied and exported to Asia
In the following statements, the protesters explain why Cove Point matters to central Maryland, and why they engaged in peaceful civil disobedience to stop it. (Click here for a PDF of their statements.)
Steve Bruns
Frederick, Maryland
The massive proposed compressor station for gas that the company Dominion wants to impose on the small town of Myersville in Frederick County would help deliver fracked gas to the company’s proposed Cove Point gas export facility in southern Maryland. That gas would then be shipped to Asia. The compressor plant, which pressurizes the gas for transmission through pipelines, will not be used with the best interests of the citizens of Myersville or the state of Maryland in mind. The project will not result in lower gas prices for consumers. In fact, with the added demand, prices will most certainly go up.
Dominion’s plan will inevitably lead to new pipelines across the state to the shores of Calvert County near the small town of Lusby. There, the gas will be super cooled and compressed into a liquid state through an extremely complex, expensive, and hazardous operation. As projected, more compressor stations will be needed along the route. Also, as designed, the pipes and compressors will leak, releasing a huge amount of methane, which would help make Cove Point the largest single trigger of greenhouse gases in Maryland, more than all of Maryland’s coal-fired power plants combined.
Approval of this project by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Maryland Department of the Environment, and the state’s Public Service Commission, would open the door to gas fracking in Maryland. Already, natural gas exploration and production companies have leased a huge percentage of the land in Garrett County. The gas industry has mounted media and lobbying campaigns in the state, promoting “clean” and “safe” natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to the future. It’s obvious where this is going and it’s time to shout…STOP!
Just last week in Frederick, a gas line broke on New Design Road. Utility crews shut down traffic for several hours while making repairs. What if the line had exploded like so many all over the country?
Dominion doesn’t respect the wishes of the citizens of Myersville. The company has sued the Town of Myersville and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) to force MDE to process the required air quality permit even without the appropriate zoning from Myersville. This sort of contempt for the health and safety of the people of Maryland is unacceptable in a democratic society. If our government isn’t getting the message, then we’re just going to have to crank up the volume!
Elisabeth Hoffman
Clarksville, Maryland
No amount of light-bulb changing and green shopping, driving less and recycling more, turning down or up the thermostat, signing petitions and writing legislators has been sufficient. Our ecosystem is unraveling, with oceans acidifying, the atmosphere warming, whole species disappearing. I can give up in despair — or take action to challenge the current business model that is destroying our water, our land, our air, our future.
I engaged in civil disobedience today because Dominion’s planned compressor station in Frederick County is part of a fossil-fueled binge that will not stop on its own. This facility is but one piece of the machinery that produces energy and wealth from the misery of others, that profits while dumping toxic garbage into our water and lungs for free.
In Maryland, all roads lead to Cove Point, where we can’t even get a thorough review for a facility that would power the world with fracked gas. So, I am here for my friends in Butler, Pa., who put in place an ongoing water bank for desperate families whose water turned brown after fracking began and whose government did nothing. And for another Pennsylvania friend who keeps an always growing “List of the Harmed” from fracking.
I am here for my friends in western Maryland who fight every day out of fear for fracking’s toll on their water, land and health. And for my friends in Myersville who have been sued by Dominion because they are resisting the compressor station for fracked gas within a mile of their town’s elementary school and evacuation center. I am here for those who fight pipelines carving up their communities for fracked gas. I’m here for Calvert County residents who are fighting the massive Cove Point facility for liquefying and exporting fracked gas, even though regulators and elected officials are so far resisting a full review of the consequences. I am here for my two children, who should not have to worry about weirding weather and a collapsing biosphere. And for my 13 nieces and nephews and for all children, who are counting on us to leave them a life-supporting Earth. I am here for clean rivers, expansive forests, living oceans, unpoisoned farms, flourishing bees and butterflies.
Fracked gas is a bridge to a catastrophic 6 degrees F of warming on our planet. I was arrested today in hopes of making the future come out differently from the way it’s headed.
Joanna LaFollette
Frederick, Maryland
There’s a proposed infrastructure of pipelines and compressor stations that the Virginia-based energy corporate giant Dominion plans to build through the state of Maryland. Basically, the idea is to turn Maryland into one big giant conveyor system for gas. The gas comes from hydraulic fracturing sites (also known as fracking) across the region, as far away as New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. From the heart of the Appalachians, the gas would be sent to a proposed compressor station in Myersville, MD, just west of Frederick, MD. Much of that gas would then be brought to a massive industrial plant at Cove Point, on the Chesapeake Bay, where it is liquified to a temperature of -260 degrees. It is estimated that over 750 million cubic feet per day will be carried by tankers to export the product.
I have asthma and live in Frederick, Md where the levels of air pollution are nearly as bad as Baltimore. According to an MIT report, Maryland ranks number one in deaths related from air pollution. And the proposed compressor station in Myersville, Md would emit 23.5 tons of nitrogen oxide – a huge amount for a rural area – and which leads to smog. Additionally, the compressor station would be 16,000 horsepower in size and would be situated less than one mile from the Myersville Elementary school. The Leesburg, VA compressor station run by Dominion has received multiple warnings for exceeding acceptable emission levels. If Dominion is not willing to operate within pollution permit parameters, why should they be allowed to build the proposed infrastructure across Maryland? The health risks would include an increase of asthma and lung diseases and concerns about the impact of increased air pollutants to the rest of Frederick County.
The entire infrastructure that Dominion plans to build will increase pollution: from the fracking wells in the Appalachian, the processing at the compressor stations in the small rural towns like Myersville, MD to the massive industrial plant and export center at Cove Point, on the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland could virtually turn into one large industrial zone and be sacrificed for energy being shipped overseas. If fracking is expanded into Maryland, not only the air but the water will be polluted as well. The Chesapeake Bay and its ecology will be impacted and a heavy price is paid as potential harmful chemicals and pollutants are a byproduct of the industry. It is time to make a stand and inform our fellow citizens what is at stake. The time is now to demand help from our Maryland leaders in the US Congress, at the state level and at the Public Service Commission. Are we ready to pay the price of potential health problems created from air pollution from the industrialization of what were once small rural areas in Maryland as well as the Chesapeake Bay?
Sweet Dee
Frederick, Maryland
I grew up in rural southern Maryland, right between the woods and the corn fields, as my moms always called it. Matter of fact as a kid I played baseball every year at Cove Point Park, not 500 feet from the proposed Dominion LNG export facility. As a kid I spent most of the time in my adolescent years, when I wasn’t in school or caring for my younger siblings, off in fields and woods. It was peaceful, predictable, and safe. Maryland is a great place to grow up.
When I learned about Fracking in Dimock, PA, and how seemingly that same story was playing out in Pavillion, Wy, and Parker County, Tx, it seemed so far away from here. And as time went on I read more about the pipeline leaks, poisoned water, and burning sink faucets, and the medical bills, and the lethal explosions, I hoped it would never take hold here in Maryland. But more and more now natural gas experts say we’re next on the chopping block. I couldn’t imagine seeing my hometown looking like some of the places I’ve seen fracked so hard people don’t even recognize their own backyards. Or have my neighbors and family friends not be able to afford things as fundamentally necessary as water and medical care because of the constant destruction of Fracking.
The Cove Point facility and the proposed compressor station at Myersville are setting the stage. Cove Point means fracking! Natural gas exports would inevitably bring fracking to some of the most sensitive areas in the state; the parks, the farms, the mountains and the forests. This place and these people mean too much to me to stand by and just watch that happen. We have to resist, and I hope you’ll join us!
