PA House in session - HB1102 vote pending
Many of you have called PA House Representatives in opposition to HB1102, a pro-fracking bill creating the Keystone Energy Authority that will use taxpayers’ money to spur shale gas development – more fracking, more pipelines, more polluting petrochemical facilities, more dirty climate-changing greenhouse gas. Your calls paused the trajectory of HB1102, stalling it so it could not achieve a final vote on the House floor – a whole-hearted thank you! Your calls mattered!
Now the Legislature is back in session and HB1102 can come up again for a vote at any time; there are 15 House days left in this year’s session. Please take a minute to call your Representative and/or House Leadership Rep. Frank Dermody at (717) 787-3566 (minority leader) or Rep. Brian Cutler at (717) 783-6424 (majority). This terrible bill can be defeated if we can impress on these elected officials that their constituents do not want more fracking, especially with public dollar support.
Read the proposed bill here: https://bit.ly/2lVPFde
Read the letter groups sent opposing HB1102 (now sent to the full House): https://bit.ly/2NecYJb
What to say when you call?
- We don’t need more fracking in Pennsylvania. What is occurring with the 10,000+ natural gas wells already drilled is water pollution, air pollution, environmental degradation, and terrifying adverse effects to peoples’, including children’s, health. With another 50,000 wells expected to be fracked and HB1102 to speed up extraction and build dirty processing plants, the harm will get much worse faster than ever.
- PA shouldn’t be spending our tax money to prop up the special interests of the petrochemical, oil and gas industry. Global trends are towards cleaning up pollution and developing self-sustaining clean economies and renewable energy sources, especially for those disproportionately bearing the brunt of dirty industries. Don’t throw good money after bad on an industry destined to go bust.
- Climate change is already having enormous negative impacts on people, the environment, cultures, and the economy. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is 86 times more potent than carbon on the 20-year time scale we must plan for if we are to avoid critical tipping points. Fracking, its infrastructure, and petrochemical plants uncontrollably release enormous amounts of methane into the atmosphere, fueling climate change. PA cannot dig us deeper into crisis!
HB1102 is one of the “Energize PA” package of bills pushing fracking - as if shale gas needed government sponsors. Some of these bills have already passed the House and are in the Senate, such as HB1100, a horrific bill that gives tax credits to new gas processing plants that extract PA “dry gas” to manufacture ammonia, methanol, or urea, similar to the legislation that incentivized the Shell Cracker Plant. It has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee, but no meeting is set yet. There are 9 Senate days left in the session. We will keep you informed so we can bombard them with calls!
Please call the House Representatives now. We cannot let HB1102 out of the House!
