"Defend the Sacred" with Bold Appalachia

Defend the Sacred: A Celebration of Life, Land, and Water

Public is Invited   ·  Hosted by Bold Alliance and Bold Appalachia

Date and Time:  Saturday, June 10^th at 3 pm to 10 pm.

Location:  Elmwood Park, 706 S. Jefferson Street, Roanoke, VA 24016

Description: The proposed Mountain Valley (MVP) and Atlantic Coast  (ACP) fracked gas pipelines threaten the land, water, and livelihoods of Appalachia. Communities all around Virginia and West Virginia are answering the call to stand for what is sacred. NOW is the time to act. This event serves to raise awareness of the risks, injustices, and alternatives to these proposed pipelines. Through dance, music, film, farm-to-table food, and much more we will celebrate community around respect for what is sacred: our land, our water, our being.

When: June 10th, 2017;  Times:  3:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Where: Elmwood Park (outdoor amphitheater), Roanoke VA

Music: Groova Scape; Seph Custer and the Papa Tom Band; Jordan Fallon; The Commons

Dance: Trail of Tears Intertribal Dance Troupe; Dance of Universal Peace; Delwin Fiddler – Native American Hoop Dancer

Speakers: Mekasi Horinek Camp, Floris White Bull, Landowners, Pipeline Fighters, Regional Poets, Local Faith Leaders and more….

Food and Beverage: Parkway Brewery, Foggy Ridge Cider, Peaks of Otter Winery, Longfin Grill Food Trailer, Viva la Cupcake, LEAP, potluck style (please bring your favorite dish!*)
*PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN CUPS AND PLATES TO REDUCE WASTE! THANKS!

Children’s Activities: arts and crafts, group games, environmental education

Water Blessing — PLEASE bring a container of WATER from your home and/or land

Film: Screening of “AWAKE,” by Josh Fox

NOTE: In the days after: Seeds of Resistance/Sacred Ceremonies Tour begins on Bent Mountain the following day, Sunday (June 11th), and subsequent ceremonies and plantings throughout the week on lands directly on the proposed pipeline route or elsewhere as time permits.

Vendor Application Form: https://goo.gl/forms/FTSXNk5sGVZqlX4O2

Contact Information:
William Adams
email: willmadams@gmail.com
phone: 540-521-6995

Carolyn Reilly
email: carolyn@boldalliance.org
phone: 540-488-4358

QUOTATION: “To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe –to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it— is a wonder beyond words.”    ― Joanna Macy

Climate Change Impacts on Global Food Security

Review by S. Tom Bond, Ph.D., Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV, August 20, 2013

FrackCheckWV has referred its readers to the recent issue of Science which has over 50 pages of articles on the changes in natural systems in changing climates.  Being both a farmer and someone who enjoys a good meal encourages me to think about what future possibilities would be.  Food security, the ability of individuals to secure enough of the right kinds of food to sustain them, is also a very important political consideration.  This article is a condensation of “Climate Change Impacts on Global Food Security, appearing on page 508 of the August 2, 2013 issue of Science.

Food security has four factors.  The first is production of sufficient quantities of the right kinds of food.  Each human needs not only energy, but protein and other nutrients.  The second is access.  There must be transportation and distribution to reach the individual, and in some cases this doesn’t exist.  In urban settings it has to be paid for, so the individual must have sufficient  steady income. Third, there must be adequate utilization – facilities to prepare the food, including cooking and clean water for sanitation that are needed so physiological needs can be met.  The fourth is stability of supply, so that an individual can have adequate food at all times. 

Production, access, facilities to prepare and year-round supply.  All are needed by every individual if they are to survive.

It is estimated that  the undernourished in terms of calories has been reduced from 980 million to 850 million in the two decades from 1992 to 2010-12, but judging from under-weight, stunted-growth and health surveys, 2 billion people still suffer from micro-nutrients today.  Moreever, this seems to have been getting worse since 2007 due to pressures from food prices, extreme climate events and forced changes in diet.

Such pressures ae expected to build in the future.  Demand for food is expected to increase by 50% by 2030, as the global population increases.  Climate change could dramatically influence the progress toward reduction of hunger.

Present studies usually think in terms of production only, ignoring the other factors  mentioned above.  Even with sufficient calories, physical and mental factors can be influenced by nutrients, ability to prepare, and daily availability.  Remember the phrase “give us this day our daily bread?” It is very serious business for someone on the edge of starvation.  Data about food availability taken from aggregate reckoning is not adequate to completely understanding of the situation.   Surprisingly, the first analysis even from this limited perspective was not published until 1994.

This study was by Rozenzweig, Parry and others. It showed there is great variation in yields, highest yields the developed North of Europe and America, decreasing across Africa and South America.  Further work has shown that crops are more negatively affected by stress in the tropics, and so coincides with countries that presently have high burden of hunger.  It seems likely that food effects of climate change will be more severe in areas which already have a problem.

Food access is better understood.  For individuals it is largely a mater of income and rights.  Findings in this area show clear linkages between economic development and resilience to climate change.   In other words, if you have to buy food, you are better able to get it when you have more income.  On the other hand, if one’s assets are drawn down, if one must change jobs,  if migrating, etc., one is more vulnerable. 

If global warming changes location of production of biomass, which includes not only food, but also fiber and timber, trade in these commodities will change and consequently prices.  The resources of production , such as land and water access, will increase in value.  Such structural problems will lead to more appropriation of the assets of the poor, such as “land grabs” by external and foreign interests.  (Such is going on now at the fringes of tropical forests, in Africa, Madagascar  and Southeast Asia by Middle East oil potentates, and European, American and Chinese investors.  – Author’s note).

Utilization will be effected by less water in some areas, droughts and floods.  Higher temperatures will increase water-born disease, particularly diarrheal disease, and uptake of microneutrients may decrease.  Pesticides may come into even greater use due to increased abundance of pests.

Global urbanization results in changes in lifestyle, including higher caloric intake, poorer quality diet and relatively low physical activity, leading to obesity and chronic disease, even among the poor.  How this will link with effects of climate change is not known.

However it is clear that small shocks in supply or demand will have great effect on prices, and thus on food supply of the poor. Aggressive bioenergy projects, when applied by the political economy, can have great effect on food supplies.   Ethanol for fuel in the U. S. caused food riots in other countries, because the global price went up.

Finally, “This complex system of risks can assume a variety of of patterns that could potentially collide in catastrophic combinations.”  This author’s conclusion is that food supply can be handled as large scale management concern, or simply left to see who can make the most money from it, the latter being the most likely outcome at this point.

NOTE:  The following guest editorial was published well over a year ago, but is still relevant.

Publication: The Morgantown Dominion Post;  Date: March 13, 2011; 

Section: Opinion; Page Number: 2-D; GUEST COMMENTARY: 

Authority on Marcellus shale not telling all

BY S. THOMAS BOND

Authority is part of the problem with Marcellus shale drilling. The industry members are very connected, very disciplined, very motivated and they are assuring the public that there is no problem with the methods of drilling, and what’s called “due diligence.”

On the other hand, the complaints come from people who are rural, many of whom lack education and who don’t “network” with political power.

But they have the “facts on the ground” to use a current phrase. You can visit them, because they have time and lots of motivation to talk. Authority — real authority at the top — doesn’t converse with individuals. It hires someone else to do that.

You also can see pictures of the damage, and there is actually a vast amount of literature going back to the time horizontal drilling and slick water fracturing began. For example, yesterday a friend sent me an article about Marcellus wells leaking in Quebec, and how that was changing the Canadian government’s view of Marcellus development. I remembered an earlier article, so Googled “leaking Marcellus wells” and got more than 300,000 articles on leaking Marcellus wells. By adding “Quebec” to the query I was able to find the case the friend was referring to, which involved 19 out of 31 wells.

There are many groups who could put inquiring individuals in contact with folks whose property or lives have been damaged, more than one would have time to contact. I know a forester, people who have retired from other states and even a state Division of Environmental Protection employee who have had problems. Contacting people is slow, laborious work — looking at their claims. But these are the “facts on the ground” that contravene the propaganda that nothing is wrong in the oil patch.

The New York Times is running a series of articles on the Marcellus. They have tremendous resources and the series is comprehensive. One of the most telling articles is “Pressure limits efforts to police drilling for gas” by Ian Urbana, published March 3, 2011. It concerns the industry effort to remain unregulated by the federal government.

The industry knows what it is doing. There is no more telling indication of that than the exemptions for the drilling industry built into the Energy Act of 2005. Former Vice President Dick Cheney marshaled a commission to study energy needs, and the resulting bill exempted the drilling industry from the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Brownfields Act, the last of which requires the industry make a toxic mess to clean it up.

