Watching Rob Astorino is a lot like playing Whack-a-Mole.
Don’t let the slick power point presentations at his Ask Astorino events (which look an awful lot like campaign events) fool you: you never know when the back-stories will pop up.
Take the Algonquin Incremental Market and Atlantic Bridge Pipelines for example. It’s daunting to know where to begin, which issue to tackle first. At some point, Astorino Watch will cover all these issues in detail. In the meantime, here’s the short list:
- Indian Point
- Gas companies donating to Astorino’s campaign
- Blue Mountain Reserve handed to a private Texas gas company
- Emminent Domain for corporate profit
- First Responders getting appropriate equipment and training for fighting pipeline explosions during Astorino’s starvation budget
- Health and safety of children in Buchanan Elementary School as well as at other points along the pipeline’s path
- That this deadly energy source is not for the U.S., but is for export into foreign markets locking us all into an unsustainable future.
And like the late night ginsu knife commercial, we need to add…but there’s more!
What comes with a pipeline carrying fracked gas? Besides inevitable explosions, scarred countryside, and locking us into escalating energy prices?
Compressor and pigging stations blowing off carcinogenic gasses. Every 10 to 20 miles. Here’s a piece from Dr. Susan Rubin from October, 2015.
And here’s an interesting thing that happened around the time Dr. Susan Rubin wrote that piece. You can tell from the pictures that there was a “Die-In” on the steps of the Westchester County Center to call attention to the pipeline carrying fracked gas through our beautiful county.
That was followed up by phone calls to the Westchester County Department of Health expressing health and safety concerns when it came to the pipeline. Many cities and counties have declared pipelines a threat to public health. But something’s different in Westchester County. After a few hours, those that made up the second wave of phone calls found their calls re-routed to Rob Astorino’s office. Our concerns were dismissed. Not by a County Health and Safety staff member, but by a staffer for Rob Astorino.
Our valid concerns for health and safety were politicized by Rob Astorino.
Now tell us about that “dialog” you’re fostering during the Ask Astorino events?
So if your great uncle is having trouble breathing, or your kid’s asthma is acting up, or you’re getting strange headaches, it might be from the compressor station. Or from the inevitable leaks that accompany fracked gas pipelines.
Look, the American Lung Association has already given Westchester County an F when it comes to air quality. Rob Astorino, by giving away our commons to a passel of Texas gas profiteers can’t lower that grade.
Is your health worth lower property taxes?
There’s been an ongoing fight against these two pipelines which you can follow on these sites:
SENRG
SAPE
Resist the Pipeline
Astorino Watch 