Good Friday letter to FERC from Rev. Betsy Sowers

Rev. Betsy Sowers submitted the following letter to FERC. Thank you, Rev. Betsy Sowers for your powerful words, we hope FERC will listen.

”I write to you as a faith leader on this Good Friday. My congregation, along with churches and synagogues across the nation, is celebrating our highest holy days without gathering in our place of worship. Soon we will be joined by our Muslim neighbors as we approach Ramadan. Our congregants who fall ill are suffering, dying, and being buried without the comfort of family and clergy. Families are not able to grieve together at funerals, but we willingly forego even these normally essential gatherings so that others will not be exposed to the virus. We are making these sacrifices because we value the lives of our neighbors more than our right to assemble. Average Americans, including those of us here in Massachusetts, are enduring enormous burdens, both economic, educational,spiritual and emotional, to flatten the curve of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this context, the continued construction of Enbridge’s Weymouth compressor station, a project whose purpose is to export fracked gas abroad, is an unconscionable slap in the face to the rest of us. Its designation as “essential” is absurd, given that our own utilities,National Grid and Eversource, have stated publicly that they have no need of the gas to serve Massachusetts customers. It is an immediate threat to the lives and health of construction workers, police, and local residents. Citizens have been monitoring the work site daily, and have seen no evidence of social distancing, PPE use (except for a couple of men who seem to be supervisors), nor use of a purported hand washing station touted by Enbridge to OSHA.
Workers are coming and going regularly from out of state, with NY and NJ licenses multiplying in the last week. Close to 30 out of state plates can be seen at the construction site at a time. We see no evidence that new out of state workers are observing the required quarantine period. We have confirmed that they are staying in local motels, getting take-out meals from local restaurants, and working in close proximity to local police who are doing security detail at the site. We have verified that the thermometer gun being used to take the temperatures of worker entering the site is an industrial thermometer not certified for human use, and has a plus or minus variation of four degrees. That means that someone could register 98.6 on the thermometer while having a temperature of 102.6. Multiple workers frequently arrive in the same vehicle, but only one per vehicle is tested with the (useless) thermometer.

The situation presents a clear and present danger to the workers, as well as to the communities of Braintree, Quincy, Weymouth, and Hingham frequented by those workers. OSHA must do an on-site inspection immediately. This project, as well as others that are not directly related to emergency utility repair, must be shut down now to prevent super-spreader situations. Otherwise, FERC and OSHA make a mockery of the enormous sacrifices being made by everyday people to stop this virus, and put us all directly in harm’s way. Please do your job, and place the lives of construction workers, local police, and other Mass. residents over Enbridge’s construction schedule. We are not your sacrifice zone.

Sincerely,

(The Rev.) Betsy J. Sowers

cc:
Loren Sweatt, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for
Occupational Safety and Health
John Dreyzehner, MD, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response for Disease Control and Prevention
Robert R. Redfield, MD, Director Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Governor Charlie Baker
Senator Patrick O’Connor
Representative James Murphy
Mayor Robert Hedlund, Town of Weymouth
Sen. Edward Markey
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Rep. Stephen Lynch
Rep. Joseph Kennedy III”