Environmentalism is often cast as people with sentimental attachment to trees and birds and landscapes. However, at a more fundamental level, it has to do with preserving resources for the future. Recorded history goes back about 8,000 years. Hopefully there will be something here for people to live on thousands of years in the future.

Environmentalism is about avoiding degradation of land, water and air so they can be used in the future. There surely will be life beyond the end of current business deals. Landowners and environmentalists are natural allies in their concerns about the damage going on.

So the debate involves two kinds of authority, the authority of a well-organized group with a lot to gain, who have wealth, public relations and political influence, and gains to society now, on the one hand; and on the other, a huge, unorganized and disconnected group, some of whom have much to lose, and others who have everything to lose, plus perpetual gains to society in the future. The facts lie with the latter, and all the industry can do is to delay public awareness.

S. THOMAS BOND is a retired teacher with a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry. He is a member of the Guardians of the West Fork and Monongahela Area Watershed Compact. He lives near Jane Lew. This commentary should be considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or editorial policy of The  Morgantown Dominion Post.

Delegates Barbara Fleischauer (Monongalia County) and Mike Mannypenny (Taylor County) and 21 other Delegates have joined in calling for a moratorium on any new permits for Marcellus gas wells. Their guest editorial in the Morgantown Dominion Post says that “Everyone in our State will soon be affected in some way by Marcellus shale gas drilling.” Our roads, our land, water and air as well as the health of our family and our animals can each be impacted, as has happened to many already.

The City of Lewisburg has joined these Delegates in the call for a moratorium; and, the City of Morgantown will take up a moratorium resolution this coming Tuesday evening. The Morgantown Dominion Post supports a moratorium; and, the Beckley Register-Herald has called for a moratorium on all drilling. “It’s clear that everyone in Charleston isn’t on the same page on this ultra-important issue, so that really leaves them with no other option other than to halt everything right now and issue a moratorium on all drilling until adequate regulations and protections can be agreed upon.”

According to the guest editorial by Fleischauer and Mannypenny: “Please encourage other delegates and senators to join in our request for a new permit moratorium and ask gubernatorial candidates where they stand on a new permit moratorium and a special session. And don’t forget to vote.” The primary for a new governor is May 14^th and the election is October 4^th.

Anadarko, which is drilling extensively on state forest land in Pennsylvania, decided last year to convert all its Marcellus operations into closed-loop systems, eliminating pits and collecting debris in steel containers that are carted to landfills. It also received state permission to dig up the buried cuttings from about a dozen wells it already had drilled. “We want to say we haven’t buried anything here,” said Steve Woelfel, Anadarko’s drilling-operations manager in Appalachia. “It always could be a risk. It could come back to you.”

Anadarko says the closed-loop system is part of a broader “no-spill” strategy aimed at keeping all materials contained during the drilling process. Said Scott Chesebro, Anadarko’s engineering manager for Appalachian operations: “Nothing we bring to the surface touches the ground.”

In some states, operators dispose of drilling debris by plowing it into fields, a practice known as “land-farming.” Other “beneficial uses” include using cuttings on gravel roads or mixing them with asphalt as paving material. Jamie Legenos, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said the state had received no formal requests for “beneficial uses” of drill cuttings.

Natural gas drilling has aroused such ardent opposition (in northeast Pennsylvania) that even disposing of cuttings at approved landfills has raised alarms, forcing landfill operators to assure local officials that all incoming waste is tested for radioactivity and hazardous materials.  See the news article here.

The award-winning documentary “Gasland” will be shown free to the public on Tuesday, Oct. 12, 6:30pm in the WVU College of Law Marlyn E. Lugar Courtroom (directions), Morgantown, W.Va. The screening will be followed by a live Skype Q&A session with filmmaker Josh Fox. Beginning at 5pm there will be a public reception and information tables to browse before the film begins.

The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudi Arabia of natural gas” beneath most of West Virginia. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets and surprises, including contamination and unanticipated health risks. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.

Fracking has come to West Virginia, and if you own land, drink water, or breathe air, it’s time to learn how fracking could impact your community. Come see the film, so you can take informed action before it is too late.

Student and citizen groups who want to reserve an information table in the lobby, please contact Kurt Doiron at kurtdoiron(at)gmail(dot)com. Other questions may be directed to Deb Fulton at dfvet(at)aol(dot)com or (304) 864-0044.

The event is sponsored in part by the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club and the WVU College of Law’s Environmental Law Society.