This e-mail “letter” was written by Nora Johnson to the PA Department of Environmental Protection encouraging them to deny the permit for the proposed Falcon Pipeline. It is a great example of the kind of letter we need EVERYBODY to write to the DEP as soon as possible. The weakest link in Shell’s regional petrochemical onslaught is this pipeline permit. Let your voice be heard loud and clear!
Learn all about how to write your own letter via our previous blog post: Falcon Pipeline Resistance Round 2: Call to Action!
Subject: Air permit exemptions requested by Shell Pipeline Comany, L.P.: Falcon Ethane Pipeline Project
To: RA-EPWW-SWRO@pa.gov
Cc: Dana Drake, DEP Wetlands Permit Engineer, dadrake@pa.gov
To the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection:
Please deny the permit application of Shell Pipeline Company for the Falcon Pipeline.
On June 1 of this year, PADEP sent Shell Pipeline Company LP three deficiency letters: one for each of the three Pennsylvania counties impacted by the Falcon Pipeline. In all, PADEP identified 101 shortcomings, or deficiencies, in Shell’s original permit application. When Shell responded later in June with three exemption requests, it referred to eleven sources of air contaminants. However, Shell proposes to include in the total Falcon Pipeline project eighteen valves and five metering stations, each of which will be a source of air contaminants such as volatile organic compounds, greenhouse gases, and inert gases in Allegheny, Beaver, and Washington counties.
These counties already suffer from poor air quality. We need the PADEP to stick to its own rules and deny this permit. Health issues associated with these pollutants are very serious and affect people across the region. We have too much asthma and other respiratory diseases, cancer, endocrine disruption, heart disease, and neonatal problems. This pollution, identified by Shell as of “minor significance”, will worsen all these and other health issues suffered by our population through many generations of poorly regulated industrial activity.
The argument that this burden of air pollution is worth taking on because we need the jobs associated with it is empty. No number of jobs would address the hardship, heartache, and economic disruption caused by the high levels of disease we already suffer, much less the extra burden projected by the pipeline. However, the pipeline itself promises very few permanent jobs. Shell tells us that the pipeline’s client, the petrochemical plant to be located in Potter Township, will create a mere 600 permanent jobs, but that plant will also create much, much more pollution.
We need to pursue other economic development strategies, of which there are many, which will bring prosperity to our region without the terrible burden of increased air pollution.
Please live up to the provisions of Article I, Section 27, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, that we “have a right to clean air, pure water and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.” Please remember that “Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come.” And that the Commonwealth is the trustee of these resources, and “shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Sincerely, Nora Johnson
(This letter was published in NoPetroPA with permission from the author)
#NoPetroPA 
Hello this is terrifying. So much is at risk here. These plants are fatal. Invest this money in renewable energy, or at least, in people who have the resources to create efficient renewables that will save money and lives.
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