Greenpeace

I’ve just returned from a month at Greenpeace’s Washington, D.C. headquarters. It was an inspiration work alongside several key staff on our grassroots team, who, day after day, organize amazing volunteers and activists across the country to take action for the planet.

Today is my first day back in the San Francisco Greenpeace office. The weather is foggy one minute, sunny the next. Typical San Francisco summer - not remarkable. What IS truly remarkable though, is the steadfast conviction of Greenpeace activists.

I just hopped off the phone with Dillon (on right), a Michigan State University student leader who is right now heading out on campus for four hours to collect petitions to shut down MSU’s dirty and dangerous campus coal plant.

I just spoke with Becca, global warming fellow, about two student activists, Anna and Tori. This month, they collected over 100 hand-written letters to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, calling on him to stop BP’s next oil spill disaster. And, I just received an email from a reporter who is doing a feature story on Tracy, a Greenpeace activist and wants to interview me and my teammate Anna about Tracy’s hard work.

These are just three amazing things that happened within my first hour back at work today. Some may say, “all in a day’s work.” To me, it’s much more than that. It's fighting to change business as usual; it's fighting for our survival. To me, it’s empowering and energizing to work with activists across the country, and right now, I am feeling the energy of this movement.

We ARE going to stop offshore oil drilling,

WE ARE going to bring an end to dirty coal,

WE ARE going to create a renewable energy future where people don’t suffer the environmental, social justice, and health effects of dirty energy.

By the way, WE ARE going to stop climate change too!

It’s my first day back in the San Francisco office, and I am beaming with joy and hope. Day by day, we are winning this historic fight.

It’s no surprise that people all around the country are still upset about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. Personally, I go back and forth between sadness and anger and it’s been really hard to sit back and watch one of America’s worst environmental catastrophes and feel pretty helpless about what I can do for the people in the Gulf.

Even more frustrating are the recent reports that things are just dandy now that the oil leak has been capped. But thanks to the Arctic Sunrise, we are starting to see that the reality is much grimmer. Almost 80 percent of the oil is still there and now its threatening the fragile ecosystem and could bring the Gulf’s sperm whale population to extinction. And on top of all of this, BP is starting to drill in the much most turbulent Arctic Ocean on artificial islands. Are you kidding me!

Enough is enough with dangerous off shore drilling projects and Big Oil companies destroying our environment and heating up our climate. That's why I'm taking action with a local coalition of environmental and social organizations called the Mobilization for Climate Justice. Together we’ll be training hundreds of Bay Area folks in the philosophy and tangible skills of Non-violent Direct Action this Sunday, August 29th. And on Monday, we’re taking to the streets to send a message to Big Oil that we will not stand for their reckless drilling practices or the human toll that comes with them. You can find out more information here:
Aug 29 & 30th: Resist BP & Big Oil! Training & Action

Monday’s action is particularly significant for me because I have come to the point in my life where I am willing to risk arrest for my beliefs. I believe the time has come for action beyond words to really show my commitment to stopping the status quo of our unsustainable, unhealthy and unfair fossil fuel-based economy. I won’t be alone on Monday either — I’ll be standing side by side with fellow activists, some whom have been risking arrest for decades and some of who are new to it just like me. As I start to mentally prepare for Monday, I remember the rich history of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience that has significantly changed both politics and public opinion on some of the most pressing issues of our times. I’m looking forward to joining in this tradition and if you’re in the Bay Area, I hope you can join us as well. 

I’m angry about the oil spill in the Gulf, but what makes me angrier is that BP is planning its next experiment with our oceans right now. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you… Liberty Island. An insane plan that involves a man-made gravel island, drilling two miles down, and seven miles across. Check out this image in the New York Times. The Liberty oil drilling project in Alaska’s Arctic Ocean is a project BP describes as one of “its biggest challenges to date.” Extended reach drilling technology is unproven and more prone to the types of gas kicks that  the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. So, what do you say, Greenpeace supporters? Let’s stop this insanity! I’m writing a letter, and getting friends to write letters to Ken Salazar, Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, who has the power to say no to BP. Join me and Greenpeace activists to stop BP.

 

 

Hello, I don’t think we’ve met yet.  I’m Elise Nabors and I work on the Greenpeace Grassroots team with Frontliners across the country.  What’s a Frontliner?…we’re the folks you see on busy street corners in cities across the US takin’ names, signin’ up members and helpin’ Greenpeace win campaigns.  We are hard core activists on a mission, rabble-rousers for a green and peaceful future.

