Oil and Gas Ordinance Update: Monday, June 3 at 7:00 PM at the Monroeville Public Library!

FREE and Open to the Public:

Please join us on Monday evening, June 3, 2018 in the downstairs program room of the Monroeville Public Library from 7:00 to 8:30 PM for an update about the existing and planned oil and gas ordinance for Monroeville, PA. No matter where you live, this will be an incredibly informative and important evening. 

Thank you Monroeville resident Kelly Yagatich, Gateway High School and University of Pittsburgh graduate, for planning this educational evening for the residents, council, Mayor, Municipal Manager, and beyond! 

Kelly, your generation is our future. May the next 7 generations carry on in your footsteps.

Blessings to us all as we move greacefully into our Regenerative Future NOW! 

Elisa B., Lois D. and Dave M. for Sustainable Monroeville :)

From the amazing Patricia DeMarco, our Western PA local Rachel Carsonesque incredible woman:

As my May blog post in Pathways and Transitions, I am sharing the keynote address I gave in Wheeling West Virginia at a Green New Deal Town Hall.  This is the time to recognize that the transition away from fossil fuels is no longer optional, but critical for our survival.  The path forward offers better choices, robust opportunities and a brighter future for our children and grandchildren.  We must decide to leave a living planet as our legacy.  We must organize and campaign for justice and fairness in the transformation.

Green Jobs and a Living Planet - Make it Happen! https://patriciademarco.com/blog-2/

For more discussion on this topic, join the Battle of Homestead Foundation for a roundtable discussion "Labor and Environmental Coalitions: A Must for survival of Both" on June 8, 2019 at 1:30 to 3:00 PM at the Pump House 880 East Waterfront Drive, Munhall PA 15120  Free and open to the public.

In Solidarity,

Patty

Live in harmony with nature

Patricia M. DeMarco, Ph.D.

Author: "Pathways to Our Sustainable Future-  Global Perspective from Pittsburgh"

Forest Hills Borough Council, 2016-2020

Visiting Researcher & Writer, Carnegie Mellon University

Senior Scholar and Adjunct Faculty, Chatham University

2017 William Freudenburg Lifetime Achievement Award

2018 Visionary of the Year- PA Interfaith Power and Light

(412) 708-9277

www.patriciademarco.com

Erica Jackson of FracTracker to speak at the Monroeville Public Library. Monday, March 11, 2019 from 7:00 to 8:30 PM

Hello and Happy March, 2019!

In collaboration with the Monroeville Public Library and Sustainable Monroeville, Erica Jackson of FracTracker will talk about local and regional oil and gas issues, with time for Q&A and time to listen to the community's needs around the topic. She'll also talk about the FracTracker Alliance app, a citizen science tool you can use to support data transparency and fracking resistance.

Monday evening, March 11, 2019 from 7:00 to 8:30 PM with Erica Jackson of FracTracker. Free and open to the public!

Contact person: Erica Jackson, Community Outreach and Communications Specialist, FracTracker Alliance. Phone: 412-229-7514 Email: jackson@fractracker.org

See you on Monday, March 11, 2019 in the Yolanda Room at the Monroeville Public Library!

ReplyForward

Monroeville's Ordinance for Stormwater Management....

Thursday evening, September 6, 2018 at 7:00 pm is the Monroeville Council Study Session. 
Take a look at the draft ordinance on the MS4 plan for Monroeville. This will be discussed tonight. 
http://www.monroeville.pa.us/PDF/PollutionControlFloodReductionOrdDraft.pdf

See the Monroeville web site for details.

Health Effects of Unconventional Shale Gas Development on Children

Please attend the August meeting of Sustainable Monroeville at the Monroeville Public Library on Monday evening, August 6, 2018 from 7:00 to 8:30 pm. The program will cover the health effects of fracking on children and adults in communities where unconventional shale gas development (fracking) is occuring. Some of the  amazing speakers include Lois Bjornson, Dr. Ned Ketyer, and Kelly Yagatich. We'll hear an update on the state of the oil and gas ordinance in Monroeville, PA and will share the map our municipal manager, Tim Little prepared showing the proximity of both active and proposed well pads in Plum and Penn Township to Monroeville, PA. Existing Murrysville well pads are not yet on this map. Flyers will be available detailing the Environmental Health Registry for people who live within five miles of a well pad which already includes some of the population in Monroeville and likely will include all who live in Monroeville once all of the proposed pads are built likely within the next few years.

Lois Bower-Bjornson is the mother of four and lives in the most heavily fracked county in Pennsylvania Washington County. Lois is a field organizer for Clean Air Council. She works on the local, state, & federal levels to address communities concerns of living with oil and gas and their backyards.

