Anti-Drilling Protestors in PA Break the Law (Again), This Time Disrupting a Meeting

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The Marcellus Shale Environmental Summit was held this week at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh. Inside were some 120 people listening to speakers talk on the topic of using technology to treat drilling wastewater so that the wastewater doesn’t end up in Pennsylvania’s waterways. Most people would agree that’s a good thing.

Outside the hotel was a small group of 30 anti-drilling protestors. And as we saw a few weeks ago in Harrisburg (Anti-Drilling Protestors Get Nasty at Shale Coalition Building in Harrisburg, PA), these protestors were not content to peaceably and respectfully march and make their statement. They decided they were above the law:

Three of the protesters interrupted the Marcellus Shale Environmental Summit at the Renaissance Hotel in an attempt to present a "bill of indictment," claiming the growing natural gas exploration and production industry in Pennsylvania is hurting the environment with its drilling operations.

They were booed by some of the 120 people in the audience and escorted out of the meeting room by security officers who refused to permit them to read their document.*

*Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Mar 30, 2011) – Demonstrators interrupt drilling industry meeting

7 Comments

  1. I really, really really want to be able to remain in Pennsylvania and not have to worry about finding clean water, clean, locally grown food and most of all a sustainable economy that doesn’t suffer like Northern Japan (and soon Tokyo) will be sufferring for years to come — maybe forever.

    I want to invest in commercial properties and farmland. I want to invest in local businesses as a silent partner.
    But in spite of a glimmer here and there — i.e. new water treatment applications — I know that the residue from bringing “hell” up from 5,000 feet below the earth’s durface, will be a pernicious problem for the rest of my life. I’m 60 years old. So by the time I get sick from the environmental effects of hydrofracturing, I’ll be leaving the planet.
    But all of the investments that I would be leaving to my business partners would probably become worthless in 10 or 20 years. The environment may be so badly contaminated that the economy will collapse.

    And now my interests in Nevada are in jeopardy due to radioactive winds blowing in the jetstream from Japan.

    So I’m ready to abandon trying to find any place that’s safe from hydrofracturing effects.

    Even properties I’ve found in Park City Utah are at risk from local hydrofracturing. Beautiful, breath taking properties — and people are trying to unload them because of the environmental impact.
    It’s frustrating.

    So I hope the “pain-in-the-ass”, obnoxious protesters wake people up to the reality of hydrofracturing. I want to believe that we can find the ways to extract this gas more safely.

    I really, really really do.

  2. This is such a deviously constructed, disingenuous plea. All the decades of previously experienced oil, gas, and coal development in PA and WV, and the writer wants to argue that only now, toward the end of his or her life, will the impact be too much for a farmer. Spare me your manipulations!

  3. In case you haven’t noticed… just in the last three years we are experiencing calamity on levels never seen before. For instance, I guarantee Japan will be far more devasted than any nation on earth in just a few more weeks. The economy in America – for the average person – will be a nightmare, far worse than anything we’ve ever seen in this country. We will jump on the gas rush with both feet to try to rescue our national economy. And when we open up unconventional gas wells – wall-to-wall across Pennsylvania — bringing radioactive material to the surface in unpresedented volumes, we will have radiation poisioning coming out of our ears.

    My really, really sincere post above may sound manipulative to you — I would bet my bottom dollar you’ve never handled a container of hydrofracked waste water or witnessed firsthand dead cattle who drank from a contaminated puddle.

    My comments are based on real scientific test results — not spin cycle – brainwashing – regurgitated propaganda like most people spew on both sides of this argument.

  4. Good question Punkdrm101. The answer is, freedom of speech is doing just fine and still flourishes in the freest country on earth–the USA. But freedom of speech does not extend to disrupting a private meeting, or give people the right to shut down a private business. It extends to public venues, not private venues like this meeting. The protesters crossed the line, and broke the law, by interrupting the meeting.