Right now, we’ve got our focus on Burger King and their ties to rainforest destruction. I don’t have to tell you about all the nasty things Sinar Mas is doing to rainforest in Indonesia and how Burger King and other fast food companies are tied to that… that’s why we have people like Senior Forest Campaigner Rolf Skar on staff.  Check out his most recent post about it called, Sinar Mas Shown Destroying Tiger Habitat, Greenwashing Practices.

But what I can tell you is activists do not like what’s going on, and they’re doing something about it!  Check out this CNN iReport from last week- highlighting a protest in Denver, Colorado, here.

It even looks like there’s some interweb activism going on for this campaign.  Below is a screenshot from Burger King’s Facebook page earlier today:

 

 

 

Looks like someone is disappointed in the king….

Do you want to get involved?  Change your Facebook profile photo, visit BK’s fan page and tell em you want it your way….without rainforest destruction.  Here's BK's FB Page link.

Here's a photo to use as your FB profile pic...

 

 

Stay tuned, guaranteed there’s more to come. 

Would you believe me if I told you that BP's hard at work masterminding it's next big disaster?

Get this – they’ve built an artificial island off the Alaskan coast called Liberty Island.  Connected to land by a bridge so they can skirt the ban on offshore oil drilling.  Then, they want to drill two miles below the sea and then six to eight miles sideways to get at oil that lies below federal waters. It's terribly risky, it's never been done before, and BP’s own estimates say there’s an 8% chance of failure (but we know they like to underestimate things…).  It's nuts.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar can stop the insanity, and now is our moment to give him the power he needs to stop this disaster before it starts.

Cue the mighty Greenpeace Lead Activists - our nationwide team of rockstar volunteers taking action in their hometowns to save the planet. All across the country, Greenpeace activists are hard at work convincing Secretary Salazar to see the light and STOP BP’s next disaster. 

Here are some of my favorite stories of what these awesome activists are up to:

• Mike M. in Brick, New Jersey has a friend who owns a Dunkin Donuts.  Mike’s been hanging out, eating donuts, and chatting with customers over the past few weeks.  He’s collected over 40 handwritten letters so far.
• Kathy F. in Redwoods, California, has already gotten 42 handwritten letters to Secretary Salazar in a little over a week! She had a little get-together with 8 like-minded friends and asked them to each get 5-10 letters of their own. And her team is not stopping until they get 100 letters!
• Annie V. in Charlotte, North Carolina, blasted an email to all her friends, colleagues, and local environmentalists right after she heard about the Liberty Island project.  She pulled together an "emergency meeting" to get handwritten letters.
• Marissa A. and Ryan S. are hosting a movie screening at a local independent theater in Arlington, Virginia this weekend.  They’re giving away free tickets to see the movie Fuel and are having each attendee write a letter to Secretary Salazar.  Popcorn, movies, and civic engagement - fabulous!
• Gena C. in Salt Lake City, Utah has a bunch of friends who like themed parties.  Apparantly they've had "public speaking" parties... a little geeky, but to each their own :) So she’s organizing a letter writing party.

We've got a tremendous team of activists nationwide, but it's gonna take mega grassroots power to make our voices hear louder than the oil industry.

We need you, so join the Greenpeace Activist Network!  http://members.greenpeace.org/survey/start/264/?session_action=reset

August is a time when students head to the beach, visit with family and friends, and then get ready for the ever-looming start to the fall semester. I remember spending my August's thinking about what I did or didn't do over the summer; what fun was had and what I wanted to accomplish but was lazy or just didn't have time. Then there's people like Mike.

Mike Alilionis, is a Greenpeace Student Network activist from Hofstra University who did everything he wanted to this summer and more. Props to you, Mike. You are an inspiration to students and Greenpeace staff across the country.

Read Mike's blog about Another Summer to Remember.

 

*(This blog is written by Trudy Egan, a nursing student in Los Angeles.  Trudy has generously contributed her time to our local chemical security efforts in L.A. in order to further educate the public on the public health risks of a chemical disaster.  Trudy's video is part of a three-part series, including interviews with retired L.A. County Fire Captain Ed Schlegel, and community members.)

