Bushwick to National Grid: Get the frack outta here

By Brooklyn Magazine Staff

Activist groups in Bushwick are alleging that a pipeline intended to funnel gas from Pennsylvania to North Brooklyn is a prime example of environmental racism. The Guardian has an excellent primer on National Grid’s Metropolitan Reliability Infrastructure (MRI) project—more often referred to as the North Brooklyn pipeline by local activists—here.

Groups including the Sane Energy Project and Frack Outta Brooklyn are calling on local officials to stop the 7-mile-long pipeline which will run underneath majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods Bushwick, Bed-Stuy and Brownsville. National Grid did not respond to the Guardian’s request of comment. Fractracter has an interactive version of the map above here.

The Guardian has this:

“Environmental racism, racial justice, we need to teach our kids about this,” says Gabriel Jamison, a local organizer who has been leading teach-ins about the pipeline. “Because we are the dumping ground. That’s what they label us as.”

In the US, people of color are far more likely than white Americans to live near polluting facilities and get sicker because of it. The MRI is no exception: as a transmission pipeline, the MRI will only be used to move gas through National Grid’s existing system, rather than distributing gas directly to the households living in closest proximity to it.

Read more here.