Ruth Striegel (NM-IPL Board Co-Chair) Testifies at EPA Hearing

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Methane in our atmosphere intensifies the greenhouse effect, and gives us more and more catastrophic weather events like floods, droughts, and hurricanes. Yet oil and gas operators fail to see the connection between this and their leaky equipment that allows methane to escape, or their practice of venting methane. They harm their neighbors but refuse to see the evidence…I urge you to use the tools and technology available to cut methane pollution by 65 percent of 2012 levels by 2025. There is no time to lose. We must act quickly and decisively.

My name is Ruth Striegel. I live in Albuquerque, NM and I am the Advocacy chair for New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light. I’m a mother, a church music director, and a retired school orchestra teacher.

Human life is totally dependent on the health of this planet. We are part of a vastly complex web of interdependence among the animate and inanimate, oceans, land and climate systems. Within my lifetime, we have come crashing in, with only minimal understanding, taking resources and lives with impunity and creating havoc in our planetary systems. The more I understand about this, the more I fear for our future and the angrier I become at those who knew this would happen, but went ahead and put profit before the health of all of us.

Here in New Mexico we are living through a deep and prolonged drought. Because human activity has weakened the jet stream, we have persistent high pressure systems parked over us, resulting in terrible heat and weeks to months without rain. Our Rio Grande is down to a trickle. All this is caused by human activities that emit greenhouse gases, with methane as the most powerful and dangerous one.

The Golden Rule, common to all faith traditions, states that you should not do to your neighbor what is harmful to you. This is basic to human community. But it seems that our definition of who is our neighbor is far too narrow. When emitted into the air, methane is enormously harmful. People and animals living nearby suffer health effects from breathing methane. Methane in our atmosphere intensifies the greenhouse effect, and gives us more and more catastrophic weather events like floods, droughts, and hurricanes. Yet oil and gas operators fail to see the connection between this and their leaky equipment that allows methane to escape, or their practice of venting methane. They harm their neighbors but refuse to see the evidence.

In southeast New Mexico, we have a fracking oil boom in the Permian basin. Operators there are interested in bringing oil to market. The methane that is emitted as part of their operations is not of interest to them, so they allow it to leak, or they vent or flare it. They say that it’s too expensive to collect the gas and bring it to market. But the true cost in human lives and in climate change is much greater than the cost of capturing the gas. People living in the Permian, as well as our Navajo neighbors living near Chaco Canyon in northwest NM and in gas producing areas of San Juan County, have elevated levels of asthma and cancer. Many live within a mile of oil and gas production sites and have to live with constant noise and light pollution. Their children are growing up in these conditions! We would not put up with this in our own neighborhoods. Yet we’ve violated the Golden Rule and allowed this to go on in our neighbors’ backyards.

For better or worse, the New Mexico economy has long been dependent on tax income from extractive industries. As a retired public school teacher, I can tell you that this income funds our schools, but there is never enough funding to cover all the needs. So beyond the health and climate implications of venting and leaking methane, there’s the fact that we are losing a great deal of tax income that would fund our schools when methane is not captured and sent to market.

I urge you to use the tools and technology available to cut methane pollution by 65 percent of 2012 levels by 2025. There is no time to lose. We must act quickly and decisively. Thank you.

Rev. Nick King’s Testimony at EPA Hearing

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I ask you, the EPA, to take your responsibility seriously in setting reasonable and responsible standards in regards to Methane emissions, so that God and history and the rest of the planet will see that we are at least trying to do the right thing.

Rev. Nick King  is one of the faith leaders involved with Citizens Caring for the Future, an affiliate of New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light in Carlsbad. Here is his testimony at the EPA hearing on June 15-16, in which the agency is collecting testimony to develop a proposed rule to reduce methane and other harmful pollutants from new and existing sources in the oil and natural gas industry.

My name is Nick King and I am pastor at the Carlsbad Mennonite Church, Carlsbad, NM in the heart of the Permian Basin. This earth, our home, is a gift of God to us to take care of, and I hope our lives and actions will be an honor to our Creator.  I ask you, the EPA, to take your responsibility seriously in setting reasonable and responsible standards in regards to Methane emissions, so that God and history and the rest of the planet will see that we are at least trying to do the right thing.  In our national attempt to be world leaders, our taking control of climate change is much more important than even the size of our nuclear arsenal, which is another related shameful heresy.  All of us around the world are children of God, and what destroys one, destroys us all, as we see in the effects of climate change all around us.  Anything we, or you on the EPA staff, can do to slow this stampede to self annihilation is important.

