The
Forum:
We have
an imperative to take a stand
To the Editor on Dec. 2:
I was arrested yesterday for trespassing outside the gates
of Crestwood, the Texas-based company attempting to turn Seneca Lake
into the “gas storage hub of the Northeast” by storing LPG
in the salt caverns on Seneca Lake. I feel passionately about my patients
and Seneca Lake, and the preponderance of evidence is that the Crestwood
project is a public health risk of an unacceptable magnitude. I am not
willing to stand by any longer while the air quality deteriorates and
the watershed is threatened.
As a Physician Assistant, I provide medical care for
all kinds of folks with all kinds of ills. From simple problems to complicated,
from troublesome to devastating. In the past few years it has become
clear that the threat to the air and water by industrialization of this
area may cause an explosion in the severity and frequency of certain
health issues. Around New York State, many medical societies and medical
institutions have publicly declared their position against fracking
in this state based on health risks. We, as a medical community, have
an imperative as gatekeepers and protectors of health to publicly take
a stand against the LPG project, which carries similar and
unique risks.
Around Seneca Lake, we do not think twice about air quality
when we go out the door. This is not true in many areas across the country
where a mother’s decision to let her child with asthma play outdoors
depends on the ozone indicator that day. An elderly person with lung
disease may end up with more frequent hospitalizations if the air quality
deteriorates. Exercising outdoors -- generally a health recommendation
-- may WORSEN asthma, respiratory disease, and even risk of cardiac
events if the ozone level is high. Truck and rail traffic are directly
related to increased ozone levels. And there will be extraordinary truck
and rail traffic to transport the LPG. In medicine, we make decisions
all the time based on risk; sometimes we use toxic treatments when the
stakes are high. Otherwise, the treatment benefits must outweigh the
risks. In the case of Crestwood, the benefits do not outweigh the risks
by far and people must realize that this is going to an Issues Conference
next year BECAUSE of how much evidence there is that this is harmful
to our health and our economy.
In public health we have excellent well-established models
to predict impact on asthma and lung disease from air pollution. And
the Crestwood project cannot happen without a significant change in
the air quality of this and neighboring counties. It is not alarmist
nor hysterical to say that the health of our residents is in jeopardy
if this project goes forward. Studies are showing that the risk to fetal
health, especially preterm births, is increased in areas of high air
pollution.
Do we want to become one of those areas? Is Schuyler County considering
these costs? Can we predict the increased burden to Medicaid costs,
already the Goliath of all counties, as these insidious health problems
mount over the next years?
The burden on healthcare and emergency resources related
to accidents will be much more dramatic and potentially catastrophic.
We have a small hospital with devoted staff. What would it take financially
and in personnel to prepare for industrial accidents related
to this scale of chemicals and explosive products? Is that where we
want to spend our already strained resources?
Seneca Lake is a watershed for over 100,000 people. Where
will our health resources go if our residents don’t have clean
water to drink or clean air to breathe? These issues are in the news
around this country every day.
The recent propaganda that this anti-LPG movement is
not a local movement, that these are “professional protesters,”
must stop. It is simply false. I participated in dozens of meetings,
debates, rallies, and political hearings over the last three years.
I have read hundreds of pages of research and data and did my due diligence
on understanding exactly what leads to ozone production and air pollution.
I am always in the company of my neighbors, business owners
(over 200 local businesses against this project!), friends, ministers,
teachers, workers FROM my county. The paradox is that the environment
is simply not just a local issue; we are not in the shire, a protected
area, where the air and the water come up against a barrier that doesn’t
affect Seneca or Yates County, or the Ontario watershed.
Like Women’s Suffrage and the Civil Rights movement,
the fight to save the environment and slow global warming is not
a local issue. You bus people in if you need to. I am mystified that
some of our residents really think this is a local issue only. Did they
see the Senate vote on the Keystone XL pipeline? Do they see the enormous
controversy and debate that caused the Pro-Keystone senators to lose?
Do they really think that this movement to make Seneca Lake the “gas
storage hub of the Northeast” is not related? It makes us the
gas station for fracking. Watch the enormous pressures on water across
our country; this is why we are so agitated and willing to put our bodies
on the line to draw national attention to our movement. There are legal
and political actions and avenues. And there is civil disobedience.
Sacrifices are made, inconveniences abound, safety can
be compromised. People are protesting and practicing civil disobedience
because all other avenues have either been tried or are still in progress
and history tells us that that doesn’t mean a last resort is meaningless.
It wasn’t wrong in civil rights and it isn’t wrong in environmental
protection.
I thank our local law enforcement today for their respectful
arrest of myself and my neighbors yesterday.
Paula Fitzsimmons, P.A.
Hector, Schuyler County
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