On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 we traveled for three hours via bus from the Port Authority Bus Station on 8th Avenue to attend a protest in Albany. The weather was cold and miserable, but a group of protesters stood out in the cold, holding signs to protest the pending Constitutional Pipeline. We made our way as close as we could to the front in order to hear the speeches being given. What I heard appalled me. In a nutshell, the Seneca Lake Defenders are, among other things, just that, people defending Seneca Lake. They were just concerned citizens trying to fight corporations. I was soon drawn into their words, yelling with the best of them. But the statistics and overall picture is was slowing seeing disturbed me. The pending constitution pipeline, planning to transport fracked gas, was going to cut down a quarter of a million trees, and was only going to be about 108 feet from Seneca Lake. Not only would that have been extremely dangerous for the ecosystem,mint was very close to a water source for 100,000 people. On top of that, the group also spoke about LPGs, or liquid petroleum gases. These were going to be stored in underground caverns, where that could potentially and are likely to leak into and contaminate groundwater. But the fact that, in this day and age, with climate science and warnings and the deterioration of our planet, people were still trying to destroy places for the bucks they’d make, made me lose a little faith in adults. Afterwards, we went across the street into the New York State Vietnam Memorial. We held up two black balloon pipelines. They promptly had holes poked in them and deflated, which I took as symbolic. We spent the rest of our time looking at new inventions at a science fair of sorts. I had quietly thought that some of these things were disposable, and would promptly end up thrown away. We ended our trip without incident.
2016 LREI Socal Justice Project goes to the clean energy at the state capital in Albany, NY during the govenor’s State of the State speach to demand action on clean power.
