Recent news headlines display a grim image of smoke and soot creeping through East Village, New York following the explosion of poorly installed natural gas piping, leaving a dozen injured. This news came as quite a shock to me, for a friend and I had been staying just one block to the west of the explosion site a mere two weeks before the incident occurred. And somewhat ironically that same week I took part in the Mountain Valley Pipeline Resistance Rally organized by students and community members of Blacksburg, Virginia. While issues of Manhattan utility maintenance are not to be conflated with the disruptive installation of an interstate pipeline project, both concerns ultimately stem from our continued reliance on a deeply problematic energy source that has no part in a healthy and safe energy economy. As stakeholders in a just energy future, University students should be wary of these concerns.
The natural gas debate is contentious for several reasons. On one hand, utility companies, energy investors, politicians and a majority of the American people support the expansion of natural gas infrastructure because it boosts domestic reliance while facilitating our transition away from dirtier energy sources. And yet on the other, Pew shows that a plurality of people oppose hydraulic fracking — a productive but severely problematic method of gas extraction. In other words, most people endorse natural gas but not the process of harnessing it. As demonstrated by the MVP protest and Manhattan incident, harms incurred from natural gas facilities run far deeper than fracking wells.
Our continued reinforcement of natural gas infrastructure not only signals accelerated gas production through fracking, as seen with Marcellus shale, but also threatens the health and stability of communities existing along its distribution grid. Take the San Bruno explosion for example, which left 38 homes destroyed and eight dead in 2010. And just this last month, the number of gas explosions is astounding. Seven homes were damaged in upper Arlington. Three people were injured in Detroit, one of two incidents occurring within the area just days apart. Two explosions left several injured New Jersey, and only recently two bodies were found in the wreckage of the East Village explosion, barely missing the anniversary of the Harlem explosion that left eight dead in March of 2014. Although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission allegedly “ensures the safe operation and reliability of proposed and operating [liquid] NG terminals,” reality dictates: natural gas kills. Given the Commission’s apparent lack of transparency and consultation with local communities on proposed pipeline projects, federal oversight of gas infrastructure seems lacking indeed.
Worries of contamination and deadly gas combustibility are unquestionable. But many opponents are equally concerned that energy regulators and utility providers are not doing enough to facilitate the market transition from gas to green energy. Unlike wind and solar, natural gas remains fixed to a highly centralized energy model comprised of an incredibly intrusive supply-side infrastructure. For instance, George Washington National Forest recently permitted fracking across 177,000 acres of the park, posing a potential threat to the 4 million who live within its watershed. Of equal concern are the proposed 550-mile Atlantic Coastal Pipeline and 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline projects, both exemplifying utility companies’ domineering power over local property owners and threats to surrounding ecosystems.
Younger generations in particular should be wary of these projects and the innumerable threats they impose on future community health and security. For this reason, roughly 100 Virginia students took part in the rally last Saturday. Among them were a dozen representatives of the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition, including five other University students and Virginia Tech sophomore Millie Smith who helped organize the event.
Also present were senate candidate Mike Hamlar and Andrew Whitley representing Laurie Buchwald, candidate for the House of Delegates. The political showing signified a growing public opposition given the apparent inclusion of an anti-gas agenda on the 2015 ballot. But unfortunately, as with many current environmental issues, pipeline politics have become increasingly polarized at the state and national levels. It is crucial for public leaders to realize that growing activism aims not to widen this divide, but rather illustrate that stifled beneath rational economic argument are the voices of real humans expressing genuine concern for their families and communities. Unless the Federal Commission strives to make its decision making process more democratic, its policy, regardless of intent, will perpetuate an injustice that victimizes a local majority to the benefit of an elite few. Only within a moral vacuum is it reasonable to capitalize on bountiful gas deposits at expense of human and nonhuman health.
Until we begin to question those conventional structures that leave bodies bloodied and crumpled beneath ruined homes, local environments ravaged and watersheds spoiled, we will not progress as a species whose industrial nature will forever demand some form of efficient energy supply. It is up to our generation to facilitate the delivery of a new energy model that reconciles economic productivity with greater values of social and environmental justice. As Virginia Commonwealth University student Michael James-Deramo eloquently states, “We the students of Virginia are here because we have a responsibility to take our future into our own hands, change our policies and our culture so that we may have the future that we were promised.” Rest assured that future does not begin with another pipedream.
Will Evans is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at w.evans@cavalierdaily.com.
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