Letters to the Editor

WINTHROP MOTHERS OUT FRONT WILL PRESENT A FORUM

Dear Editor:

Winthrop Mothers Out Front will present a Gas Pipeline Forum on Monday, April 3, 2017 from 6-7:30 pm with refreshments at 6 pm and presentation beginning at 6:30 pm. The forum will take place at Winthrop Community Access TV studio (WCAT) 165 Winthrop St., Winthrop, MA  02152. The event is free and open to the public but the studio audience is limited to 30 so reservations are required.  Call Suzanne Hitchcock-Bryan at 978-973-5309 or email  [email protected].  The event will be taped by WCAT and will be available via WCAT website and on YouTube.

The panelists include:

Alice Arena, Founder and lead coordinator of the Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station (FRRACS). She is Chair of the Weymouth Democratic Town Committee, and Chair of the South Shore Caucus. A lifelong environmentalist with a financial background, she has a BS in business from Boston University.

Margaret Bellafiore, a founding member of the Fore River Residents Against Compressor Station (FRRACS). She has lived in North Weymouth for over 40 years with the bay at the bottom of her street. As an artist, she paints and photographs the beauty of her neighborhood and wants to keep it that way without the toxicity of a fracked methane gas compressor nearby. She formed the Intervenor Group to Protect the Environment with the Massachusetts Department of the Environment to oppose the ongoing wetlands permit request of Spectra Energy/Algonquin. A grandmother of four, she teaches an Art As Activism course at Bridgewater State University.

Rev. Mariama  White-Hammond  serves on the ministerial staff at Bethel AME Church in Boston and is a Masters of Divinity Candidate at Boston University School of Theology. She serves as Ecological Justice Minister at Bethel AME Church and is a member of the leadership team of Mass Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. She served on the clergy delegation to Standing Rock. She has also been very involved in the West Roxbury pipeline struggle.

Nancy Wilson, a resident of the incineration zone of the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline. She is a mother, grandmother, small business owner, and internet business consultant.  She actively resists this project & others like it through work in Stop the West Roxbury Lateral, Resist the Pipeline, and the People’s Hearing, a live event and online collection of testimony by groups and individuals fighting the unfairness of the FERC process and the forces of profits over people, sponsored by the Delaware Riverkeeper.

Winthrop Mothers Out Front

 

URGES READERS TO WRITE TO BAKER

To the Editor:

I am writing to encourage our community to contact Gov. Baker and ask that he put an end to the Access North East pipeline now.  In the report released by Synapse on February 6, 2017, “New England’s Shrinking Need for Natural Gas”, it is quite clear that we have no need for the proposed Access Northeast Pipeline (ANE) since any savings created by this pipeline are likely to be outweighed by its costs.  It is now estimated at $6.6 billion, according to expert witness testimony for Eversource, one of the main proponents of the project.  This is more than double the original estimate of $3.2 billion.  Proponents even had the audacity to put forth a novel idea that electric ratepayers should pay for these new gas pipelines (our Supreme Judicial court rejected the proposal).  Synapse Energy Economics, Inc. is an independent research-consulting firm; follow the article at http://www.synapse-energy.com/about-us/blog/access-northeast-pipedream.

Synapse’s analysis, thoroughly modeled with energy use, prices and emissions in a base scenario with no pipeline compared to a scenario in which the ANE pipeline is constructed, indicate that without a pipeline, existing laws and regulations require New England’s use of natural gas for electric generation to decrease 27% by 2023, relative to 2015 levels.  These regulations include: renewable portfolio standards, energy efficiency resource standards, long-term requirements for additional hydropower and wind power and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caps.  Finally, the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) we must comply with across our six-state region requires us to cut CO2 emissions 40% by 2030 over 1990 levels.

We ask that we all call Governor Baker at 617-725-4005 and tell him he must put an end to the ANE pipeline now.

Sylvia Whiting

 

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