Below is my testimony at the PEOPLE’S HEARING to respond to the Ohio EPA’s sham public hearing on BP-Husky’ Draft Air Pollution Permit as part of their Oregon Ohio refinery re-tooling to process oil tar sands, the dirtiest oil on the planet. This People’s Hearing was sponsored by the Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy. I was speaking on behalf of Occupy Toledo and planetary citizens everywhere:
Welcome to Oregon, Ohio — now with 50% less stench!
My name is Dan Rutt. I am a long-time resident of Toledo, a citizen of Ohio and these United States of America. However, I have an over-arching allegiance; that allegiance is to our planet, which sustains our life and the life of all living beings from all nations and ecosystems. I am a planetary citizen. I am calling on all planetary citizens to rise above lesser allegiances and protect our planet from British Petroleum and other transnational corporations who stand against the interests of humanity and life on our planet.
I am standing outside the formal EPA hearing, so we the people can have our own hearing, a people’s hearing, that is not limited to narrow, technical matters, while BP and others are literally mining our planet in order to burn it. BP wants to re-tool their refining to process tar sands, the dirtiest oil on the planet, the bottom of the barrel. This is exactly the wrong direction we should be headed. Spending billions on an infrastructure to process the most polluting, least economically viable and least sustainable fossil fuel will only lock us onto the wrong path for years — years that we and our planet cannot afford. We need to switch to safe and renewable energy NOW — not next year, not next decade, not next generation, but TODAY, June 5th, 2013!
How about investing billions of dollars to switch to clean, safe, renewable, and sustainable energy? Where is your plan for that BP?
Unfortunately, the Ohio EPA is powerless to stop BP from destroying Mother Earth. The EPA may be able to regulate the lethal injection of Mother Earth while BP euthanizes her. But I am here to say, that that is not good enough! Merely deciding how we are going to destroy the planet is insanity of the highest order. We need to end our addiction to fossil fuels or we will become fossils ourselves. BP is a pusher, profiting from this deadly addiction, and should be treated as such.
Real people suffer environmental destruction while corporate persons like BP are insulated from their crimes. Three years ago, BP caused the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. This was not an “accident.” It was a criminal act. Now, they want us to entrust Mother Earth to them, again. As the U.S. Department of Justice put it, “The explosion of the rig was a disaster that resulted from BP’s culture of privileging profit over prudence.” BP has pled guilty of felony manslaughter, environmental crimes, and obstruction of Congress. While no BP executives have gone to jail, planetary citizens resist their criminal behavior and fuelish business practices and these planetary citizens go to jail.
Inside, there will be a parade of people on the payroll of British Petroleum, some literally on the payroll, some just hoping to get some of the economic scraps from refining our planet into money. This is on the heels of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, which in 2010 cited Oregon’s BP-Husky refinery for 62 safety violations and fined the company nearly $3 million for “exposing workers to a variety of hazards.” Then, this year, on March 10th, the BP-Husky refinery malfunctioned and released extremely dangerous hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide pollution into the air.
Should we trust BP? Is BP a good corporate citizen? In the years leading up to the BP gulf oil spill, on about an annual basis, BP pled guilty to criminal acts, each time saying that they were going to change their ways. Mother Earth is a battered women, BP is a batterer, and it’s time to end the cycle of criminal abuse. Buying her flowers and offering her gushing words have not stopped BP’s gushing oil in the past. We don’t want your sweet talk. We want you to stop raping the earth!
The only real question here today is whether or not we can avoid the Native American prophecy that “When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”
BP will you fundamentally change your fossilized business practices and switch to clean, safe, renewable, and sustainable energy?
I have in my hands 38 pages of documents from Ohio EPA regarding the draft Air Pollution Permit-to-Install for BP-Husky Refining, Limited Liability Corporation, with an accent on the “Limited Liability”! I have a Bachelor’s Degree in biology, a Master’s Degree in Public Health; I’ve even had a graduate level course in environmental genetic toxicology. I’ve spent years working in and with government bureaucracies. How can one adequately address the issues raised in a few minutes? What I conclude from this draft permit and tonight’s so-called public hearing is that they are a smokescreen. Buried in this smokescreen of technocratic minutiae is our planet being buried; or perhaps more accurately: unburied and burned — literally, the cremation of our planet. This Ohio EPA sham hearing today is lethal to democracy, thwarting the larger will of the people, as it stands by, impotent to protect our environment, the very environment it is sworn to protect. Meanwhile, BP and others are destroying our planet.
Anybody who lives or passes through Oregon, Ohio, knows that BP doesn’t pass the stink test. You don’t need a doctoral degree to know that our fossil fuels addiction threatens our planet and the life it sustains. We can’t depend on British Petroleum or other fossilized corporations to protect our planet. We can’t depend on politicians or bureaucrats to protect our planet. If the planet is to be saved, then it depends on you and me, we the people. Thank you for coming out to this people’s hearing. Thank you for listening.
