We are a coalition of Middlebury College staff, faculty and students who stand in opposition to the Addison County Natural Gas project. The project will transport fracked gas from Alberta and continue Vermont and Middlebury College’s dependency on fossil fuels for the next half-century. We demand that Middlebury College meets our goals of carbon reduction through creating biomethane infrastructure separate from the Addison County Natural Gas project and by continuing to invest in conservation efforts.
Many Vermonters in communities along the route have been voicing their concerns about the impact of the construction on their property, their water supplies, the local ecology and the climate. We are in solidarity with these communities, as well as those affected by the damaging and irreversible effects of fracking at the point of extraction. This fossil fuel pipeline will impose on farmland, wetland and residential properties, and provide few economic benefits to those directly affected.
We believe that Middlebury College can stand together with Vermonters, united by a vision of an equitable and sustainable energy future achieved through a just transition that focuses on creating skilled long-term jobs through energy efficiency services and weatherization in order to reduce energy consumption overall.
As such, together we demand that Middlebury College publicly retract its statement of support from the Vermont Gas System’s filing to the Public Service Board and use its status as an intervener in the process to advocate for the interests of faculty, staff, students and administrators impacted by the short and long-term consequences of this project.
This letter was launched this week as a change.org petition and as of Tuesday morning had gathered almost 900 signatures from members of the campus community and beyond. If you want to know more about the process of fracking, there will be a screening of the movie “Gasland” in MBH 220 at 7:00 on the night of Thursday, April 25.
Middlebury staff, students and faculty against the fracked gas pipeline
