ICYMI: Gulf residents, community members, and church leaders urge the Department of Energy to protect their communities at People’s Hearing on LNG

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Date: October 24, 2024 

Contact: Elena Gaona, egaona@lcv.org, 202-907-9717 

 

CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS — On Friday, October 18th, Chispa Texas, a program of the League of Conservation Voters, convened a People’s Hearing on the Environmental Justice Impacts of LNG to offer community members a chance to give public testimony as the Department of Energy (DOE) reviews and updates the data and analysis used in its Public Interest Determination to review LNG export license applications. 

“DOE needs to hear from frontline community members and communities experiencing environmental injustice who are directly impacted by LNG early on to inform their analysis,” said Elida Castillo, Chispa Texas program director. “What we heard during the hearing is regular folks who see that within a few years, the cities where they could once fish and enjoy their lives and homes are now overrun with LNG pipes, facilities, and tankers. Allowing LNG to expand even more means the sacrifice of their communities in the form of poisoned waterways, worse air, toxic flaring, and many more consequences they are experiencing every day to their health, environment, quality of life, economy, and safety.”

At the hearing, leaders from impacted communities in Texas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania spoke. Chispa Texas is submitting all testimony to DOE, including the following excerpts:

• “Right now we’re dealing with pipelines that are running right before our little elementary school in my city and my community and I am here in opposition against LNG full-hearted because they are truly destroying the world and we can’t allow them to continue to destroy us,” said Lois Booker Malvo, from Lake Charles, LA. “God created us to live here on this earth and this is what we’re going to do – stand up together.”
• “We do not want more LNG lines running along the lands that our children play on… We’re going to fight until we can’t fight anymore,” said Deborah Ramirez, a resident from Lake Charles, LA. “We know that there are other alternatives for clean energy.”
• “It appears that they think they have a priority to the right to make a lot of money and continue to ship … (over) my right breathe, to clean air, to live in my house that I bought to be able to go fishing if I want to go fishing or to have clean water, and it doesn’t seem that the people that are living on the front lines of all of this should have to sacrifice for the chance for people to make a large amount of money,” said Charlie Boone, Ingleside by the Bay resident on the north shore of Corpus Christi Bay.
• “The Texas Gulf sacrifice coast is known for its numerous refineries of other petrochemical facilities, but yet, communities like Port Arthur, Freeport, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville continue to have environmental problems. They have health problems of their populations, and they also have environmental justice problems and issues because all of these communities, BIPOC communities, Black, Indigenous, people of color, are all similarly affected,” said John Beard of Port Arthur Community Action Network in Port Arthur, TX. “So I’m here to ask you that as you look at this public interest determination, you got to understand and know who that public is. We are the public. We’re the ones who are affected, and our voices must be heard because if it’s good for everybody, if it’s in the public’s interest, then we don’t have a problem with letting you put that somewhere else. Let them have it and let them go through what we’re going through.”
• “We’re exposed to pollutants on a regular basis. The air we breathe is tainted with toxic emissions which have severely impacted our health. Children across the county and neighboring counties suffer disproportionately from asthma and rare cancers. Additionally, elderly residents experience rates of heart and lung issues and cancer that are higher than peers in other communities,” said Patrina Hayes, a resident of Freeport, Texas.
• “We want to live in a clean neighborhood. We want to be able to educate our children. We want to go to work and provide a living for ourselves, and when we reach the time where we can sit on our porch, we want to live in comfort and peace. But above all, we deserve and demand the God-given right of the ability to breathe. And with the LNGs we cannot, literally, breathe,” said Zulene Mayfield of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, in Chester, PA.
• “What you’re telling the community is that we don’t matter, that some of us have to die so that corporations can keep making a profit, that your agencies are just facades to quiet us down. And that’s not going to happen,” said Dr. Isabel Araiza with For the Greater Good, in Corpus Christi, TX.
• “I can tell you today that air does not care about a buffer zone,” said Lamont Taylor of Citizens Alliance For Fairness And Progress, Corpus Christi, TX. “It goes across the fence, in your house, and in the next neighbor’s house. Air does not care about a buffer zone. Water, as it runs, contaminates other groundwater, so it doesn’t care about a buffer zone.”
• “They’re killing us right now, they’re killing us all, and they’re killing us all for gains,” said Juan Mancias of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas in Floresville, TX. “Anytime you dig up and gentrify any of these fishing villages that are along the coast, along the Rio Grande, along any of the rivers in Texas, guess what you’re doing: you’re killing us again. So the genocide hasn’t stopped.”

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Chispa Texas is a program of the League of Conservation Voters that aims to create healthy environments for Latinx and people of color communities.