Vermont Business Magazine Rising Tide Vermont, which has opposed the Addison County natural gas pipeline, said Friday that it will hold a rally and symbolic blockade of oil trains carrying fracked oil down the shores of Lake Champlain. Rising Tide said the blockade will last 47 minutes, honoring the 47 people who lost their lives when a train carrying fracked oil derailed and exploded in the town of Lac Megantic, Quebec, in 2013. It said there may also be other civil disobedience actions nearby.
The action will be held Tuesday, July 7, 10am-3pm, with the symbolic blockade at 11 am and a rally at noon. It is planned for the Ticonderoga Ferry and Train Station, 275 Fort Ti Road in Ticonderoga, NY. This action is part of a national week of action coordinated by Forest Ethics, the Sierra Club and other national environmental organizations. It is coming at the end of the annual national Earth First! Rendezvous, being held in the Green Mountain National Forest this year from July 1-8.
Rising Tide said that it is estimated that up to 20 trains carry between 40-60 million gallons of fracked, Bakken crude oil (the Williston Basin of North Dakota and surrounding region) down the shores of Lake Champlain each week. A recent report by the National Wildlife Federation highlights the dangers posed by oil-by-rail transport, especially given the state of rail infrastructure in the Northeast and the US as a whole, as well as the potential for tar sands oil to be transported by rail in the near future.