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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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