SUMMER PLANNING SEASON
Here’s hoping that you are finding time to relax, regroup and enjoy this summer season. You will need your rest for the coming year. Our Spring Annual Luncheon at the Downingtown Country Club was enjoyed by all with the celebration of our League’s 50-Year Members. Our appreciation and admiration was warmly extended to Mary Lou Dondero, Joyce Shaffer and Ginger Whittington.
What an accomplishment to be proud of! Congratulations to all three!
We are plotting and planning at both the local and state level. Preparation for the fall election season is under way with voter registration efforts as well as debate plans. Our Chester County “Signature Event” will be an action packed, memory filled, historically relevant occasion to be held on September 6, 2014, 12:00 Noon – 3:30 P.M. at the Borough of West Chester Municipal Building. Our predecessors would be proud!
While you build up your strength for the coming year, the League will provide testimony before the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Pittsburgh on July 31st. We will support the EPA’s proposed Rule III (d) to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. (Clean Power Plan) Each state will have the flexibility to address its unique mix of emissions and power sources. We wholeheartedly support all efforts to improve air quality. Diminishing air pollution and its impact on our climate is primary to our health and the health of generations to come.
At the same time we will urge the EPA to take action to regulate the methane emissions from natural gas operations. As a greenhouse gas, methane emissions are more than 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a twenty year period (1). Wellheads, pipes, valves, compressors and even abandoned wells (2) are releasing increasing volumes of methane into our atmosphere. Pennsylvania currently has more than 6,000 natural gas wells with ten times more projected. Compressor stations, placed along our expanding number of pipelines, maintain transmission pressures by venting methane. What we cannot see is easily unnoticed. But the repercussions will be felt for generations to come. The EPA’s efforts in the prevention of methane emissions will truly be worth a pound of cure to generations to come.
REST RELAX AND REGROUP – we will need your energy! Grateful for all that you do!
(1) http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/2708911/fracking-ipcc-methane/
(2) http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/20/3451380/abandoned-pennsylvania-wells-spew-methane/
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