I will now conclude by reading a poem, entitled, O Children of Mother Earth, Arise!
Listen, O children of Mother Earth!
Hear, those who have ears
Hear the streams of clean water, our tributaries of life
Hear the streams of cars and trucks dirtying the air we breathe
See, O children of Mother Earth!
See, those who have eyes
See the beauty of fields and forests, mountains and meadows
See the scars of strip mines and cesspools of toxins
Smell, O children of Mother Earth!
Smell, those who have noses
Smell the fragrance of wildflowers and gardens
Smell the stench of oil and coal combustion, and chemical cocktails concocted
Reach out and touch, O children of Mother Earth!
Reach out and touch, those who have hands
Reach out and touch the soil and sun which fuels nature’s bounty
Reach out and touch the concrete and landfills, the Alpha and Omega of so-called “progress”
Taste, O children of Mother Earth!
Taste, those who have mouths
Taste the fruits of her plenty, enough for all
Taste the bitterness of her children’s petty scarcity, robbing brother and sister
Feel, O children of Mother Earth!
Feel, those who have hearts
Feel the call of nature
Feel the greed of those who would of nature relieve themselves
Speak, O children of Mother Earth!
Speak, those who have tongues
Speak of the splendor of a Mother’s care
Speak of the horror of an orphaned race
Arise, every living creature, O children of Mother Earth!
Return to her lap, and breast, and arms
Turn away from her desecration
Take your rightful place, to neither rule from above nor rule from below
Work side by side
Play together
Live neighborly
For we share the same fate
Whether we share or not
O children of Mother Earth
NOTE: There were an estimate 18 to 18,000 people at the People’s Hearing. THANKS to all who showed up!
Here is the testimony of Kristina Moazed, Chair, Western Lake Erie Sierra Club:
The proposal that BP has revealed to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and to us, the public, has been improperly piecemealed and made to appear as if it will be just fine for this refinery to accept tar sands.
We must begin at the very source of these oil bearing sands. Canada’s government, and the province of Alberta are massively destroying Alberta’s pristine, northern ancient forests, poisoning the water sources of their native wildlife, and natives and other Albertans for one generation’s profit and greed. The desecration of this form of extraction is seriously forever.
> This permitting decision is being made in ignorance of recognized scientific principles that do predict increasingly worse consequences of global warming.
> The decision to go forward with tar sands as a source of petroleum rejects the scientifically-grounded conclusion that to even begin to slow down the global warming and that our over-use of fossil fuels has put into motion, we must keep as much of the remaining carbon fuels as possible in the ground: they must never be extracted and burned!
> There is no consideration in this decision process of public health effects on human populations in our Toledo-Oregon-Lake Erie shore region as a consequence of the higher volumes of known carcinogenic and other pollutants which will be emitted!
> There is no consideration given to otheralternate mitigation activities, such as the building and promotion of mass transit, which would consume less petroleum, create far more permanent jobs, and cause much less pollution than perpetuating North America’s one-car, one-driver folly.
> There is no certainty that high volumes of petroleum coke will actually be generated by the proposed altered refinement process. And if it is, that coke will not be sheltered from the elements and will accumulate less than a mile from Lake Erie and one of its estuaries.
Have any emergency plans been put in place in case of explosion or fire while processing these dirty bitumen fuels so close to our source of drinking water?
Have possible impacts to tourism and the maritime and fishing industries been considered?
I’m sure if we contact the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, the birding crowd will have plenty of objections to the increased pollution in and desecration of the surrounding habitat!
Just one example of tar sands refining immediately to our north, in Detroit will give us an example of what happens. Emissions of sulfur dioxide did decrease, but emissions of hydrogen sulfide increased as they do everywhere bitumen is refined. Hydrogen sulfide is known for its rotten egg odor and is potentially fatal in sufficient concentrations. Residents near this Marathon Refinery in Detroit participated in Air Sampling which was overseen by Global Community Monitor, an environmental group based in California. In 2010 they found high levels of benzene, a carcinogen, and hydrogen sulfide near the refinery. IN one case, more than 20 chemicals, including benzene were detected in a resident’s basement. An EPA investigation traced the contamination to Marathon’s dumping of wastewater into the city sewer system! “We were shocked to learn they did not have their own discharge pipe into a body of water like, I believe, every other refinery in the United States ,” said Denny Larson, Global Community Monitor’s executive director. How convenient that the BP Refinery is right on the shore of Lake Erie! I think we will need to watch their discharges very carefully!
> These production changes are being undertaken by a global corporation which has seriously poisoned the Gulf of Mexico through crass, careless and dangerous negligence and deliberately ignoring safety regulations causing the oil spill in 2010, and its still incomplete remediation.
Now that we know BP has gamed the regulators and the public into bring tar sands cracking here to Oregon, Ohio, exactly what basis is there for any trust that consideration of public health and avoidance of environmental destruction hold any priority for BP?
We must promote green, renewable and sustainable energy! We must conserve and become more efficient our usage!
THANKS Kristina!
