This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Cabot's Sneaky Attack on Pennsylvania Cancer Survivor Reveals Dirty Agenda to Silence Environmentalists
By Wenonah Hauter
Cabot Oil & Gas, a company with $765 million in assets in 2017, doesn't like environmental nonprofits meddling in its dirty business in Pennsylvania. And the company is delivering this message by targeting Ray Kemble—a local 63-year old who just survived his fourth cancer surgery—with a $5 million lawsuit for speaking out about Cabot and fracking.
If corporate injustices were measured on a scale of one to ten, Cabot's latest disgraceful maneuver would be a rock-solid eleven. Back in 2010, Cabot settled a number of lawsuits brought by Dimock homeowners who claimed that the company had poisoned their groundwater, decreased their property values and threatened their health and safety. Kemble was one of those plaintiffs who signed a settlement agreement that included some unknown nondisclosure terms. It's a secrecy provision that Cabot often uses to keep its dirty practices hidden and one that state and federal regulators have cited as a hinderance to a full investigation into the impact of fracking on groundwater and public health.
While its exact terms remain concealed, Cabot's lawyers want us all to take their word for it that Kemble is in violation of the nondisclosure provision of the agreement because he has exercised his First Amendment right to warn others of the risks of fracking and encourage an end to this inherently harmful practice. Kemble's effective advocacy made him a target of Cabot's ire, and now they've taken aim and fired off a lawsuit that seeks to strip him of all he has left in the world, and then some.
Cabot's recent filing with the court asked the judge to place a cancer patient with no resources in jail until its lawyers have had a chance to interrogate him. The judge rejected its request and after the hearing, Cabot's spokesperson tried to deflect from the corporation's persecution of Kemble by claiming that it is really just using the courts to go after groups that have provided financial support to Kemble and others who have been victimized by Cabot's irresponsible fracking operations.
The irony of Cabot's claims is rich. While Cabot whines about advocacy groups supporting affected citizens in their work to stop fracking, its spokesperson didn't mention the over $600,000 the company paid out in lobbying and campaign contributions between 2011 and 2014 in Pennsylvania in an attempt to cover up the 265 operating violations it racked up over the same period.
Elected officials have happily taken campaign money from Cabot to protect its interests in the state. Food & Water Watch has been proud to stand alongside Kemble and all the other victims of Cabot and other fracking companies in Dimock, across Pennsylvania and around the country. We've provided funding so that people in Dimock who have had their drinking water taken from them have access to clean water, and to assist these courageous frontline advocates who have been fighting hard against crooked companies and bought-and-paid-for elected officials who look the other way. And we will continue to do so even in the face of corporate intimidation.
Cabot can only continue to operate by violating the fundamental rights of others. It threatens the property rights of homeowners whose groundwater is poisoned and whose property values plummet. It even relies on judges to overturn juries who grant Cabot's victims monetary damages for the harm Cabot has caused, while paying off politicians. And now the corporation wants to put an end to people's rights to speak freely about fracking.
It's time to put an end to Cabot's reign of terror in Pennsylvania. The federal Environmental Protection Agency should reopen the investigation into Dimock's groundwater that it abruptly walked away from without explanation. The state legislature should hold hearings on Cabot's business and drilling practices and the use of nondisclosure agreements to silence victims. And the state Attorney General Josh Shapiro should launch an investigation into Cabot's shameless persecution of Kemble and Cabot's misuse of the court system. It's time for these officials to step up and protect residents of Pennsylvania from the abuses of greedy and irresponsible oil and gas companies like Cabot.
Wenonah Hauter is executive director of Food & Water Watch.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Anita Desikan
The Trump administration is routinely undermining your ability — and mine, and everyone else's in this country — to exercise our democratic rights to provide input on the administration's proposed actions through the public comment process. Public comments are just what they sound like: an opportunity for anyone in the public, both individuals and organizations, to submit a comment on a proposed rule that federal agencies are required by law to read and take into account. Public comments can raise the profile of an issue, can help amplify the voices of affected communities, and can show policymakers whether a proposal has broad support or is wildly unpopular.
Picture this: a world where chocolate is as rare as gold. No more five-dollar bags of candy on Halloween. No more boxes of truffles on Valentine's day. No more roasting s'mores by the campfire. No more hot chocolate on a cold winter's day.
Who wants to live in a world like that?
By Lisa Wartenberg, MFA, RD, LD
Honey and vinegar have been used for medicinal and culinary purposes for thousands of years, with folk medicine often combining the two as a health tonic (1Trusted Source).
Trending
By Elizabeth Streit, MS, RDN, LD
Paprika is a spice made from the dried peppers of the plant Capsicum annuum.
By Tracy L. Barnett
Sources reviewed this article for accuracy.
For Sicangu Lakota water protector Cheryl Angel, Standing Rock helped her define what she stands against: an economy rooted in extraction of resources and exploitation of people and planet. It wasn't until she'd had some distance that the vision of what she stands for came into focus.
Trending
By Patrick Rogers
"I'm really into trees," said the sculptor Hugh Hayden. "I'm drawn to plants."