Maryland group says Dominion’s natural gas facility would pollute their neighborhood.
Monday Night Football is an American tradition going back decades, and even now the game draws about 14 million viewers each week. But last night the game’s audience saw something unique during the televised event.
Just past halftime during the game between the home team Caroline Panthers and the visiting Indianapolis Colts, two activists rappelled down from the upper decks, according to USA Today. The two hung above the crowd, unfurling a banner calling attention to a proposed plan to build a new liquefied natural gas export terminal at the Cove Point neighborhood in Lusby, Maryland.
The banner read, “BOA Dump Dominion,” and pointed viewers to the website We Are Cove Point, the group that claimed responsibility for the protest. The protesters oppose hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, also called fracking, due to concerns about the health and environmental threats posed by the new technology.
The liquefied natural gas terminal is being developed by Dominion Midstream Partners of Richmond, Virginia, which plans to open the facility in the summer of 2017. The protest was intended to draw attention to the role of Bank of America, which has helped Dominion finance the $4 billion project, and which owns a 1.5 percent stake in the company.
Bank of America’s corporate headquarters is in Charlotte, where the Panthers games are played.
A statement from the activists was released on another website with information from local groups opposed to the Cove Point project. The two, identified as Rica Madrid and John Nicholson, pointed to the health and safety risks from fracking, and noted that the area of Southern Maryland near the Dominion facility would suffer “the human costs” from the project’s environmental and health threats.
The protesters say that if it is built, the Dominion facility would be the first liquefied natural gas export facility in the world to be built in a residential neighborhood, and cite documents showing that the plant would release 21.5 tons of toxic air pollutants each year.
Recent studies have linked fracking to an increased risk of premature births, and previous reports have linked fracking to air and water pollution.
