Keep Tap Water Safe

Environmental Organizations Disrupt DRBC Meeting,

Demand A Resolution On Pipeline Oversight

Despite the wildly banging gavel, The Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum would not be silenced at the March 6 Delaware River Basin Commission public hearing – not until she had given full voice to the resolution proposed by numerous environmental groups in the basin. Only then did she yield the floor, and it was to the incredible harmony of the 70 or so activists in attendance singing This Land Is Your Land.

Try as DRBC might, even with a formal acknowledgement of  the March 1 letter signed by 67 organizations and a petition signed by thousands of citizens, the Commission can no longer fallback on its routine deferral of pipeline oversight. While the DRBC would continue to kick the can down the road, chainsaws are whirring, and trees are already being felled by the thousands as forests are fragmented for new pipeline routes. This is no longer acceptable to watershed stakeholders, nor was it palatable to the majority of people in that meeting room.

van Rossum delivered their message with succinct, breathtaking force:

“A failure to act is a decision not to act.”

Thank you, protestors. Thank you, Delaware Riverkeeper, for standing up for our right to a clean, safe watershed.

“Somebody has to do something to protect these waters,” Joe Zenes, Pike County PA resident. Posted by Delaware Riverkeeper Network, March 7, 2013

“The Delaware Riverkeeper Network and concerned citizens from four states vented their anger at the Delaware River Basin Commission when the agency refused to take action to regulate shale gas pipelines in the watershed. The protestors shutdown the meeting at one point.”   (more…)