Who's Lying?: More Smoke, More Mirrors

Just when you thought it was safe to actually think everything was settled, when our Mayor Davidson said it was over, that the silos would NOT be located in Upshur County and that the jobs would remain in Upshur County, there emerges a front page article in the Sept. 27 edition of the Clarksburg-Telegram...

So what is the real story?

Let's keep in mind what was said in the city council meeting of Sept. 19, 2008. Here is a recording of Mayor Davidson's declaration, comments by citizens in attendance, and other council members' support of Davidson's statement in its entirety:

According to the Sept. 27 Telegram article, Rick Smith, the man who has been the central figure in all of the deals associated with "the project," the man who has represented his company, Weatherford International in all the dealings with the City of Buckhannon, the Upshur County Development Authority and the County Commission, said:

... the option to place the sand silos in northern Buckhannon is still open and it was never closed.

"Our first choice is still northern Buckhannon."

However, in the Sept. 19 council meeting, Davidson says the following:

"I talked with Rick Smith yesterday morning. Rick Smith is the regional manger for Weatherford. He confirmed what I have been trying to tell you for the past several meetings now. Weatherford is diligently seeking a location for their sand silos outside the county...he asked me to tell you that Weatherford desires to be a good neighbor. Tha they will be a good neighbor. They are going to locate their facilities in Upshur County. The sand silos he has plans to put outside of Upshur County...I'm confident that that's going to come to fruition."

Comments made by the other members on the council confirms the decision. Councilman Thomas says that 85-90-some percent of the employees will be working from Upshur County.

And I (Pete Galarneau) clarified: "So we have employment and we have sand silos outside of North Buckhannon."

And Mayor Davidson replied, "Exactly. Win-win. It's what everybody wanted."

Skeeter Queen reminded us that the council had rescinded the city's grant to a right of way across the paper street known as Harrison Avenue (which Rick Smith needed to allow for railroad access) and that this decision has always been maintained.

So now Rick Smith has been emboldened to say that if Weatherford can't find a suitable space or the right property, then the silos will be placed in Buckhannon, according to the the Telegram article.

But this right has been rescinded.

What is the deal?

It's What We've Been Saying All Along

Decision Announced at Buckhannon City Council, September 18, 2008

There are so many things I could say right now, but I think that, through this blog, through the voices of the residents of North Buckhannon, and through some very important officials who have never, once, diverted from their support of us, all of the arguments have been made.

Tonight the Council announced that Weatherford International's main office, the one that was always supposed to be located on the "CJ Martin" hill will be built, employing 85% of the 200 Weatherford jobs promised when all of this started at the beginning of May.

AND THE SILICA SILOS WILL NOT BE IN NORTH BUCKHANNON!

Though the location of the silos was not revealed in the meeting, Mayor Davidson said that they would not be in North Buckhannon.

The resolution is what our Coalition has always said was the best resolution. The resolution guarantees the jobs as our Coalition always said it would. Innocent lives are not put at stake just like the Coalition always said was possible.

But it took a group of citizens who stood up and enacted the freedoms granted by our great country. We did not sit on our hands like so much of America does. We worked hard, dug in, wrote letters, talked to congressmen, lobbied and lobbied and lobbied. Civic duty is not easy that is why so few Americans engage. For so many Americans the answer always is "Well you can't fight City Hall." But our Coalition has shown that this just isn't true.

If you feel danger you react. As a person. As a community. The residents of N. Buckhannon reacted.

And the resolution was the best for everyone.

I am proud and overjoyed for my family and for my new family: my neighbors. But I remain cautious. If such an event as this could happen once, it can happen again...in North, West, South, or East Buckhannon. If an event such as this can lead to the hated comments that pit neighbor against neighbor while corporate interest stands on the sideline eating popcorn with a smile, then each of us has the responsibility to pay attention. Watch out for those who would use a system that is lean on checks and balances and heavy on diversion and invisibility. They could take your freedom, your choice, your life.

If it happened to us, it can happen to you.

God bless those who did the right thing.

-Pete Galarneau

Weatherford is Already Here

Just to reiterate since it appears that some still are not getting it...

• Weatherford is here
• Their business is beside Shop n' Save
• They are hiring employees
• They are working in Upshur County
• They are adding to our economy
• There are no silica silos in North Buckhannon
• Everyone is happy

We Are "Only" People

Come walk with us... the residents that live here in North Buckhannon. Let us take you to the peoples’ homes and let you see that we are not unreasonable - that we are just like you in every way. We want good jobs for our family and friends. We want quality of life for ourselves and our neighbors. We want our homes and investments to be secure.