 Imagine this: a storage tank at a bleach factory ruptures, releasing chlorine gas. The greenish-yellow cloud hugs the ground as it flows through the plant and the surrounding community. Evacuations are ordered. People smell the chlorine. Their eyes burn, windpipes blister and swell. Blood capillaries leak fluid into victim’s lungs, causing them to gasp for air. Highly trained emergency responders wearing hazmat suits and self-contained respiratory apparatus rush in to take the survivors out of the gas. Domestic and agricultural animals must be left behind while the people are rescued. Now change a single factor. When the tank bursts, sodium chloride pours out. That’s right, salt. Plant managers are mildly annoyed. No emergency personnel are notified. No one is evacuated. Only earthworms and slugs scream in mortal terror as maintenance crews equipped with shovels clean up the mess.

The difference between these two scenarios is a package of legislation introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), the Secure Chemical Facilities Act (S.3599) and the Secure Water Facilities Act (S. 3598). This legislation would mandate safer manufacturing processes to protect our communities from accidental – or deliberate – release of toxic chlorine, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and anhydrous ammonia gasses. The recent gulf oil spill reminds us that bad decisions are part of human nature. Accidents happen. NOAA says that more than 1,000 chemical spills occur in the US every year. There are 16 manufacturing and processing plants in the Los Angeles area that each put at least 100,000 people at risk from the escape of toxic gasses. To put that in perspective, according to the USC Keck School of Medicine most hospital emergency departments in Los Angeles County treat fewer than 100,000 patients in a year. Rushing to the hospital will not help if a whole community is poisoned. Actually, once the gas is released, there is darn little that can be done to help. People will die. Those who survive may have lasting damage to their vision and lungs. Everyone within 25 miles downwind of a serious spill is in danger.

As a nursing student, I care deeply about preventing illness and keeping our water supplies safe. I depend on chlorine bleach to kill germs on things like my stethoscope or your hospital bed. Chlorine in municipal water supplies keeps millions of Americans safe from diseases including cholera and typhoid fever. Anhydrous ammonia is a fertilizer that helps us grow tasty nutritious vegetables. Hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide are used in numerous products from non-stick cookware to wine.  Sen. Lautenberg’s bills do not forbid use of industrial chemicals. They promote the use of safe, cost effective, currently available manufacturing technologies in order to avert disaster and will beef up security at chemical plants and municipal water treatment plants. I want Senator Boxer’s Committee on Environment and Public Works to act promptly to strengthen and move these bills to the Senate floor. I urge you to contact your senator and ask them to support the legislation. The Secure Chemical Facilities Act and the Secure Water Facilities Act are preventive measures, like vaccines, that will keep our communities healthy.

-By Trudy Egan, Los Angeles area nursing student

Clean coal is a myth. It’s as simple as that. So when the Obama administration released a statement yesterday talking about how the Department of Energy and private investors are putting a total of almost $4 billion a year in carbon capture and storage technology, I thought it was a joke.

Nope. It wasn’t. Here’s what they actually said:

“Rapid development and deployment of clean coal technologies, particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS), will help position the United States as a leader in the global clean energy race.”

Apparently, the plan is for the United States to take the lead in the global clean energy race by investing billions in the dirtiest form of energy that exists. This doesn’t sound like a winning plan for the economy or the planet to me.

It also made me wonder: how much clean energy could you get right now by investing that same amount of money for the next five years in existing clean energy technology? I asked some of my colleagues who know these things and here’s what they had to say:

What a waste of money!

For  $20 billion (5 years X $ 4 billion) -- you can get:

15 GW of wind turbines (= 1.5 as much wind power as was newly installed in 2009), generating approximately: 32 TWh/per year of electricity (a bit less than 1% of the USA annual demand or 10% of the Australian demand) while saving approximately 19 million tons of CO2 per year (the equivalent of removing nearly 3.5 million cars from America’s roads).

Which would you rather have? But that’s not what this is about. This is really just another government investment in the fossil fuel industry at the expense of taxpayers and the climate. Our friends over at Oil Change International have helped paint the picture how policy like this becomes reality. Check it out.

Just a few days ago, I was standing strong and proud on Capitol Hill with fifty top Greenpeace activists from across the US and Canada. We were gathered on the Capitol lawn to protest dirty energy, get rid of campaign contributions from dirty energy to Congress, and Congress to stop subsidizing big oil and coal. Activists in the front had their hands covered in fake oil (chocolate syrup), symbolically showing that dirty oil money is influencing Congress. Several times, the group chanted "Congress, you've got oil on your hands."