None of us like rules for ourselves, but from kindergarten to family to city, state, federal and even international entities-we all have rules that are for the common good.  There are rules that a tire company cannot dump our old tires on an empty lot, or our oil change center cannot dump our used crankcase oil in the storm sewers that go to the river.  Our air is just as sacred as our earth and water.

And now we are dealing with methane and other toxic byproducts that are part of the oil and gas industry that is so important to all of us in this area in SE NM.  And the methane problem may be even more prevalent than what is self reported by the industry.  But we do know that it has dire effects- both locally and globally.  Fossil fuels have been the lifeblood of our culture for more than 100 years, but they are also our poison.

On top of that, there has been virtually NO enforcement of air quality standards for the last 9 years here in New Mexico of even the pollution laws that we do have, and the EPA is little better.  So any reasonable laws for the good of all – all of us and all of the world, as well as realistically feasible for the oil and gas industry, should be created- and enforced.

In this highly competitive oil and gas industry,  reasonable standards would cost a little more to implement, so it would not be fair to those companies that want to do the right thing, if not all operators are playing by the same reasonable rules to contain methane pollution.

We are the wild west, but we are also God’s children that have a responsibility for our siblings around the world, and our posterity.  As world leaders, we as a nation should set pollution standards, and enforce them.

If the EPA doesn’t take the lead on this, who will?

Kayley Shoup’s Testimony at EPA Hearing

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Kayley Shoup is an organizer for Citizens Caring for the Future, an affiliate of New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light in Carlsbad.  Here is her testimony at the EPA hearing on June 15-16, in which the agency is collecting testimony to develop a proposed rule to reduce methane and other harmful pollutants from new and existing sources in the oil and natural gas industry.

I don’t need to tell all of you what climate goals stricter methane rules and stronger enforcement will help us achieve. You know why we must cut methane emissions…These rules could mean that a mother doesn’t have to watch her child go through leukemia. They could mean that a young  man doesn’t lose his hardworking father at a young age. They could mean that a grandmother can breathe easy into her old age. They could mean that a young couples dream of a family isn’t dashed by reproductive issues.

Just last week I was out in the oil fields of the Permian with Earthworks looking for emission events. It was upwards of 105 degrees every single day. Prior heat records were being broken. It was something else to quite literally be feeling the effects of climate change, while also seeing through a FLIR video camera the emissions that are significantly contributing to that climate change. It was memorable to say the least.

As I drove home from the oil fields each night last week, I thought about how scared I was that my community is breathing the emissions I had just seen into our lungs every single day. I thought about how so few people in my tiny hometown realize what danger our health is in. The risks are not communicated by industry or the agencies that are supposed to protect us. I thought about the oilfield workers who are directly exposed to this pollution every single day, and how their lives may be upended by disease in the future. I thought about how many emissions events I had seen in just one day, and then I would shudder remembering that there is only one air monitor in my town, and that there are no air inspectors in New Mexico that live in the Permian. I thought about how cancer runs in my family, and how the pollution I’m exposed to may assure that I die young. I thought about my 51 year old mother who has just finished treatment for ovarian cancer, and how terrified I am that pollution could contribute to the recurrence of her cancer. I thought about how everyday I am learning that my community is a sacrifice zone.

I naively thought that I was being protected by federal and state environmental agencies. I blindly trusted my government and I blindly trusted industry, but sometimes the truth slaps you in the face and wakes you up. I am involved today because living in a frontline community has woken me up to the fact that some communities, some families, some human beings really are seen as disposable. I’ve seen firsthand a culture that values the state of the economy more than a child’s life. I realized something was wrong when I pieced together that I knew more young people with rare and aggressive cancers than the total number of people my eighty year old grandmother has known throughout her life that had cancer. Since beginning. This is reality for young people on the front lines. Whether or not they realize that the devastation they face in their life could very well be attributed to pollution caused by emissions does not change the fact that the devastation exists.

I don’t need to tell all of you what climate goals stricter methane rules and stronger enforcement will help us achieve. You know why we must cut methane emissions. I don’t need to explain why we need to diversify our economy, or how cutting methane provides job creation. I do need to remind you of this though. These rules are more than just rules. These rules could mean that a mother doesn’t have to watch her child go through leukemia. They could mean that a young  man doesn’t lose his hardworking father at a young age. They could mean that a grandmother can breathe easy into her old age. They could mean that a young couples dream of a family isn’t dashed by reproductive issues.

Frontline communities suffer the most when common sense action isn’t taken, but because of climate change everyone in the world is essentially living in a sacrifice zone in one way or another. Whether their community is constantly threatened by natural disaster or riddled with disease. Methane emissions affect us all. I hope the EPA chooses to take bold and swift action to make methane rules that sustain life.