Please let us take you where Weatherford wants to place the silos and show you how close they could be to your neighbors’ homes.

Let us introduce you to our Head Start School and to our children whose laughter you can hear throughout the neighborhood.

Please walk through our park and watch the soccer kids play games that enhance their own team-building skills.

Please come meet our beautiful 92-year-old lady who has lived here all of her life and wants to share her experiences with those who have a kind ear.

Come meet our 90-year-old veteran who has survived a surgery that surgeons would not have even attempted on someone his age if it were not for his 60-year-old mind and body.

Come visit with the lovely nearly-blind lady who just had her bedroom painted a beautiful bird-egg blue that we hope she can enjoy.

Come meet the woman who built her house in 1947 with her husband, raised three children, and have all her family in for every holiday where they meet and remember.

We are the people of Buckhannon...

We are the people.

Having Power Over Others

As an avid reader of BusinessWeek I found the following article timely and relevant (and a bit sarcastic):

Are You Being A Jerk? Again?

In the article, the following seemed appropriate for this blog:

"A second, and equally reliable, force that makes people hard to stomach is having power over others. The belief that power turns people into selfish jerks has been around a long time. This isn't just a myth. A growing body of research—notably by professors Dachner Keltner at University of California, Berkeley, Deborah Gruenfeld at Stanford, and their students—documents that three things happen when people are put in positions of power:

1. They focus more on satisfying their own needs;
2. They focus less on the needs of their underlings;
3. They act like "the rules" others are expected to follow don't apply to them.

A particularly amusing study—undertaken by Keltner, Gruenfeld, and another colleague—shows that giving people just a little more power than their colleagues causes them to eat more cookies, chew with their mouths open, and leave more crumbs. Keltner also cites research showing that power leads people to process information in shallower ways and to make decisions that are less carefully reasoned."

In Rebuttal to point #4 of the Dev Authority Letter

The Upshur County Dev. Authority Letter stated in point #4 that the residents' argument regarding real concerns for health issues "was the most disappointing argument." The Dev. Authority letter is trying to tell us in this "response" that silica based proppant (which the PR spin of the article simply labels as sand) is not hazardous, inferring that for Weatherford it would be "economic suicide for a company to install an operation that would threaten the health of its workers and neighbors." It is a FACT, that the U.S. EPA and OSHA have determined silica based products to be a carcinogenic hazard. So it is dangerous. But what point #4 wants us to understand is that Weatherford will control and contain this carcinogen and for that reason, it is not a health threat to workers or nearby residents.


Evidence tells another story. For those of you who have kept tabs using this blog, you have seen the piles of proppant left unattented in the lot currently occupied beside Shop n' Save. You have seen the video of the transfer of proppant from one truck to another in an UNcontrolled and UNcontained manner. If you were to watch the rest of this video, you would see workers atop these trucks with billowing proppant all around them and no respiratory protection. The pictures and videos presented in this blog were taken August 1 of this year.

Also, on August 1, because of complaints issued by Buckhannon residents, the Department of Environmental Protection in Charleston visited the staging area in Tennerton and found that the conditions were to be reported as "total irresponsibility." The inspector, Andy Grim (304-926-0440) said that the report is on file in Charleston and can be obtained by visiting the DEP in Charleston but that fax copies were against policy. He said that you can call for information about the report.

If the transfer of proppant between a couple of 30-ton trucks is an issue, what would it be like if caravans of 30-ton trucks visit N. Buckhannon daily to transfer proppant from four differnet 80-foot silos each holding 1.2 million pounds of proppant (not to mention the transfer of proppant from the rail cars to the silos)?

Can you reason this for yourself?

Letter to the Editor in Rebuttal to Upshur Co. Development Authority "Response"

The following Letter to the Editor appeared in the August 27 edition of the Record-Delta. The text of the letter as submitted is as follows:

Dear Editor:

Forgive me if I take a moment to laugh. So, here the citizens of Buckhannon sit waiting for a response to this whole silica silo debacle since a cone of silence has been in place for the past four weeks, sitting and waiting to hear something from our city council or Weatherford to the tune of: “OK citizens. We respect you and your property and your families and your will to stick this out, so we are going to have the public meeting that we promised way back on July 9, the same public meeting that was scheduled for July 22 (because Weatherford threatened to pull everything out by August 7) and was cancelled at the last minute leaving the city attorney and Delegate Bill Hamilton standing alone outside the Church of God.” But no. The first response in four weeks doesn’t even come from the City. It comes from the Upshur County Development Authority Board of Directors. What? Huh? Forgive me if I have this wrong, but since when did our citizens start electing the Dev. Board of Directors. Oh, that’s right. We didn’t!

