Phila Fracking Hearing

The Philadelphia City Council Room was filled to standing room only as residents submitted impassioned pleas for the Delaware River Basin Commission to suspend the process of fracking until which time a comprehensive study could be performed insuring the safety and efficacy of the process to our water system. One of the most powerful statements was submitted by Ross Levin, a high school student from the Philadelphia suburbs:

Before I begin my own statement, I’d like to remind everyone here of Article 1, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution:

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

My name is Ross Levin, and I’m a high school student in the Philly suburbs. I am here representing myself as a private citizen, but also representing the Green Party of Philadelphia, as well as every young person who will have to deal with the consequences of fracking for far longer than anyone who is currently writing the rules for it.

Especially after the recent confirmation that wastewater from natural gas wells is indeed much more toxic, and radioactive, than gas companies had revealed, it is clear that the Delaware River Basin Commission’s proposed regulations don’t go far enough. The Green Party of Pennsylvania endorses the following actions: halting drilling until every well complies with the Clean Water Act, a drilling moratorium on state lands (unless the public specifically votes otherwise in a referendum), a ban on drilling that doesn’t strictly conform to a wastewater reclamation plan, and harsh penalties for violating these regulations. The party is also currently working to endorse an outright ban on fracking. Most politicians and political groups are not willing to take such a firm stand, but this is in fact a highly practical vision for the future of fracking in Pennsylvania. It makes no sense to hurt ourselves and future generations, by poisoning our drinking water, in order to get the short term gain of gas and corporate profits.

As a private citizen and as a person who will live for many decades after the gas being extracted today is burned, I will not be satisfied with anything less than a total moratorium on all new natural gas wells. In Pittsburgh, people have already had to forgo drinking tap water at times because it was considered dangerous. In towns all over Pennsylvania and Texas and Wyoming and other states, we have already seen the horrible consequences of fracking. We know what will happen if we allow this practice in the Delaware River Basin. Our water will be poisoned, ecosystems will be devastated, and people will get sick and die. To me, there is no acceptable level of death in the name of fossil fuels and money.

I'd like to issue a kind of challenge to everyone here. Everyone knows what is going on, everyone who has come here probably appreciates the scale of the problem, so we must match the scale of our actions to that. We know what will happen if this is allowed, and so our actions must be on that same scale, not just writing letters or testifying at hearings where everyone agrees with us.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak today.
Ross Levin