We are so blessed to live in Western PA. The landscape of our region is naturally beautiful. We enjoy the benefits of a city with the charm of many, many small towns and friendly people in and surrounding Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. We are blessed. My family is blessed. We are healthy, vital and all participate fully in life!
Within our blessings there is some dissonance. Perhaps I notice this dissonance a bit more, as I am not a Western PA native. I was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of the D.C. area. I've lived in Western PA for my whole married life, that's 26 years. I've chosen to let loose and talk about what I've been feeling. Juxtaposed with the beauty within us and surrounding us is a veil. Just below the veil sits not only a legacy of raped land and waters and surely raped people. That legacy has not ended. It is happening in the present moment and is real right now. It is still happening today and we are all to some degree unknowing participants. We sit and stand in the same room as others disassociated from our fellow human beings while focussing on our electronic devices. We forget about the beauty and necessity of simply BEING in the landscape, the great outdoors and we stay inside for most of our days. We are addicted to oil and gas. We drive our cars, fly in planes, wear plastic vegan shoes and clothing, eat meat, chicken, fish, and dairy foods. We poop and pee into a piped system that was designed a long time ago and does not work. It carries what leaves our bodies away, away into the rivers. What is away anyway? We're about to support a billions of dollars new "pipe" system to comply with a consent decree that makes no sense in our new world.
Our new world? What do you mean by that? We are living at this moment in time at the end of a 26,000 year cycle. The end of the Mayan calendar and the end of many eras according to many spiritual and religious traditions. We have the opportunity right NOW to shift our awareness and consciousness in ways that were not possible at other times in history or herstory.
We have the opportunity to change the story to one of complete gratitude, peace, and abundance. The opportunity to repair the world beginning with ourselves, our own inner ecosystems and working outward into our landscape. Some of us are BEING the CHANGE we with to see in this world NOW!
How? Glad you asked!
We are beginning to connect the dots in the Pittsburgh region. Those of us who have been working under the radar, away from what some could consider 'real' jobs, outside of the institutions of health care, education and government, those of us who have been working on Transition Town (check out Rob Hopkins and the Transition Town Movement he spearheaded in Totnes, England in 2005, perhaps the white man and women's version of re-discovering all of our indigenous roots?!:) projects are arriving. A few of these projects I have been directly facilitating. Two example projects are Sustainable Monroeville (sustainablemonroeville.blogspot.com) and the Schwartz Living Market (http://1317eastcarson.blogspot.com out of which has just hatched the For One Peace Artist Cooperative) process. These Transition Town, Regenerative, Independent processes along with other processes in the area after about six years have reached critical mass and are bearing fruit. Greg Boulos and his wife's Blackberry Meadows Farm are producing fresh Community Supported Agriculture for community and teaching people how to grow their own food. Mark Dixon of YERT.org fame has been active in numerous projects in the region including creating a film for Rachel Carson's 50th Anniversary last year with Mayor of Forest Hills' Patricia de Marco. Jeff Newman has started a cooperative called Steel City Soils in Braddock, PA and is demonstrating how organic produce can be turned into the best black gold there is on the planet! Kate O'Brien is showing how that black gold compost is used on a private Mckeesrocks, PA household lawn to grow some of the largest and most productive gardens including the most enormous sunflowers I ever did see! Maren Cooke's monthly Sustainability Salons just keep getting better and better and are educating more and more people about our Regenerative Future. Many more examples are exploding all around the Pittsburgh region!
And we are figuring out as a culture how to move beyond our addictions and heal from the inside out. As a neurodevelopmental optometrist specializing in optometric vision therapy, I understand deeply what is transpiring and what is possible with the WILL of our Human Spirit, and I am super excited about this moment in time as we are lifting the veil of dis-ease and morphing ourselves and the planet into the EDEN our planet is!
What is the secret? Positivity! Centering in our hearts, taking care of ourselves in ways we used to think were selfish, and sharing all we can with others all the time. That's it. That simple. That profound!
And now the deep, deep thanks for what is happening now to those that continue in the trenches for the short term. We'll shift now to work with one another on a major issue in this Western PA region. A situation that is about to transform our region into a true REGENERATIVE town!
Thank You Matt Mehalik, formerly of Sustainable Pittsburgh for organizing the meeting in Beaver County PA on Thursday evening, December 1, 2016 regarding the PROPOSED Shell Oil "Cracker" Plant where 150 concerned citizens met in Beaver County to hear many amazing speakers and see a documentary on how this type of plant affects community. Two amazing women spoke from their hearts about Cancer Alley, Louisiana where there is a "Cracker" Plant. We learned that this Cracker Plant proposal for Beaver county, PA is NOT a done deal. In other words, this plant does NOT need to be constructed and may not be constructed even as Shell Oil acts as if the installation of this plant is inevitable. We learned that what the industry tells us is not the truth. We also heard some of the facts from Clean Water Action's Adam Tuznik. Thank You! Go to CleanWaterAction.org to the PA tab for updates on Actions.
