At-Large Councilmember Helen Gym Joins Chorus of Voices Calling for the Closure of PES Refinery

By Jillian Baxter

While the City seems content to keep giving Philadelphia Energy Solutions more chances, others have run out of patience.

“There are thousands of Philadelphians who live in close proximity to this plant and 1,000 workers who show up everyday with the goal of providing for their families and getting home safe,” says At-Large Councilmember Helen Gym in her response on Twitter. “The refinery should be shut down until a full and independent investigation by city, state, and federal officials have determined the cause of the explosion and the fires, assessed and improved safety protocols, and communicated clearly to residents and workers of these findings.”

The Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), a nonprofit organization comprised of health professionals dedicated to protecting the health of the public, the environment and communities, issued a statement on the explosion urging the City to take every precaution after the latest incident.

“This is the second fire within the past two weeks at the refinery,” the release, offered jointly by PSR Interim Executive Director Walter Tsou and PSR President Pouné Saberi, states. “We are deeply concerned for the safety of the workers and nearby residents.” While testing by Philadelphia’s Air Management Service Laboratory found no unsafe emissions from the explosion, PSR and air quality experts are not convinced. “Our concern is that air monitors may not be capturing accurate air pollution data if the plumes do not travel over the site.”

“We hold policy makers like Kenyatta Johnson, Jordan Harris, Mayor Jim Kenny, and city council members-at-large accountable for protecting the health of the public from catastrophes such as this one,” the PSR release continues. “Approving any other fossil fuel infrastructure in Philadelphia, such as the SEPTA gas plant and liquefied natural gas plant, will create more unacceptable sacrifice zones.”

The PES refinery has a history of safety scares. Friday’s explosion is the fourth fire at the refinery in just eight years. The most serious accident occurred in 2009 when 13 workers were sent to the hospital after a Hydrogen Fluoride (HF) leak. HF, a highly toxic gas, is still used today at the refinery, despite a push by the United Steelworkers Union to replace it with a less hazardous alternative. Luckily, no HF was involved in the explosion last Friday. If it had been, the news would likely be grim. “Philadelphia and surrounding communities appear to have narrowly dodged a catastrophe,” says Joseph Minott, executive director of the Clean Air Council, in a letter calling for the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) to investigate the explosion. 

Gym believes we can and must do better. “No Philadelphian should have to wake up with their city on fire.”

The Green Party’s candidate for governor lays out his vision

For ten years Grid magazine has invited us to repair the planet and help one another. Most media scream that everything is getting worse because people are dangerous or stupid. Yet thousands of Philadelphians are building hundreds of businesses and organizations that shift power toward ecology and justice.

Meanwhile, modern society demands we compromise with the destruction of nature and the abuse of labor—that we shrink our dreams in order to have a home and a job. That we vote for candidates who will cause less damage rather than reverse damage. Thus there is constant social tension between tradition, reform and revolution. Between hierarchy and equality. Between caution and risk.

Those who have racial privilege and achieved comforts—homeownership, a retirement fund, decent health insurance, restaurant meals, travel, debts paid—are often satisfied with reform. But when an increasing part of the public lacks secure housing, steady work, medical care, retirement without debt and regular meals, then anger grows—especially among Black and brown people, the middle class and millennials. Eventually, without bold change, rich and poor alike will endure boiling summers, impossible food prices and greater violence.

So we are each challenged to decide how much to compromise or how much to rebel. Our paths forward are rugged because today without fossil fuels and uranium we could not heat and cool our homes, could not cook dinner, could not take hot showers, could not light the night. And yet these fuels poison the future.

The good news is that crude technologies, faulty science, poor decisions and greed got us into this mess. Therefore, new technologies, geoscience, smart decisions and generosity must drive the next Philadelphia.

To preserve civilization, we’ll need to rebuild it completely. Weaving nature into cities is a vast, orderly process that feeds and warms us without fossil fuels; delights us without shopping; heals us without pills; moves us without cars; protects us without wars; enriches us without dollars; employs us without pollution.