Dr. Ned Ketyer has special interests in developmental pediatrics and preventative medicine, specifically how nutrition and the environment affect health. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont and his medical degree from Northwestern University Medical School. He completed his residency at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. As one of the founding physicians of Pediatric Alliance, PC, Dr. Ketyer served as its president from 1997-2004. He has been practicing general pediatrics at Pediatric Alliance since 1990. Dr. Ketyer and his wife have three boys and live in Pittsburgh's South Hills. 

Kelly Yagatich works for Clean Air Council and is a resident of Monroeville. Kelly will be informing us of the petrochemical build out of Shell's new proposed ethane cracker plant 30 miles north of Pittsburgh and sharing the same airshed as Pittsburgh, PA.

SAVE the DATE: There will be an event co-sponsored by the Environmental Health Project, ProtecT PT and Sustainable Monroeville on Wednesday, August 29, 2018 at the Penn Area Library Multi-Purpose room from 10 am to 2 pm in Harrison City, PA 15636 to register with the health registry

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please share this information widely. We are depending on you the community to spread the word and bring your friends as neighbors to this informative meeting. 

Thanks so much!

Like Sustainable Monroeville on Facebook:)

Sustainable Monroeville Meetings, Monroeville Citizen's Night and More! You Tube Link on FERC and Eminent Domain...

I want to take this time to thank everybody who attended April's Sustainable Monroeville meeting, and for any of you who may have missed it, the video is pinned to the top of the Sustainable Monroeville's Facebook page. 

Please mark your calendar for our next Sustainable Monroeville meeting on Monday, May 7, 2018 at 7:00 pm at the Monroeville Public Library (MPL). During April, 2018, our concerns with Huntley and Huntley’s operations were not resolved and these concerns will be discussed. The seismic testing company hired by H&H, Geokinetics, may have ushered their seismic testing equipment away from Monroeville, but they didn’t leave here before violating duties outlined in Monroeville's seismic testing settlement agreement. There are unanswered questions as to why this happened. We need to remind Monroeville Municipal Council of this at the Monroeville Council Meeting on Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at 7:00 PM in Monroeville Municipal Council Chambers) while Geokinetics continues their seismic surveys in surrounding areas. For this reason, we recommend anyone having a “no seismic testing” yard sign continue displaying them. If more are needed, we’ll have them available this coming Monday evening at the Sustainable Monroeville meeting at the MPL.

MEETING AGENDA:

• Update on local Seismic Testing challenges - an update from Food and Water Watch. Q&A to address those concerns. 
• Information by Lois Drumheller relating to Air Quality Standards and Environmental Protection (EPA). 
• We also welcome our guest,  Debra Smit, who is Communications Director of the Breathe project. Her talk will go into further detail about what is being done locally about the standards of air and water. Remember, we have a municipality that has not yet addressed this in any form of an ordinance to regulate what MUST be done with the oil and gas industry to guarantee our air and water rules when it comes to gas and oil operations.
• Meeting Dates:
• Monday, May 7, at 7:00 PM Sustainable Monroeville at MPL
• Tuesday, May 8 at 7:00 PM Monroeville Council Meeting at the Monroeville Municipal Building

Please join us on Monday, May 7th at 7 PM, Monroeville Public Library’s Program Room (downstairs, by the children’s library) and save the other meeting date too. 

Feel free to share this information widely and invite your councilperson, the Mayor of Monroeville, and the Municipal manager personally to the upcoming meeting of Sustainable Monroeville by sending an e-mail or calling the municipal building...This is a community job! 

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

For Sustainable Monroeville, Great Thanks!

LoisDrumheller

l_drumheller@me.com
412.374.0870-412.736.1765 (m)

(e): sustainablemonroeville@gmail.com
www.sustainablemonroeville.blogspot.com

Like Sustainable Monroeville on Facebook!

Check out this brand new informational video:

https://youtu.be/wdZ0ORE7KPw

You Are Invited! Celebrating Moving Into Our Regenerative Future Now!

Hello, and Happy warm sunny days! *** 

Sustainable Monroeville has been collaborating with Food and Water Watch, and we are deeply grateful for their insights regarding our move into our beyond sustainable, regenerative future. What does a regenerative future, now, look like? Hey, scroll back and read and study the blogs from the inception of Sustainable Monroeville in 2009-2010 to learn about morphing culture... How do we create a healthier economy in Monroeville, PA and beyond? We can support many more small businesses, social and environmental justice, more community interaction and integrating solar, wind, and growing our own food... Imagine what it will look like in our town with all of the front, back and side yards in Monroeville of both private residences, municipal property, and commercial spaces, including the lawn of Forbes Regional Hospital as Food Forests with solar panels and small cylindrical Wind Stax, wind turbines .. Plant that seed today! Blessings for a wonderful end of 2017, Elisa Beck:)

What's Next?
Let's celebrate our accomplishments! 
December 4, 2017 from 6:00 to 10:00 PM: Please join Food & Water Watch and Sustainable Monroeville as we host a potluck celebrating a year of Allegheny County communities standing up to fight the fracking industry.

