[Green] Fwd: [possibly spam] Fwd: Letter: 48 citizens' groups and local businesses protest Wayne planning process

[Dawn Hewitt]

FYI—dawn

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Heather Cantino <heather.cantino at gmail.com>
> Date: September 2, 2018 at 4:14:25 PM EDT
> To: Athens County Fracking Action Network <acfanohio at gmail.com>
> Subject: [possibly spam] Fwd: Letter: 48 citizens' groups and local businesses protest Wayne planning process
> 
> Thank you all for signing onto this letter, sent to the Wayne this week. It's a powerful collection of community and national voices calling for ecological management of our public forest to protect climate, sustainable economies, and our forest, air, water, and public health. 33 non-profits, 15 sustainable businesses, and 5 individuals signed on. 
> 
> And we have a chance to continue to weigh in to the Wayne. They cancelled the Aug. 30 deadline for the assessment phase (they said we were "confused" by the deadline) and lengthened the assessment process, so we have at least the next couple of months to provide testimony before they draft their report from this phase, now not due out until February 2019. 
> 
> That's the good news. The bad news is that we obtained a copy of the Wayne's $100,000 contract with Marietta College's Department of Petroleum Geology (attached) for an assessment of fracking impacts!! That's direct funneling of federal taxpayer dollars to industry, since the two people whom Tony Scardina named to receive these funds are Robert Chase (https://www.wired.com/2012/07/gas-fracking-science-conflict) and Tina Thomas (https://www.marietta.edu/person/tina-thomas). 
> 
> We are amazed that Wayne Forest Supervisor Tony Scardina, who is the decision-maker in charge of this process, thinks it's ok to pay $500/hour (or more -- we haven't learned yet what the $1000/unit line item refers to -- an hour? a workshop?) to the tune of $100k directly to industry for an assessment that by federal law is supposed to be based on science. 
> 
> This process clearly will only have integrity and become science-based if citizens insist.
> 
> Thanks for speaking out. We hope you will all continue to do so to send a message to USFS that the public insists on integrity, science, and a true evaluation of the impacts of industrial extraction from our forest on our economy, climate, air, water, public forest and health.
> Heather Cantino 
> for ACFAN and Buckeye Environmental Network
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Heather Cantino <heather.cantino at gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 11:46 PM
> Subject: Letter: 48 citizens' groups and local businesses protest Wayne planning process
> To: WaynePlanRevision at fs.fed.us, 
> 
> To Wayne Plan Revision Team:
> 
> Please acknowledge receipt.
> 
> The attached letter, from 
> * 33 local, state, regional, and national environmentally concerned organizations, 
> * 15 sustainable businesses, 
> * and five additional individuals 
> 
> registers the deep concerns of the signatories who appeal to the Wayne planning team to:
>  
> 1. do outreach and invite and listen to all those who have weighed in with objections to the 2006 Plan as well as to subsequent logging, burning, highway and ATV trail-building projects and to opening the Forest to deep-shale, high-volume horizontal drilling and fracturing by granting permission to the BLM to conduct deep-shale oil and gas lease sales,
>  
> 2. rigorously consider all of the material submitted previously to both USFS and the BLM relevant to the current planning process. This includes all legal protests, peer-reviewed and other substantive research and reports, the voluminous comments, and more than one hundred thousand petition signatures delivered to USFS/BLM over past decades concerning on-going activities on and under our state’s only National Forest. The 2006 Plan has been used and misused to justify continuing industrial extraction and other practices that are destructive to our Forest, air, water, climate, and communities’ economic and public health, as decades of protest letters and legal efforts have detailed,
> 
> and 3. as mandated by NEPA, use up-to-date science, economic and cultural data, and meaningful input from the broad community to conduct rigorous evaluation of all activities to be considered for inclusion in the new Plan. Such evaluation must consider the true economic, climate, air, water, ecosystem, and socio-cultural long-term and cumulative costs and benefits of all activities considered.
>  
> We hope you will listen to science and the public – to those not represented by industry or profit-driven spokespeople – this time around. We look forward to our voices and the science on forests, climate, and sustainable economies finally being considered in decision-making for our public forest.
> 
> The letter lists 33 grassroots, state, and national environmental groups and fifteen sustainable businesses who join public bodies, drinking water authorities, academics, Ohio University, business owners, farmers, and over a hundred thousand citizens who weighed in on Wayne management activities over the past two decades, since long before the 2006 Plan was adopted. 
> 
> Organizational objectors to the 2006 Plan and to Wayne projects before and since its adoption have included the following 43 entities: the Athens County Commission, Athens City Council, Ohio University, Burr Oak Water District, Athens County Fracking Action Network, Buckeye Forest Council (now Buckeye Environmental Network), Athens Conservancy, Hocking River Commission, Heartwood, Keep Wayne Wild, Torch Can Do, FreshWater Accountability Project, Ohio Sierra Club, Ohio Environmental Council (OEC), Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Mountain Lakes Preservation Alliance, Radioactive Waste Alert, Columbus Community Bill of Rights, Guernsey County Citizens' Support on Drilling Issues, Frack Free Lake County, Sustainable  Medina County, Ohio Allies, Frack Free Geauga, Network for Oil & Gas Accountability & Protection, Concerned Citizens Ohio, Friends for Environmental Justice, FaCT-Faith Communities Together for a Sustainable Future, Northwest Ohio Alliance to Stop Fracking, The Committee for the Youngstown Community Bill of Rights, Ohio Community Rights Network, Concerned Citizens of New Concord, Ohio River Citizens' Alliance, Ashtabula County Water Watch, Headwaters Defense, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Environment Ohio.
>  
> The letter then states, "Your current list of partners in your planning process includes few of these entities or groups and absolutely zero grassroots environmental groups. This does not speak well of your stated intent to consider public input this time around or bode well for any change from the Wayne’s consistent past disregard for community environmental and public health concerns."
> 
> The letter is attached. It must be considered as the submission of all 53 signatories as well as remind the Wayne administration of every one of the aforementioned 43 bodies, as well as the more than 100,000 signatories on petitions protesting opening the Wayne to fracking and hundreds of others who have stated their concerns about the Wayne's prioritization of extraction at the expense of climate protection, public health, and sustainable communities. 
> 
> With the new planning process, the Wayne must honor the intent of the National Environmental Policy Act and the wishes of the community and shift direction to protect our air, water, climate, and community health and well-being as the science demands.
> 
> The attached letter must be fully considered with as much weight as is given to your hired industry consultants and all others with financial ties to your agency. 
> 
> Athens County Fracking Action Network, 
> August 30, 2018
> contact: 
> Heather Cantino, 740-591-6632; heather.cantino at gmail.com;
> Christine Hughes <villagebakery at dellazona.com> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
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