Strength in the Struggle: Faith leaders march to compressor construction site

Today, over 100 faith and spiritual leaders and people of good will gathered at Quincy Point Congregational Church and marched together to Enrbidge’s construction site.

The sound of the shofar echoed across Boston Harbor from a spit of land just next to the Fore River Bridge in Weymouth. It was a call to faith and spiritual leaders from many traditions to march along the fence-line of a construction site where Enbridge is attempting to build a 7700 hp fracked gas compressor station.

“The ritual was a public proclamation that all walls of injustice must one day fall,” said Rabbi Katy Allen, president of Jewish Climate Action Network.

People from of dozens of congregations, spiritual communities and organizations across Massachusetts marched, sang, and prayed, many carrying banners and signs opposing the compressor station, and calling for an awakening to the urgency of mending creation.

“Our experience fighting the installation of Enbridge’s Metering and Regulating Station in West Roxbury, now receiving fracked gas at 750 lbs./square inch in a location directly opposite an actively blasting quarry, makes us painfully aware of the dangers inherent in the Weymouth Compressor proposal,” said the Rev. Anne Bancroft, Minister, Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church in West Roxbury, and board member of Stop West Roxbury Lateral (SWRL). Our spirits unite on behalf of the efforts to curtail fossil fuel infrastructure. We are all Weymouth now.”

The crowd had gathered earlier at nearby Quincy Point Congregational Church, to support Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station (FRRACS) in their five-year effort to protect their communities from Enbridge’s proposed project. Co-sponsors of the FRRACS event were Episcopalians Caring for Creation, Jewish Climate Action Network, UUMassAction, Mass. Environmental Ministries of the United Church of Christ, Southern New England Conference; and Boston Catholic Climate Movement.

“As a Catholic, I feel a moral responsibility to care for the gift of God's Creation, and especially to care for the poor, and for future generations who have contributed the least to today's changing climate, but bear the greatest impact. I agree with Pope Francis that in order to limit global temperature rise, ‘. . . highly polluting fossil fuels need to be. . . replaced without delay.’ When I look into my grandchildren's innocent eyes, I pray all the harder that we have the courage and persistence to move quickly toward a clean energy world,” said Fran Ludwig, a member of the Boston Catholic Climate Movement leadership team. 

At the church, leaders spoke of being spiritually and morally compelled to call for Enbridge’s project to be stopped because of its threats to vulnerable communities, and to creation itself.  

“The poisoning of our neighbors, both locally and globally, and of the very web of life, is the preeminent moral challenge of this century,” said the Rev. Betsy Sowers, Minister for Earth Justice at Old Cambridge Baptist Church, FRRACS Board member, and Weymouth resident. “It is time for spiritual leaders of every tradition to speak and act publicly on behalf of a just and sustainable future while we still can.” 

The proposed compressor site is in a densely populated urban area, adjacent to two Environmental Justice Communities already overburdened with pollution from existing emitters. It is on the banks of the Fore River and Boston Harbor, next to conservation land, a public park, and critical infrastructure. Enbridge is excavating the site, composed of coal ash containing arsenic, asbestos, heavy metals, and oil contamination, without proper protection for their workers, the public, or the environment. They are trucking out 1100 loads of toxic industrial waste to dumps in MA and NH. The compressor station they are planning to build would add to local pollution that is already above EPA limits, and is inconsistent with Gov. Baker’s stated goal of making Massachusetts carbon neutral by 2050.

“The Gospels’ tradition calls people of faith to stand up against environmental injustices happening in the world,” said Rev. Vernon K. Walker, member of the social justice team at the Pentecostal Tabernacle, and 350 MA member. “It is the epitome of environmental injustice that the Weymouth Compressor Station is being constructed. It would have very real and damaging health and safety ramifications for Weymouth residents and the entire region.”

Eversource and National Grid have stated publicly that they do not need gas from this project in order to serve Mass. needs.  The gas is primarily for export as LNG via a proposed terminal in Nova Scotia, where Mi’kmaq fishing grounds would be destroyed. The impacts of this projects would affect families and the environment from the Pennsylvania fracking fields to Canada, to Europe where the gas would be burned, accelerating the global climate emergency. We believe that stopping this project is an urgent matter of climate justice for people of faith and for all people of good will.

News Coverage:

95.9 WATD - Weymouth: Faith Leaders Voice Opposition to Proposed Compressor Station

Videos:

Video 1 (51 min)

Video 2 (40 sec)

Video 3 (5 min)

Video 4 (11 min)

Video recap by Carolyn Shadid Lewis (6 min)

Photos: