Air Management: Please don’t OK SEPTA gas plant

Please join us at a hearing sponsored by Philadelphia’s Air Management Services (AMS). It’s about approving SEPTA’s gas power plant in Nicetown.

AMS has said they want to hear us. And we need AMS to deny a permit for SEPTA’s gas plant.

Several of us plan to testify why AMS should reject the plant. We’ll be asking critical questions, including challenging SEPTA’s assertions. We also plan to deliver written comments from folks who cannot attend.

When: Tuesday June 27, 2017
The hearing begins at 6pm. We will gather for a brief rally outside at 5:30, and then go in together. Feel free to join us at any time! For last minute updates, see the Facebook event page.

Where: Panati Playground
3100 N 22nd St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19132

Your voice

We encourage you to submit a written comment as well.

Write in your own words, or use our canned response. Our City’s own Air Management Services must know that the people don’t want a gas plant. Not in Nicetown. Not anyplace. That a gas plant is fossil fuel infrastructure, and bad for people and other living things at this late stage of our planet’s fever.

You can find background and sample comments here.

If you would like to make a statement during the hearing, we’d be glad to help you prepare. Please contact us at 350philadelphia@gmail.com.

Getting there

SEPTA has committed to provide free bus transportation for folks going to and from the Panati Playground. But, SEPTA has not yet provided a schedule or indicated where its bus(es) will stop in the Nicetown area. So, please contact Catherine A. Wesley of SEPTA, 267-738-5365 | CWesley@septa.org. Give Cathy your requests and suggestions for times and places where the bus(es) should stop besides the Midvale Bus Depot. And ask that the schedules be made widely available to people in the neighborhood, keeping in mind that many folks don’t have Internet access.

Process

AMS will have a sign-up sheet for those interested in speaking at the hearing. Signing up in advance is not necessary. Everybody will be given an opportunity to speak. Depending on the number of people who wish to make public comments, each speaker will be allowed a certain amount of time. Then, assuming time is available after everybody has spoken once, AMS will let individuals speak again, if they didn’t get to say everything they wanted to say previously. Anybody can speak their mind for the record about anything related to SEPTA and the GESA project in Nicetown, although AMS can only take action within the regulatory guidelines it is required to follow.

Please remember that AMS is a Division of the Philadelphia Department of Health. AMS is responsible for administration of specific environmental regulations from the US Environmental Protection Agency (primarily the Clean Air Act), the PA Department of Environmental Protection, and the Philadelphia Department of Health. The purpose of this hearing is to receive public comments specifically concerning the application by SEPTA for an air permit for the proposed gas-fueled electricity generation plant in Nicetown.

Information pertaining to SEPTA’s air permit application can be obtained on the AMS website, here. The AMS package is also available at the Falls of Schuylkill Library at 3501 Middle Avenue. Also, the AMS package is available at the neighborhood offices of elected officials:

Councilwoman Cindy Bass,
Councilman Curtis Jones,
PA Senator Sharif Street,
PA Senator Art Haywood,
PA Rep. Rosita Youngblood,
PA Rep. Stephen Kinsey,
PA Rep. Christopher Rabb,
PA Rep. Donna Bullock, and
Congressman Dwight Evans.

Stop by, if you can, to let our elected representatives know we care about this issue.

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Your voice

Getting there

Process

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