It was a hot, humid day - and as I wiped sweat from my brow, I thought about the destruction from the Gulf oil spill, the millions of lives forever changed and our desperate need for a clean energy revolution. After the photo, activists headed to their congressmembers' offices to personally deliver over 70 hand-written letters to senators and representatives, demanding a permanent ban on future offshore oil drilling.

The protest and letter-deliveries were an amazing experience, but just one out of five days of trainings, workshops, teambuilding, and action we call the Greenpeace Activist Summit. Each summer, Greenpeace brings together activists from across the country for the Activist Summit. This year was extra special because we had participants of all different ages and backgrounds - from teenagers in high school to retired folks fighting for our planet. From Tatiana, who seized an opportunity in Starbucks to call out Sarah Palin on broken energy policies, to Jennifer, an activist fighting mountain-top removal in Appalachia, and Mike, who has taken to the streets to save our oceans from commercial whaling and offshore oil drilling – we had some amazing folks at the Activist Summit.

On the first night, we heard from Greenpeace’s Executive Director, Phil Radford. Phil spoke with the group about the need for an Energy Revolution, and thanked the activists for their amazing work. He said the only reason why Greenpeace exists, and why we win victories for the planet is because people dedicate their time and energy to fight for the planet. We couldn’t stop illegal deforestation in the Amazon, save the whales by making commercial whaling illegal, or stop nuclear testing across the globe without activists like Tatiana, Jennifer, and Mike.

The next few days are somewhat of a blur. We trained folks in essential organizing skills like working with the media, running effective meetings, principles of non-violent civil disobedience, and campaign planning. We watched a film about dirty and dangerous coal and another about Greenpeace’s ship the Rainbow Warrior. We listened to music and stories about the Gulf from the band Sassafras. We shared stories about what it means to be an environmental activist, and how to relate with family members who are more concerned about reality TV than climate change. We developed connections and built grassroots power. And we’re taking this energy and momentum back to campuses and communities across the country.

As I stood alongside activists on Capitol Hill, I thought about everything we did at this year’s Activist Summit and about how honored I am to know and work with amazing activists like Tatiana, Jennifer, and Mike who are fighting for our planet. The sky is the limit for what we can achieve in the next few months as we fight dirty energy. Phil Radford said it best on the first night of the Activist Summit: “The world will thank you for being here.” I couldn't agree more.

 

As a Southern California native, I was surprised to learn that millions of people in my home area – as well as across the country – are at risk of a chemical plant leak or disaster. It comes as a surprise to most others I speak to as well.  Los Angeles has over sixteen high-risk chemical plants, with out-dated and minimal safety regulations, using highly toxic chemicals. In the wake of the devastating BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it makes the potential of a devastating chemical disaster all the more real.

Working at the Greenpeace Los Angeles office as Frontline staff and video producer volunteer, I met Field Organizer Jenny Binstock, who is currently working directly on this issue. LA is a major front on our chemical security campaign, particularly because our Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) chairs the Environment and Public Works committee, which is key in drafting legislation to make our chemical plants safer. 

As rumors mounted that Senator Frank Lautenberg’s (D-NJ) long-awaited comprehensive chemical security legislation was about to hit the US Senate floor, we wanted to make sure Senator Boxer supported the legislation. Our local volunteer group decided that we could communicate our message with a short series of videos that showed the voices of concerned citizens. The goal was to send a powerful message to Senator Boxer: now is the time to pass comprehensive chemical security legislation to protect the millions of Americans at risk from a chemical plant disaster.

Greenpeace volunteer Jasmin Vargas interviews a resident of Torrance, CA at the local farmer's market about the risk of a toxic chemical release in the community.  Photo credit: Tae Lim.

Our first video featured retired Los Angeles County Fire Captain Ed Schlegel speaking on the need to pass comprehensive legislation. The video was a huge success, viewed by thousands of people, and was featured in a blog by Greenpeace USA’s Executive Director Phil Radford on the Huffington Post. For our next project, we decided to take the camera to the streets and share just a few of the millions of voices of Angelenos who live at risk from a chemical plant disaster in our city.

We visited a few different farmer’s markets in Torrance and Downey and we pulled people aside to invite them to answer a few questions on camera about our campaign. Many were happy to oblige.

The folks we talked to came from all walks of life, yet their responses were surprisingly similar. They were first shocked by the proximity of chemical plants to their home communities, and upset to discover the lack of safety regulations currently in place. They felt worried for themselves and their families. They “definitely” wanted their Senator to take action on this issue, and their message to Senator Boxer was clear: take action now, pass comprehensive chemical security legislation, and protect our communities.

