Center for Coalfield Justice to hold informational meetings in Greene County
CARMICHAELS – The Center for Coalfield Justice is hosting community meetings in Greene County to meet with people who have been negatively impacted by Marcellus Shale gas drilling or longwall mining activities and to educate residents through their Landscape Today campaign.
Landscape Today is a project designed to educate, empower and enable communities to understand the environmental and public health issues that they face due to coal and natural gas extraction.
The meetings will be held in Carmichaels on Tuesday, Jan. 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the American Legion and on Thursday, Jan. 17, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Morris Township Community Center in Nineveh.
On display will be CCJ’s atlases of Greene and Washington counties showing Marcellus Shale development in proximity to drinking water wells and a survey of coal mining complexes beneath these municipalities.
“Navigating the various permits that regulate drilling and mining activities can be very difficult,” said Patrick Grenter, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice. “We responded to some of the challenges we found people were having and put all of the information in a single source that we want to share.”
CCJ also wants to hear about other issues that are important to residents related to shale drilling and mining activities.
“There are impacts on the communities where drilling and mining are most concentrated. We want to try to measure those and see what we can do to help,” said Grenter.
The meetings will be attended by CCJ staff, residents, attorneys and local experts on these important issues and are being co-sponsored by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, Washington County Watershed Alliance and Buffalo Creek Watershed Alliance.
Begun in 1997 as a grassroots effort by groups and individuals concerned about the effects coal mining had on communities and the environment, the group was incorporated in 1999 and re-organized into Center for Coalfield Justice in 2007.
CCJ is a Pennsylvania-incorporated, not-for-profit organization with federal Internal Revenue Service §501(c)(3)-status recognition located at 184 S. Main Street, Washington, PA 15301. CCJ is a membership organization and is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors.
For more information, call 724-229-3550.