Protecting Mother Earth

By John Wagner, WILPF Triangle Branch

North Carolina’s Triangle Branch Water Committee is working on fracking, coal ash dumping, indigenous rights, voting rights, and specific legal actions in which WILPF was active in planning meetings that resulted in three state lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of procedures. All these issues are related to the critical challenge of the day – protecting Mother Earth.  

Fracking

NC had a large statewide anti-fracking planning meeting in July.  The Earth Democracy Water Committee members spoke and helped lead sessions about citizen water and air monitoring, and on non-violent direct action.

• Following a public hearing the Chatham County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to draft a 2-year moratorium on fracking. This will be the second county in NC with a moratorium on fracking. 
• We spent three days meeting with community members in West Union, West Virginia.  They are fighting the widespread fracking and devastation in their beautiful mountains, coves, and rivers.
• We have started working with the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and are beginning to do community monitoring of stream life, simple water chemistry, and particulate monitoring in Lee and Chatham counties in areas that are threatened by coal ash – and – fracking.

Coal Ash

We continue to attend meetings at many levels in Lee and Chatham counties to stop the dumping of 20 million tons of coal ash by Duke Energy. 

We took part in the first statewide meeting of communities that are, or will be, affected by coal ash. Representatives from across the state began a unified plan to push for a safe, permanent plan for the toxic ash, and for permanent water supplies and health care for the hundreds of families that have documented well contamination.  We also are demanding very widespread, extensive testing and monitoring of wells surrounding coal ash dumps. 

Indigenous Rights

We attended the Save Oak Flats protest on the Capitol lawn in DC on July 22 about the planned destruction of an area in the Tonto National Forest, Arizona, that is sacred land to the Apache Nation. The land is being swapped to the Australian Resolution Copper Co. to mine for copper, making a huge crater in the earth, and destroying the stream and forests, and destroying the sacred site.   This should be considered for Earth Democracy support and actions.

Voting Rights  

Along with many WILPF members and around 6,000 citizens, we attended the Voting Rights March  in Winston-Salem on the first day of the NAACP’s case in the federal court against Gov. McCrory and the legislature’s massive voter suppression laws.  The case is still in the court system. 

Although maybe not technically an Earth Democracy issue, in North Carolina it is a major racial justice issue and may be the deciding factor in stopping the current dismantling of our environmental, educational, and social protections.  The outcome will affect national voting rights actions in many states.

Legal Actions

Several environmental groups have lawsuits against the State Legislature, the Mining and Energy Commission (MEC), and the Department of Natural Resources.   Although WILPF is not directly involved in the suits, we have been active in planning meetings that resulted in three North Carolina lawsuits challenging:

• The constitutionality of way the MEC members were selected.
• The constitutionality of the MEC – a temporary rule-making board, to be allowed to over-rule local governments.
• The NC Department of Natural Resources issuance of permits for Duke’s coal ash dumping plans for Lee in Chatham in spite of a large document that raised serious specific scientific, procedural, wetland issues, endangered species threats, coal ash liner flaws and concerns, and environmental justice issues.
   

John Wagner and Lib Hutchby are the mainstays of the Triangle Branch Water Committee. Lib, a member of Earth Democracy’s Coordinating Team, attends innumerable events as representative of WILPF and as a Raging Granny to sing at marches and protests. John has attended meetings in Washington, DC, and West Virginia to better inform himself on the scientific back ground of the environmental issues they are dealing with in North Carolina.(Nancy Price)

PHOTO: Waterkeeper Alliance/Rick Dove