Thank you Nora Alwine of the PA Department of Environmental Protection for answering a few questions related to the proposed Shell Oil Ethane "Cracker" Plant one half hour north of Pittsburgh, PA in Beaver County, Potter Township at the intersection of Routes 376 and 18. Thanks for being available for questions at 412-442-4137 or nalwine@pa.gov. Thanks for providing the contact information for both the Water and Air Permit reviewers for this proposed site. The Water Permit Reviewer is Ryan Decker, rydecker@pa.gov, 412-442-4144. The Air Permit Reviewer is Alan Binder, 412-442-4168 ABinder@pa.gov.
One or more permits have been issued and Shell Oil is now going for an amendment to the current permit which will allow them to construct the Cracker Plant on the designated site in Potter. It is VERY IMPORTANT that ALL of us (yes that means YOU as you are reading this article!! :) attend the DEP of PA Hearing on this issue Thursday, December 15, 2016. SAVE the time between 5:00 PM and 9:00 PM that evening, register with Nora Alwine of the DEP (see contact information above) if you'd like to speak for three minutes, and let's carpool to Beaver County together! Following the meeting on December 15, 2016, there will be a comment period open until December 26, 2016. Yes, right smack in the middle of holiday season!
There is an extensive fact sheet on the PA DEP.PA.gov web site. Follow this trail to get there:
1) Go to the dep.pa.gov web site 2) On the front page of the site, click on Regional Resources 3) Scroll down and click on Southwest Regional 4) Scroll again and click on Community Information 5) Scroll again and click on Shell and you'll see the extensive FACT SHEET describing what Shell Oil is asking for.
Now I will share much of what I plan to say in my testimony at this upcoming DEP Hearing:
Hello Community members and Shell Oil Company members. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you for a few minutes this evening. I am feeling so blessed that the opportunity has arisen for so much of the community to come together and unify around our Regenerative Future which is NOW! I am feeling so much compassion for all of us and feeling gratefulness to be standing before you. I know how lucky and blessed I am. I juice each and every morning for myself and for my family. It's our morning detox. As we go inside and detoxify our inner ecosystems, our brains and hearts become clearer and we start to understand. I understand why spirit has guided us to visit Beaver, the site of this proposed Shell Cracker plant. The paradigm shift from 1957 when the Shippensport Nuclear Power Plant was installed a few miles up the Ohio River from this former Zinc Smelter Plant Site (that still carries the toxic load of Mercury and Lead) was the Extractive Paradigm. That it's OK to take from (a.k.a. RAPE) the Earth, our Mother, our Mother Earth, and give nothing in return.
As 2016 comes to a close, many of us are waking up in a new reality. At this moment, at this time, we understand Mother Earth, our Mother, is exhausted from being raped so brutally and so consistently. She is ready for deep, deep compassion and deep recovery. All of us are!
Shell Oil executives and workers who have so carefully prepared the infrastructure for this proposed plant. Thank You! Mother Earth has a Regenerative, Rejeuvenative proposal for you. Employ yourselves and your workers in the Regenerative, Rejeuvenative business of the NEW EARTH. Give back more than you take. Double the number of workers to 12,000 people who will be permanently employed at the site of this former Zinc Smelter Plant. Replace the Cracker Plant plans with a REGENERATIVE Plant that will produce energy in a REGENERATIVE WAY and restore the Earth in its operation. Build a LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE Campus on that 400 acre site. Use all of the locals who have built or are registered to build Living Buildings in Pittsburgh such as The Center for Sustainable Living and the SEED classroom at Phipps Conservatory, the Frick Environmental Center and The Schwartz Living Market as resources in the Pittsburgh region. Teach your workers Permaculture, teach them how to take care of themselves from the inside out. Teach them both inner ecosystem cleansing, outer ecosystem (air, water, spirit, emotional clarity) cleansing and then maintenance to show the planet how one of the most toxic places on Planet Earth can not only be restored to its original beautifully magnificent self, but can exceed everyone's wildest expectations and become the EDEN inside and out that we were all meant to be in amazing cooperative, collaborative and regenerative community. Thank you Shell Oil for giving us this opportunity for paradigm shifting just upstream from the POINT~ the sacred union of the Four Rivers in Pittsburgh, PA. So many of us are so very excited! May we all be blessed as we work together as ONE!~:)
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