I also got a snicker when I read last Wednesday’s “Response” (Aug. 20) to my letter printed in the July 23 edition of the Record Delta when in it, the term “voice of reason” surfaces. This is certainly an oxymoron as there has never been anything close to reason in this whole ordeal. If you reason that people come second to industry, if you reason that the years residents labored at building family homesteads, spending money at local merchants to do so, and paying city taxes and levies to maintain their property right is insignificant to a “promise” by unknown entities that will pay nothing to the city for the existence of silos in North Buckhannon, then “reason” has evidently been purchased by the uncaring.

As a reminder, those who signed this “voice of reason” and should be held accountable for its indoctrination are as follows. It should also be revealed the members of the Board whose names are not signed to the Response. Additionally, one name appears that was not a member of the Board on August 20. And, none of the Board members live in North Buckhannon.
The signatures were:

• Connie Tenney (President of Progressive Bank)
• Mark Harper (Owner of Harper Lumber)
• Creed Pletcher (Upshur County Commissioner)
• Dennis Klingensmith (President of First Central Bank)
• Glen Hawkins (Owner of Rock Cave IGA)
• Elaine Abel (Diana Hallmark)
• Andrew Duncan (Executive for Corhart: St. Gobain)
• Rosemary Wagner Ex-Officio (Region VII Planning & Development Director)
• Dennis Xander (Board of Directors at Independent Oil & Gas Association of WV)
• Don Nestor (Partner in Toothman and Rice; Board of Directors at Independent Oil & Gas Association of WV)
• Steve Foster (Exec. Dir. Upshur County Dev. Authority)
• Dave Thomas (City Councilman)
• Terry Reed (Attorney with Hymes & Coontz)
• Bill Wellings (Airport Authority)
• Terry Ware (Owner of Sears)
• Sharon McNemar (President of Chase Bank)
• Tony Atkins (St. Joseph’s Hospital)
• Bryson VanNostrand (owner of VanNostrand Architects and architect for the Weatherford Project in N. Buckhannon)
  

One name listed is not on the Board: Tony Atkins

The following are Board members but were not signed to the Response letter to the editor:

• Dr. Pamela Balch (President of WV Wesleyan College)
• Scott Lampinen (Superintendant of Schools)
• Kenny Davidson (Mayor of Buckhannon)
• Ex-Officio members: Bill Hamilton (WV State Delegate), Randy White (WV State Senator), Nancy Shobe (City of Buckhannon Recorder,) Willie Parker (Upshur County Commission), Dee Tomblyn (President of City Chamber of Commerce).

Because there is limited space in the newspaper to fully argue the individual items “selected” from my original letter, I will make the rest of my response available at the Protest Coalition’s blog site: http://silicasilos.blogspot.com/.

First, let’s reason some things that you may not be aware of and I make these observations from the point of view that there has always been a contention that there is some connection between jobs and the location of silica silos in North Buckhannon. One necessitates the other, the argument has been. If there are no silos in North Buckhannon, Weatherford will leave. You can read it in the Board’s Response. You can hear it every time you listen to pro-Weatherford activists. And the contention is that we (North Buckhannon) are against jobs. This is the PR spin that is a part of the pro-Weatherford campaign. NOT TRUE. That connection does not exist. And all residents want good jobs for their friends and families.

Weatherford threatened to pull out “Everything” if the City did not allow the silos to be located in North Buckhannon. That ultimatum ended on August 8. Instead of pulling everything out, Weatherford has already begun working in Upshur County. Their temporary staging ground is located next to Shop n’ Save in Tennerton where you will find a sign promoting “Now hiring”. So, did you catch that? Did you reason what is going on? Did you disconnect the silo-equals-jobs argument? Weatherford is hiring and there are no silos in North Buckhannon. Jobs are being created right now without the suffering of Buckhannon residents. Further, if Weatherford is hiring in Upshur County, anyone who tells you that “they could still pull everything out [and move to Washington, Pa.]” is either continuing the misinformation campaign or is assuming that Weatherford is such an irresponsible employer that they would hire local residents only to move their operation two hours north and leave those new hires hanging.

Reason takes time and effort and a willingness to look at and question everything. I feel that a great veil of mistrust has fallen upon Upshur County and those who claim to be a “voice of reason” may be allowing personal investment to cloud their judgments.

Thank you to those of the Coalition who have sacrificed much for the well-reasoned cause.

-Peter Galarneau, Jr.
Spokesperson for the COALITION AGAINST THE CONSTRUCTION OF
WEATHERFORD SAND SILOS IN RESIDENTIAL NORTH BUCKHANNON