Public health and safety advocates protest pipeline easement after Marsh Creek Lake spill, call for cancellation of Mariner East permits

Photo by Rachael Warriner.

Exton, PA -- This morning, 20 members of the Mama Bear Brigade and accompanying environmental groups, including Food & Water Action, demanded that the permits for the dangerous Mariner East pipeline project be revoked. They sang songs, chanted, and poured out water on the easement before leaving. 

On August 11th, Sunoco spilled tens of thousands of gallons of industrial drilling mud into Marsh Creek Lake. Marsh Creek is the source of drinking water for multiple water authorities in Chester County. 

“As we’ve seen, this pipeline hasn’t even gone into operation and is already threatening the health and safety of the surrounding communities, who rely on Marsh Creek for their clean drinking water and don’t want to be poisoned by pipeline chemicals,” says Sam Rubin, organizer for Food & Water Action. 

“Sunoco is destroying our community, and has destroyed water from here to Delaware County,” says Connor Young, a member of the Mama Bear Brigade. “These permits need to be pulled now.”

“Sunoco has demonstrated that they are unable to construct or operate this pipeline safely,” says Luke Bauerlein, also a member of the Mama Bear Brigade. “We’re here to hold Sunoco accountable and challenge the damage to our communities, democracy, and climate.”

Today’s action was preceded by a projection action at the DEP Southeastern regional headquarters on August 20th, where the Mama Bear Brigade, Food & Water Action, and Sunrise Berks projected Sunoco’s permit violations onto an outside wall and demanded that the DEP pull the permits for the pipeline. On August 21st, the Mama Bear Brigade and Sunrise Berks held a wide-awake action at DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell’s home in Dauphin county to demand that the permits for this dangerous pipeline be revoked. 

The Mariner East pipeline would carry highly volatile liquids -- ethane, butane, pentane, and propane -- from fracking fields in Western PA, Ohio, and West Virginia to the Delaware River for export, to be made into plastic water bottles overseas. The dangerous pipeline will provide enough precursors to produce the equivalent of 1,000,000,000 disposable water bottles every single day. Sunoco and its parent company, Energy Transfer, have one of the worst safety records of any pipeline operator in the country. A weld-inspector has pleaded guilty to falsifying weld inspection reports on the pipeline. There are over 40 schools in the probable fatality blast zone of the Mariner East.