Photo by Lester Smith
Ben Grosscup of Amherst, who specializes in social and ecological critique, sings and strums as the crowd gathers for a gas pipeline protest march across Suffield in late September.
Suffield experienced a protest march this summer – a rare event for our town. At mid-day on Saturday, September 24, about 100 enthusiastic environmentalists gathered for a Sierra Club rally at the Suffield Village parking lot. They were protesting natural gas pipelines in general and especially the Kinder-Morgan, a.k.a. Tennessee Gas, pipeline through Suffield, soon to have a new, larger pipe installed next to the existing line. Reportedly, all permits are in place for the new installation. (This pipeline runs diagonally straight across Suffield from the East Granby town line near the New England Air Museum to the pumping station in Agawam on Route 75 just north of the state line. )
The Sierra Club crowd in Suffield was entertained by a motivational singer as the families, friends, and individual walkers assembled, then they were shuttled in an M&J school bus up to a spot near the pumping station for the start of the walk. Martha Klein of Granby, the principal organizer of the event and a local officer of the Sierra Club, had made plenty of preparations, providing water supplies, first aid equipment, and a safety patrol to care for stragglers. There were, of course, many banners, signs, and kindred messages on T-shirts.
The march was touted to be “along the pipeline route,” but the line runs through farm fields, marshes, and other inconvenient terrain, so the route could only symbolically be as described. The group marched down North Street and North Main to Suffield Center, then west on Mountain Road to West Suffield Center – about seven miles in all. On the sidewalks or strung along the roadside, facing traffic, they completed the hike without difficulties. The bus returned the hikers to their cars at the Village.
Martha Klein notes, “These pipelines are being expanded to three feet in diameter and sometimes larger. . . . There is the potential for leakage, contamination of drinking water, explosions, and the list goes on and on.” She is particularly critical of fracking, which is increasingly in use to improve the production from gas wells, as well as oil. Deeply concerned about global warming, she urges a general, immediate conversion to clean, renewable energy, pushing for solar energy and wind turbines.