Skip to main content

To: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Delaware Governor John Carney, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, Army Corps of Engineers

Stop the fracked gas export terminal in the Delaware River

Please sign the petition here to the Army Corps of Engineers and the governors of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware to stop the fracked gas export terminal in the Delaware River at their next meeting on Thursday, September 10th.

Why is this important?

The Delaware River Basin Commission was established in 1961 by the Governors of your states and President Kennedy to protect this vital river basin that provides drinking water for over 15 million people. Yet right now the DRBC is failing to live up to its mandate with New Fortress Energy’s Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export terminal project that will set a dangerous national precedent for the transportation of extremely volatile fracked gas by trucks and rail tank cars to export the gas overseas.
The company is using the Delaware River as it’s testing grounds for an expedited plan to get around federal safety regulations instead planning to send hundreds of trucks and rail tank cars per day across the river watershed for export overseas from the site of an old DuPont munitions plant in Gibbstown, NJ.

Trump signed an Executive Order last year to fastrack LNG by rail and his administration issued a special permit for this project.

The DRBC wrongfully approved this project without looking at all the facts or providing the public with adequate input to express concerns and expert testimony over a year ago. This project has been cloaked in secrecy. Recently in July, the DRBC’s Hearing Officer ruled that they had done nothing wrong in handling this permit application or approval after formally hearing the case from a regional organization - Delaware Riverkeeper Network. The DRBC Hearing Officer ignored the potential impacts that this project can have on the water quality of the river including how the proposed site for the export terminal has PCBs and how these and other pollutants at the site could be disturbed by dredging the river.

Furthermore, concerns about disturbance of pollution from the old DuPont munitions plant, including contamination with toxic and carcinogenic nitrobenzene, and others such as aniline, and mercury, have not been adequately addressed. The Hearing Officer also refused to accurately consider impacts on the ecosystem of the river including the federally endangered Atlantic sturgeon, rare freshwater mussels and their habitats at this location.

Lastly, the DRBC refuses to look at the impact the over 1600 truck trips and up to two 100-car trainloads of LNG per day could have to the river basin as well as public safety. If there is a release of LNG in an accident, the fire burns so hot it can’t be extinguished, the vapor cloud can explode and cause catastrophic damage for miles, and people nearby can die. In fact, 22 rail tank cars have the equivalent force of the Hiroshima bomb.

Thousands of people are speaking out. A large group of doctors and health experts and scientists have written about the dangers of the facility to public health. Let’s heed their warning.

We ask you to reject the Hearing Officer’s findings, rescind the existing permit and stop this project!

Category

Updates

2020-09-09 16:58:08 -0400

50,000 signatures reached

2020-09-08 12:49:15 -0400

20,000 signatures reached

2020-09-08 11:59:29 -0400

10,000 signatures reached

2020-09-08 11:47:27 -0400

5,000 signatures reached

2020-09-07 16:37:33 -0400

1,000 signatures reached

2020-09-07 14:45:23 -0400

500 signatures reached

2020-09-07 12:05:35 -0400

100 signatures reached

2020-09-07 11:58:01 -0400

50 signatures reached

2020-09-07 11:55:56 -0400

25 signatures reached

2020-09-07 11:53:43 -0400

10 signatures reached