It was interesting chatting with these local residents once the camera was down.
They said, “Thanks for getting this story out there – not enough people know about this issue.”

 

 

Hopefully these videos shine some light on a little-known risk that so many Americans face.  I hope these videos inspire people to urge their Senators to take action and pass Sen. Lautenberg’s Secure Water Facilities Act and Secure Chemical Facility Act.  Here in CA, it is imperative that we urge Senator Barbara Boxer to pass legislation out of her committee when Congress returns from August recess that would provide secure protections for water treatment facilities.  Urge your own Senator to take action TODAY!

 

I first heard about the danger of chlorine gas when I was growing up in South Carolina. There was a train wreck in a small rural town called Graniteville. As if the tragedy of the wreck alone wasn't enough, one of the cars in the train was carrying deadly chlorine gas. The gas inevitably leaked out making a toxic cloud that killed at least nine people and sent over 550 people to the hospital.

Killed a person from inhaling a gas? I couldn’t imagine what a death like that would feel like. I found out that chlorine gas reacts with the water in your eyes, mouth, throat, and lungs and forms a hydrochloric acid that literally dissolves your tissue from the inside out. Images of gas masks and the trenches of World War I come to mind.

But this wasn’t some trench in Germany during the 1910s.  

Today, many manufacturing plants, wastewater treatment plants, and other facilities in our communities use deadly toxins like chlorine gas. When I moved to Columbus, Ohio last month I found out that there are nearly 300 facilities that use deadly chemicals in the buckeye state, alone. Across the country, over 100 million people are put at risk due to a chemical plant in their community. What would happen if there was a spill or accident at one of these plants? What if some mal-intentioned person actually attacked one of these facilities?

I had to find out what was going on in my city of Columbus, so I asked the manager of our local wastewater treatment plant, Gary Hickman to come speak at a meeting of concerned citizens. His news was indeed encouraging!  The wastewater treatment plant where Gary works, Jackson Pike, didn’t even use dangerous chemicals like chlorine gas!

Gary told us that they had stopped using the deadly chemical chlorine in the mid-1990s when they went through an upgrade at the plant. He said it was too much of a danger for his workers and for the people who lived near the plant. Good thing, too, because by switching to safer chemicals to disinfect, Gary eliminated a risk to 57,000 people!

I couldn’t believe it. If it were possible to eliminate these risks, why hadn’t all plants? One of the plants I lived near made itself safer, but what about the others?

It is irresponsible for these facilities not to eliminate such an unnecessary risk, especially when so many plants have proven that making the switch to safer chemicals is feasible and in the best interest of our communities.  That’s why so many people in Ohio are banding together to tell Senator Brown not to listen to chemical industry lobbyists and to listen to the people of Ohio. We have already made hundreds of calls to his office and we will be meeting with his staff in a few weeks.

Help us by taking action now to tell Senator Brown to make your community safe from a chemical disaster.

Let’s eliminate this UNNECESSARY risk!

If you would like more information about the real danger of using chlorine gas or want to get involved in helping others understand these dangers, check out Greenpeace's toxics page.

As a New York resident  I felt complelled to cross-post this blog from our friends at The Other 98%. However, destructive gas drilling takes place all over the country. It's another reason that we all need to keep working our butts off to kick start the renewable energy revolution.

Seems like everyone is singing the praises of Natural Gas, our newest greenest most homegrown and secure source of American Energy. NOT!  “Clean Natural” Gas is neither. Gas extraction, made possible by hydraulic fracturing (or fracking for short) has to sit right beside Deep Sea Drilling, Mountain Top Removal, and Dirty Tar Sands Oil in the pantheon of insane ways to get our carbon fix.

 

 

Did you know that Halliburton (yes that Halliburton) pantented fracking: a process that mixes millions of gallons of precious fresh water with a proprietary cocktail of toxics, injects it through our drinking water table, and into the ground at a pressure that will fracture rock? Did you know that when Dick Cheney (yes that Dick) was the VP he fracked the EPA to make sure that this insanity would be exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act?

Stand Up, New York!

Fracking has brought the gas rush to New York. Some of the biggest and dirtiest names in Big Oil are coming to frack you. And they will not be gentle with New York’s world class water features.

