Huffington Post - Demand For Oil Has Plummeted, But Industry Keeps Building New Infrastructure Anyway

The Huffington Post has a great article about the absurdity of continuing construction of non-essential fossil fuel projects during a pandemic. This piece also features our fight to stop the compressor station.

Construction of this death industry continues unabated all over the country during a pandemic. Gov. Baker shows his particular brand of failed leadership on this issue here in Weymouth. Enjoy the money, Charlie. You'll need it when you're unemployed in two years. ☠

Read more from the Huffington Post - Demand For Oil Has Plummeted, But Industry Keeps Building New Infrastructure Anyway (link)

Excerpt: “In Weymouth, Massachusetts, Canadian energy company Enbridge is continuing work on a 7,700-horsepower compressor station, part of the company’s Atlantic Bridge Project that will deliver fracked natural gas via pipeline to Maine and Canadian provinces. City residents opposed to the project filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in mid-March alleging numerous on-site hazards that they said put workers at increased risk of contracting and spreading the coronavirus. 

Alice Arena, president of Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station, argues that it’s simply not possible for those workers to comply with health and safety protocols on site. She told HuffPost that she and her team have observed out-of-state workers carpooling to the project site, laboring in close proximity to one another and not wearing face masks and other protective gear. Arena worries about the impact that ongoing construction could have on both crew and the community, and questions what makes the project necessary during a public health crisis.

“There’s nothing connecting this construction project to anything. There’s no gas flowing in, there’s no gas flowing out,” she said. “It makes no sense. It’s not essential.”’ (The Huffington Post, 2020)