Given by Randy Cunningham to the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee on April 10, 2019.
The stated motivation behind SB 33 is to protect critical infrastructure facilities – by and large oil and gas facilities – from environmentally inspired damage and vandalism. The examples proponents give of such destruction or tampering are from out of state. What is not mentioned is who is the greater threat to the health and safety and rights of the people of Ohio. I think we should look at the record of the very industry that is pushing for this legislation. A few examples will make my point.
First, we have the destruction of the historic 1843 Stoneman House in Morrow County that was in the way of the Rover Pipeline under construction by Energy Transfer. The Stoneman house was demolished in 2016. It ran afoul of the FERC which is a regulatory body with jurisdiction over pipelines. Seems they forgot to get FERC’s permission before bulldozing the house.
Then we had the destruction of a pristine wetlands in Tuscarawas County during Rover’s rampage across the state. Energy Transfer dumped two million gallons of drilling mud into a wetland in Tuscarawas County in 2017. This was on top of continuous mishaps and accidents that resulted in the Ohio EPA issuing 19 violation notices against the company for various accidents that polluted streams along the path of Rover, and polluting sources of drinking water for local communities.
We have the record of fracking gas pipelines exploding in Ohio. One of the most recent ones occurred in January in Noble County in a part of the state where numerous pipelines converge for the proposed petrochemical plastics complex being built in Belmont County. There have been 5 such explosions in the area in the last two to three years.
Tally up the damage done. Then take the whole record of the oil and gas industry and all they have destroyed, damaged and polluted. Tally up that figure. There is no comparison. We are worrying about the wrong people.
There is no such thing as a non-political piece of legislation. This law was written as a political document that is part of a political offensive against those movements we saw at Standing Rock. The oil and gas industry wanted revenge and relief from those bedeviling them. Laws such as this one gave them what they wanted.
I have a little different assessment of the intent of SB 33. I don’t think that the supporters necessarily want to throw the opponents of the oil and gas industry in jail or sue their organizations. That is much too crude and can backfire on you as an accumulating number of court cases being won by protesters attest to along with examples of prosecutors choosing not to prosecute for fear of the laws being struck down in court.
The sweet spot for such laws is when they get into the heads of protesters and spread fear. It is a beautiful thing when you can get people to repress themselves. Where SB 33’s sister legislation has been passed activist organizations report that they receive calls from sympathizers who ask if they attend a meeting or go to a rally will they be arrested. That is called a chilling effect in civil liberties law and it has been treated roughly by the courts.
SB 33 is a trick bag designed to scare and intimidate. It is marketed as a sober and reasonable precaution against infrastructure sabotage. But that totally depends on where you are standing.
It is sort like describing a chicken dinner by only interviewing the people who ate the chicken. No one asks the chicken how it went. In the case of SB 33, the diners are the oil and gas industries. The chickens are those who oppose them.
I am pleading the case of the chickens. Give them and our much praised and often disregarded freedoms a break and say no to this legislation.
