A group of nuns in Lancaster County dedicated an outdoor chapel in a field on the proposed path of the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline on Sunday. The Adorers of the Blood of Christ have refused to turn over their land to Williams Partners, the Oklahoma-based pipeline giant that has proposed the nearly 200-mile natural gas transmission line that would cut through 10 counties in central Pennsylvania.
Photos of the event show the simple wooden altar with a few rows of benches facing it. Behind the altar is a Technicolor row of green corn beneath a blue, cloudless sky. Just get a glimpse of one of the photos and it’s easy to understand why the nuns want to protect this beautiful tableau.
Something you could easily miss in the photos is impossible to miss if you look at site using Google Map’s satellite view. A grassroots group called the Shalefield Organizing Committee put together a map that shows the proposed route of the pipeline. I added the red pointer to indicate where the chapel is located. Most of the photos from the chapel didn’t show how close the route is to a neigborhood, a couple of gas stations, restaurants, and other business. On either side of the route, indicated by the bright red line, is a lightly shaded area bounded by lighter red lines. The shaded area represents the impact zone should something go terribly wrong.
A week ago, only seven miles from the chapel, a UGI pipeline exploded killing a UGI employee, injuring two others, leveling one home, and forcing officials to condemn four others. The occupant of the house that was obliterated got out in time thanks to the odorant mercaptan added to natural gas to alert us to leaks.
Trouble is, mercaptan isn’t generally added until the gas hits a maze of pipelines called city gates that move the gas from a large transmission line through a series of progressively narrow pipes until it is moved into distribution lines, or gas mains, that deliver gas to customers.
The 2016 explosion that nearly killed 26-year old James Baker as he sat in his Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania home recuperating from surgery to repair a broken ankle came without warning. The Texas Eastern line that blew up was a transmission line, so no mercaptan was present. And unlike distribution lines that are about a foot in diameter, most transmission lines’ diameters range from 30” to 42”. To make matters worse, the idea of a transmission line explosion wasn’t even on James’ radar because he had no idea that he was living 500 feet from a pipeline. What he learned after the fact when it was reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is that his area is “saturated” in natural gas infrastructure — gas wells, injection wells, pipelines, compressor stations, and more, all sitting atop a 39 square-mile underground natural gas storage facility.
The sisters in Lancaster County, along with the grassroots group Lancaster Against Pipelines that constructed the chapel, have much more than the natural beauty of the location on their minds and in their hearts as they vow to keep fighting. Speakers at yesterday’s dedication talked about the need to care for our common home, quoting the phrase Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical on climate change. They talked about keeping communities safe and protecting forests, farm fields, streams, creeks, and the ecosystems unique to each.
But everything the Lancaster opponents are doing, as is the case everywhere communities are fighting pipelines, fracking, and other assaults on the environment, is a repudiation of corporate overreach and the governments that are complicit in it. Areas of the state may be saturated with natural gas infrastructure, yet the projects keep coming. Governor Tom Wolf’s Department of Environmental Protection has issued permits for new gas wells at the rate of one every hour and 15 minutes and has approved a new generation of natural gas power plants. More wells and more power plants mean more pipelines, more pollution, more greenhouse gas emissions, more health impacts, more tragedies, more environmental destruction and degradation, and prolonged addiction to fossil fuels.
One thing was clear yesterday after listening to the speakers and seeing the hundreds of people who came to show their support. The hubris of the fossil fuel industry and what is has revealed to the public about how the industry has partnered with government to keep us on an untenable, even deadly, path has only served to grow the movement that will ultimately prevail.