Let’s be realistic: this will take a while. Explicit slavery was banned in this nation partly because crazy Quakers first declared it evil, starting in Philadelphia 177 years before emancipation. Most workers now work eight-hour days with two days free because crazy, angry laborers bossed the bosses for two hundred years. Women can vote today because crazy ladies started demanding suffrage 72 years earlier. In each campaign, people risked their lives and homes. And in each they were told to shut up.

Today, a small group of proudly crazy people are saying that during the next decades, Philadelphians can systematically transform our car-clogged, fossil-fueled, gentrifying city, empowering the poor while fully employing the next ten generations. Such solutions surround us, as this magazine proves. Every neighborhood can enjoy green jobs, secure housing, cheap utilities, great schools, urban farms and free medical care.

Who could argue? Philadelphia’s current power brokers, who dominate land, law, labor and money. Their principal notion of economic development in this hungry city is condos and skyscrapers serving major employers—evicting the poor. They compromise our rebellion by making us compete for jobs, grants and loans. They purchase our silence.

Thus we will not prevail without confronting greed. We need not only to think outside the box, we need to break outside of it.

This is why the Green Party asked me to be their candidate for Pennsylvania governor in 2018. Both major party candidates favor fracking, accept mass incarceration, oppose marijuana legalization and are dominated by insurance lobbyists and corporate cash.

Greens intend to ban fracking, end mass incarceration, expand green jobs, expand transit and bike paths, extend Medicare to everyone based on co-ops, prioritize worker ownership, foster regional organic agriculture, restore fresh air and water, legalize marijuana and ensure that education inspires creativity—building cities as beautiful as our children.

Paul Glover is the author of six books on grassroots power, including Green Jobs Philly; he is one of four candidates for governor on the Pennsylvania ballot. 

Federal policies are harming Pennsylvania

Illustration by Clarissa Eck

By Jacqui Bonomo

President Trump’s napalming of environmental protection is withering the air, water, landscape and public health of our nation. As the president’s agenda begins to manifest in on-the-ground changes—at the state and federal levels, in our fragile ecosystems, in waterways and throughout our imperiled climate system—we move closer to crises that future leaders, laws and technology will be hard-pressed to reverse.

The most striking impact of the president’s effect in Pennsylvania is how it’s emboldened anti-environmental elected officials in the state Legislature. The past year saw an unprecedented series of attacks on previously hard-fought, and typically bipartisan, environmental protections that, at least until now, provided basic measures and tools to clean our air and water. The Trump effect has spawned copycat policymakers who embrace the same bombastic and divisive tactics and rhetoric as the president. If the electorate does not reject these destructive personalities or turn them out of office, the prospect becomes grim for providing a healthy environment and uncompromised climate systems to future generations. 

But despite the extreme anti-environmental provocations of the Trump team, we are seeing small victories for clean water and air. A large state coalition of clean water advocates recently beat back the Trump administration’s attempt to zero out the budget for watershed protection and restoration projects in local streams of the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The recently passed state budget closed Pennsylvania’s solar borders, and now clean energy credits needed to meet our renewable energy goals must come from solar projects and jobs produced here, and not from out of state, as previously allowed.  

We are witnessing a profound rejection of Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, and his demolition of the Clean Power Plan, a reasonable path forward to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our communities are stepping up to take their climate and clean energy futures into their own hands. Backed by their constituents, mayors and elected officials around the commonwealth have declared their intention to reduce emissions and move forward with climate action in places like Bethlehem, Downingtown, Mount Pocono, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Swarthmore and State College, with the list growing every day.

There are opportunities for state and federal policymakers to shed the polarized fever that’s beset them and make progress for our environment. Congress could surprise us and produce a good Farm Bill reauthorization that helps Pennsylvania agriculture and water quality, or pass the RECLAIM Act to provide funding to accelerate restoration of land and water impacted by legacy pollution from coal mining. The state Legislature could get serious about reforming and reauthorizing the alternative energy portfolio standard and continue to build on 70,000 clean energy jobs around the state. 