You can expect the same dirty drilling that has poisoned the water in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Ohio. Who will be at risk? Everyone downstream. Including the drinking water of tens of million in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

If you love NY and NY State as we do (or just love someone who does) then please watch our video, go to http://CleanWaterNotDirtyDrilling.org, and DO SOMETHING!!

Volunteers here in NYC have been working very hard on our Toxics campaign; on Monday, they had a great opportunity to see their efforts get noticed!

Within the next few weeks, the Senate will be voting on an important piece of legislation to keep us safe from dangerous chemicals used at water facilities around the country. It will require the most dangerous ones to switch to safer technologies to avoid the harmful consequences of an accident or even terrorist attack.  Senator Gillibrand of the EPW committee is co-sponsoring The Secure Water Facilities Act that Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced into the Senate. We have been working to ensure that NY Sen. Schumer also supports this legislation.  And we wanted to thank Senator Gillibrand for her good work. So, on Monday we paid visits to the offices of both of these senators.

For the past two weeks, we have been collecting petitions, urging the senators to support this bill.  And our volunteers have been nothing short of amazing—Dylan Mayer collected 100 petitions on Long Island with the help of his friends!  Volunteers Ranjit Singh, Julia Knorr and Ronny Davillo have been working steadfastly to collect petitions and inform people on this important issue. In the end, we had over 500 petitions to deliver to Senator Schumer, with a letter urging him to protect New Yorkers from chemical facilities. As Ronny explained to Staff Assistant Sydney Renwick, we see these bills as crucial to taking steps away from toxic chemicals and toward safer communities.  When Ronny told Renwick that there are 183 high-risk chemical facilities in NY state alone, Sydney responded by saying that “that was a lot.” As a matter of fact, one of the highest risk facilities is located in South Kearny, NJ, called the Kuehne Chemical Company, which could affect 12 million Americans in the event of an accident or attack.  With family in Brooklyn, living in Queens, and working in Manhattan, Ronny clearly has a real stake in this issue, and he communicated the urgency of this law to Senator Schumer’s staff. 

In addition, we gave a thank-you note and a NO MORE TOXICS t-shirt to a member of Senator Gillibrand’s staff, Sam Cooper, Director of Economic Development and Transportation, to pass on as a thank you message. Bunker Seyfert, who has been volunteering with Greenpeace, got pictures of us speaking with these staff members of the senators, and even a video of Ronny speaking with Senator Schumer’s staff.  Check out some pictures below!

    It was definitely empowering to speak to the staff of the senators’ offices, and know our voices will be heard!   A big thanks to our awesome volunteers! 

This past Friday I witnessed activists “die” on the iconic steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to raise awareness about the Secure Water Facilities Act that Senator Specter (D-PA) needs to support in the Environmental and Public Works Committee.  This act will make water processing plants across the country assess the safety of the deadly chemicals they are currently using and switch to safer processes when it’s feasible for them.  

As the activists gathered on the steps made famous by the Rocky films, chlorine gas, a chemical that is unnecessarily used in water treatment plants, stealthily attacked each one. As the activists fell to the steps and died a banner reading “Chemical Disasters: 1 in 3 Americans are at risk” was deployed above the devastation.

Jack Kinnarney, a member of the Greenpeace Toxics Unit, was quickly dispatched to inspect the scene.  Mr. Kinnarney warned of the danger that so many Americans are in. Even today the fact remains that 1 in every 3 Americans are at risk to a chemical disaster thanks to the dangerous chemicals being used in facilities across the country, including hundreds of thousands of people right here in Pennsylvania.  He also stated that Philadelphia has already converted all of its 6 water treatment plants away from chlorine gas in order to protect workers and citizens alike.

 “Senator Specter needs to take a cue from Philly and support the Secure Water Facilities Act in order to protect the rest of Pennsylvania and the United States from a disaster like this," Kinnarney said, pointing to the death scene on the steps above him.

Watching these activists take a stand for chemical security made me think not only of the risk that so many people are in, but of all the support that has been building behind this legislation.  There have been editorials and letters to the editor  published.  Hundreds of phone calls have been made to Senator Specter and over 1,000 petitions were delivered directly to his office.   

Now it’s Specter’s turn to step up and have water facilities across the country protect the communities that they provide clean water for.  There is no reason for the same facilities that give us the gift of clean water to simultaneously put us at risk for a deadly chemical disaster.

 

UPDATE!

here is the video from the day, shot and edited by Bobby, a greenpeace volunteer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKyei4FNtaY