11 - Raina Rippel, Environmental Health Project

10/10/18 • 27 min

In this episode Raina Rippel from the Environmental Health Project talks about the Citizen Science Toolkit, a helpful resource for anyone who wants to protect their family and neighbors from the harms of fracking. This toolkit is an expansive document that details ways that anyone can participate in monitoring environmental health impacts.

We talk about the implications of health monitoring, how the toolkit was created, and provide some insight into the role of citizen science in protecting ourselves from industry that is looking for the cheapest and fastest way to extract gas and bring it to market.

Raina says we all need to be involved in protecting our family and neighbors from the potential harms associated with unconventional oil and gas development – there are tools at our disposal to do this right now.

As mentioned in this episode

About Raina Rippel

In 2011, Raina Rippel helped found the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project (EHP) in response to growing concerns associated with gas drilling activity and health impacts in Washington County, PA. Formerly Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility/Maine and the Center for Coalfield Justice, Rippel has on the job training in environmental public health, medical education and outreach, community organizing, strategic development and leadership.

Rippel heads up a team of fifteen staff and consultants and various interns with expertise in healthcare, public health research, toxicology, air and water quality, strategic development and community organizing, in conducting a targeted and timely public health response to unconventional shale development. EHP focuses their work on gathering data from residents of southwest PA and beyond on probable health impacts from oil and gas development, determining routes of exposures, and providing best-practice air and water monitoring tools and guidance, as well as accessible and effective interventions for individuals, households, and communities.

Citizen Scientist Toolkit

This Citizen Scientist toolkit will provide listeners with an easy-to-follow framework for taking steps to becoming a more informed, empowered member of your community. By carefully following the procedures and protocols that are defined in the toolkit, listeners will become a citizen scientist, and their efforts can have an impact that extends well beyond their community. Their data can be added to the findings of many others. Together, this information can help listeners, their community, researchers and scientists truly understand the type and level of fracking-related risks.

Credits

This podcast is a project of halttheharm.net, a website and resource that connects you with leaders, activists, researchers, economists, legal experts, and funders to protect your community from oil & gas industry. Halt the Harm is a network of leaders who are taking action, sharing resources and information, and supporting each other’s campaigns. Find out more at halttheharm.net

The soundtrack Halt the Harm podcast is"One of These Days" by Eilen Jewell from her album Sea of Tears.

Recorded, produced, and published by Ryan Clover in the studios WRFI Watkins Glen, Ithaca

As mentioned in this episode

About Raina Rippel

Citizen Scientist Toolkit

Credits

The soundtrack Halt the Harm podcast is"One of These Days" by Eilen Jewell from her album Sea of Tears.

Recorded, produced, and published by Ryan Clover in the studios WRFI Watkins Glen, Ithaca

Previous Episode

10 - Walter Hang on strategy, focus, and doing the work to crush industry plans.

Walter Hang from Toxics Targeting has led unprecedented victories against oil and gas projects in upstate NY – and in this interview he explains his strategy of balancing the message with an incredibly focused demand. The trick, he says, is that there is no trick – there are no shortcuts to the hard work, training, and commitment we need to win. What’s remarkable is that even though it’s challenging, the principles are actually quite simple, but we need to avoid the mistake of pouring effort into campaign strategies that are ineffective. In this episode you’ll gain some insight into how Walter has achieved so many victories, and in his words “crushed” pipeline project and other infrastructure demands of the oil & gas industry.

As mentioned in this episode:

Toxics Targeting at www.toxicstargeting.com
Infrastructure Campaign Compilation
www.facebook.com/ToxicsTargeting
Despite FERC approval, groups in NY are still able to defeat the development of a massive regional storage hub for fracked gas.
The political argument “how can you support additional infrastructure for a dying industry?”...
great political argument, which is going to rally and build the movement... but it’s not the legal strategy.
When you identify the regulatory pressure points, identify exactly who you need to pressure on exactly which legal point. The ASK needs to be focused... The ask is different than the message which is how we organize a campaign.
Toxics targeting helps focus the activists legal strategies to be more effective. They help identify the points and focus the efforts like a battering ram to prevent infrastructure projects.

Bio: Walter Hang is the founder of Toxics Targeting, an consulting firm in Ithaca, NY that helps people understand toxic sites through New York State. He produces maps, reports, and publishes research with his team. You don’t need to be in New York State to be involved with Toxics Targeting campaigns, or to learn about their work – just contact [email protected] or go to the website www.toxicstargeting.com and look at the call to action in the bottom right of the page.

Core Message: The trick is that there is no trick... to beat the fossil fuel industry and the politicians that favor them we need to work hard, build our network, and have a focused strategy with extremely clear demands. No tool, app, or social platform replaces the value of going door to door, building a campaign around a single (strategically sound) demand.

Credits: This podcast is a project of halttheharm.net, a website and resource that connects you with leaders, activists, researchers, economists, legal experts, and funders to protect your community from oil & gas industry. Halt the Harm is a network of leaders who are taking action, sharing resources and information, and supporting each other’s campaigns. Find out more at halttheharm.net The soundtrack Halt the Harm podcast is"One of These Days" by Eilen Jewell from her album Sea of Tears. Recorded, produced, and published by Ryan Clover in the studios WRFI Watkins Glen, Ithaca

Next Episode

12 - Eliza Griswold, Author of Amity and Prosperity

In this episode you’ll hear a recording of a webinar presentation that Eliza Griswold, author of Amity and Prosperity brought to the network. The presentation is followed by a Q&A with Eliza.

In Amity and Prosperity, the prize-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom’s impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia and one woman’s transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist.

“In her new book, Amity and Prosperity, journalist Eliza Griswold provides a deeply human counterpoint to this political fray. She takes on the decidedly fraught issue of energy extraction through a vivid, compassionate portrait of one family living in the long shadow of industry . . . Griswold chronicles these escalating horrors with disarming intimacy.”

— Meara Sharma, The Washington Post

As mentioned in this episode

Credits

The soundtrack Halt the Harm podcast is"One of These Days" by Eilen Jewell from her album Sea of Tears.

Recorded, produced, and published by Ryan Clover in the studios WRFI Watkins Glen, Ithaca