No New Fossil Fuels at Southport: a Win for Green Justice Philly, Clean Air Council, and Philadelphia

 

On Tuesday, November 22nd, Governor Wolf and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority announced good news for air quality and health in Philadelphia.

Southport is a roughly 200-acre, mostly vacant site at the eastern end of the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. Much of the vacant land was once part of the Navy Yard complex. For over a year, Green Justice Philly, a coalition of area organizations and community groups that includes Clean Air Council as one of five steering committee organizations, has been fighting to prevent new fossil fuel infrastructure from being built at Southport. On Tuesday, Governor Wolf and PRPA announced that, for the foreseeable future, Southport will get some upgrades to the vacant or under-utilized areas and that the land will be used for expansion of existing new automobile storage and transfer and container storage. Instead of committing to a polluting fossil fuel future, this choice will provide additional long-term jobs at the facility and leaves the door open for a variety of future uses of the site. Additionally, the State of Pennsylvania pledged $300 million to improvements across the Port of Philadelphia’s sites, including switching three cranes at the Packer Ave Marine Terminal from diesel to electric power.

This decision is the culmination of months of hard work by Green Justice Philly, including Clean Air Council and many dedicated, unpaid concerned residents. When the shortlisted proposals for Southport were released in January, members of the Green Justice Philly coalition found cause for alarm. One of the most detailed and worrisome proposals was from Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), the owner of the refining complex in South Philadelphia. PES proposed to use the 200-acre site, which sits entirely in the 100-year floodplain, for an import/export facility for crude oil and refined oil products. The proposal called for ten tanks holding 2.5 million barrels of crude and refined oil products. Three of the five other preliminary proposals were either based around fossil fuels or were submitted by fossil fuel companies. For example, USD Group, a Texas-based company specializing in transportation logistics for products such as tar sands crude oil and ethanol, proposed “bulk product processing” and “bulk liquids for Southport.” Another proposal included a 35-acre waste-to-power plant.

Clean Air Council was a part of this campaign from the very beginning. The Council’s work on Southport stretched from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) file review room to the strategy room. The Council was a participant at initial sparsely attended public Philadelphia Regional Port Authority meetings, and spoke from the bullhorn at later meetings packed with concerned–and vocal–community members. In keeping with its focus on air quality and health, Clean Air Council provided critical information about the air and health impacts about proposed fossil fuel infrastructure to decision-makers and residents in neighborhoods that would be impacted. While Clean Air Council is proud of its work on this successful campaign, the success could not have happened without the full efforts of the coalition. Green Justice Philly’s growing list of organizations and community groups shared the workload and effectively amplified our united voice. Community members devoted hundreds of unpaid hours to research, advocacy, and events. Besides protecting Southport from fossil fuel expansion, this victory has demonstrated Philadelphians’ readiness and determination to challenge future polluting projects across the region and their success in doing so.