***Help us keep track of how many people we should be prepared for by RSVPing here: fwwat.ch/mopfundraiser. Once you RSVP, we'll send you an email with the event location ***

We’ve seen amazing victories over the past year. In Monroeville and Oakmont, we passed ordinances to protect communities from seismic testing, and are moving forward with oil and gas zoning ordinances to protect families from fracking. The Plum Borough community is fighting newly proposed fracking wells and underground injection wells for the disposal of fracking wastewater.

These victories show what is possible when we get organized to fight for our health and safety. Food & Water Watch wants to replicate our fight in many of the surrounding communities, such as North Huntington, Upper and Lower Burrell, Pitcairn, and Penn Hills. That means building the resources we’ll need to scale up this important work.

Please consider signing up as a monthly contributor to Food & Water Watch at this event! If you can't make the event, or want to sign up as a member before you come, you can do so here:

http://act.foodandwaterwatch.org/site/Donation2?6194.donation=form1&df_id=6194&mfc_pref=T

We’ll have de-toxifying green drinks, made with organic veggies and roots, as well as delicious salad and soup. There will be a potluck starting at 6 PM so please feel free to bring vegan, preferably organic, dishes.

Starting at 7 PM we'll have a short program with speakers including former Pittsburgh City Councilman Doug Shields, who has led the Food & Water Watch’s Municipal Outreach Project.

RSVP at this link and we'll send you an email with the event location:
fwwat.ch/mopfundraiser

To read more about our campaign, check out this Post-Gazette article: http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2017/05/30/Marcellus-Shale-drilling-Allegheny-County-zoning-ordinance-pa/stories/201705240023

A Drop in the Ocean: Sustainable Monroeville

A Drop in the Ocean

From the album: Cover Photos

By dropintheocean.co

What has Sustainable Monroeville, rather the people in the group, and the Monroeville Library and the Monroeville Food Garden and all the volunteers accomplished over these past, almost four years?Perhaps just a drop in the ocean, but we certainly have begun to educate ourselves about what it means to be a sustainable community and help to move Monroeville forward in the Green Economy. Join us this coming Monday evening, November 5, 2012 to plan our future! 2013, Here We Come!

Please watch this video short and share images of what you see here in Western, PA so we can reach out further and educate more and more people here in Western, PA and around the world for the need to understand and implement the work we do. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4abGpdEXf6g

Who conceived this video? It was a group of folks, including my friend Diana Rotberg Bray and a few of her children, and their friends. We have known each other since perhaps even before kindergarten. We were in a photography class together in eleventh grade. And then she married an amazing Australian man, had four children and well, what led to this video, that part, is history.

Be present in this moment. Linking the world together. Connecting the dots. Raising Awareness. One moment at a time.

See you on Monday, November 5, 2012 in the downstairs program room of the Monroeville Public Library from 7:00 to 8:30 PM.

Elisa Beck
Sustainable Monroeville, founded February, 2009
A Transition Town Process

Rachel Carson Legacy Conference: September 24, 2010

If you pick two conferences to attend this year in Pittsburgh, make this one of them!

Challenging Marcellus Shale:
Consequences and Alternatives
Keynote Speaker: Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Ph.D., MD - one of Sweden’s foremost cancer scientists and the founder of The Natural Step.
Register Here
September 24, 2010Pittsburgh, PA

The 2010 Rachel Carson Legacy Conference : Challenging Marcellus Shale - Consequences and Alternatives will address the health, environmental and community effects Pennsylvania will face with the development of the Marcellus Shale natural gas fields.
We have gathered people from New York, Colorado and Pennsylvania with experience and expertise in evaluating hte results of the deep shale fracking industry. The Alternatives approach will be highlighted by keynote speaker Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt of Sweden founder of The Natural Step process for reaching a sustainable economy. He will be followed by Ken Melamed, Mayor of Whistler, B.C., who will describe the Whistler 2020 plan as implemented based on Dr. Robert's approach and a panel of renewable and sustainable energy businesses illustrating current economically viable applications of renewable energy systems. Learn more and register

Fracking for Natural Gas

Here is the link to Mayor Calvin Tillman's presentation from Dish, Texas who spoke at Duquesne University about the realities of Marcellus-Barnett shale drilling. The event, which is sponsored by Duquesne University’s Center for Environmental Research and Education, covered a range of topics, from the economic impact of gas drilling in DISH to demands on infrastructure, such as roads, and water supplies, and noise issues.

A Toxic Spew

The horrific news about the BP offshore platform explosion is raising our awareness about drilling, oil dependency and corporate profits. With events unfolding, many point to simple pure negligence resulting in a bleeding oil gusher.

This event prompts us to connect more closely with the concern in the what underlies our community connection in the Marcellus Shale. To focus more clearly, hot off the press from Newsweek is insight into "fracking" oil and gas. How do you think this story unfolds for Western PA?

Image Source: Newsweek 2010