Yet, the pull of the president’s fear-driven environmental policy is so strong, I would not count on it. My money is on the regular folks and emerging environmental leaders who know there is too much at stake, and who will not allow this president to get in our way.

_____
Jacqui Bonomo is the president and CEO of PennFuture, a statewide environmental advocacy organization in Pennsylvania.

Two Pennsylvania court cases could end partisan political districts—possibly even in time for the 2018 elections

Illustration by Michael Wohlberg

By Kyle Bagenstose

The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania tackles a long list of pressing issues: drilling in the Marcellus shale, child welfare, collective bargaining and campaign finance among them.

But more than any other, it is gerrymandering—the political process of drawing uneven election maps to heavily favor one party—that sets off alarm bells for league vice president and Chester County native Carol Kuniholm.

“The system is broken, and democracy is dying in Pennsylvania if we don’t fix it,” Kuniholm said.

Gerrymandering is such an important topic for the league that in 2016 members helped launch Fair Districts PA, an organization fighting for competitive elections. Kuniholm serves as chair and says the organization is closely watching two ongoing court cases that, if the pieces fall into place, could require a redraw of Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts ahead of next fall’s general elections.

“Normally, the courts don’t involve themselves in a legislative process. It will be interesting to see what happens,” she said.

Also following closely is Michael Li, senior redistrict counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Li points out that even though Pennsylvania is a closely contested state, usually voting about 50-50 in statewide elections, Republicans hold a 13-to-5 edge in congressional districts. But he’s more troubled by the noncompetitiveness in recent elections.

“The problem is not only the 13-5, but that it’s locked in,” Li said.

Li explains that although gerrymandering has existed for more than 200 years, new technologies now allow politicians to use “surgical” precision in redrawing maps. A redraw by Pennsylvania Republicans in between the 2010 and 2012 elections provides evidence.

In the first election, 51 percent of Pennsylvania voters picked Republicans and 47 percent picked Democrats. Power flipped, with the Republicans gaining five seats for a total of 12.

Two years later Democrats surged back, winning 50 percent of the vote to the Republicans’ 48 percent. But Democrats actually lost a district, and haven’t won one since.

Having seen enough, the League of Women Voters filed suit against the state this year. What happened next was highly unusual: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to fast track the suit and require a lower court judge to render a decision by Dec. 31. Even if the court favors state Republican leaders contesting the suit, the state Supreme Court could overrule it.

“The question becomes, ‘How can you undo [gerrymandering]?’” Li said.

Because primaries would start in the spring, a likely route would be to put in place an independent “special master” to redraw the lines for the 2018 elections, Li said. The court could also favor a request from the league to make new rules for legislators for future redistricting efforts, such as not allowing the use of party registration data in the process.

“The long-term solution is an independent commission,” Kuniholm added.

Should both courts rule in favor of state Republicans, there’s a second, federal gerrymandering case brought by five Pennsylvania voters that began in December. But Li thinks it’s a long shot, as it argues “that you can’t have any partisanship at all” during redrawing, he says.

“This has not been tried before,” Li said. “It potentially opens the door in a way that the U.S. Supreme Court might not be comfortable with… where literally any map is challengeable.”

By June, both suits could be moot, depending on how the Supreme Court rules on a third suit, Gill v. Whitford. The landmark case out of Wisconsin could make highly partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional nationwide. Although the Supreme Court has heard gerrymandering cases in the past and declined to curb it, Li believes new data and mapping technologies allow a higher level of scrutiny that could turn the tide.

Should all fail, Kuniholm says there will be one consolation. Through court documents, she says the public will learn what kinds of conversations went on in 2011 when Pennsylvania Republicans redrew the maps.

“I want people to see these are the names of the people who sat in a room and deliberately denied millions of Pennsylvanians a fair, free vote,” she said. “No matter what the decision in these cases, that information will be made public.”