What’s the problem?
Dirty pipelines.
How do you organize your community to stop a dirty pipeline project?
A dirty pipeline project can deliver a triple whammy to your community and the planet:
- New pipelines are designed to deliver fossil fuels, including gas from fracking sites and oil mined from the Canadian tar sands, to where they can be burned, polluting the air and heating up the planet.
- New pipeline projects often trample through conservation land or result in people’s property being taken by eminent domain.
- Accidents happen. Oil pipelines can spill, polluting the land and drinking water supplies. Gas pipelines can explode, sometimes with fatal consequences.
It’s no wonder most communities oppose new pipeline projects. But it takes an organized community to stop a dirty pipeline. Here are a few examples:
- Massachusetts: Our organizers worked with community groups throughout the state to oppose the 96-mile Access Northeast Expansion Pipeline project. The results included the unanimous opposition of Massachusetts state senators as well as 97 state representatives against the “pipeline tax” crafted to fund the project. The project was shelved.
- New Hampshire: After the defeat of the Northeast pipeline, energy companies proposed a series of smaller fracked gas pipelines, including two in New Hampshire: the Lebanon-Hanover pipeline and the Granite Bridge pipeline. Thanks to the sustained action of the groups Energy and Climate Upper Valley and Resist Granite Bridge, both pipeline projects were defeated.
- Maine: We worked with the citizen activists in South Portland, Maine, to reject a dangerous plan to make their community the tail end of a tar sands pipeline. Canadian tar sands is one of the most carbon-intensive and polluting forms of energy on the planet. A tar sands pipeline would have added the risk of spills all along the pipeline’s path as well as increased air pollution at the pipeline’s terminal in South Portland. The community group succeeded in passing a local law to stop the project.