Our Mission

2011 Activism home

The Environmental Front

Coal.The burning of coal to generate power is the largest source of global-warming gases, not to mention a slew of public health hazards. CREDO is committed to preventing the startup of any new coal plants and the shutting down of existing ones and replacing them with cleaner fuels and conservation. In 2011, CREDO members and activists mobilized and won many victories on the coal front.

• In West Virginia, after CREDO members called and sent letters, the EPA helped save the Appalachian Mountains from further destruction by rejecting the permit for Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine, citing the environmental damage the mountaintop-removal mine would cause. And more than 60,000 CREDO members forced Arch Coal to cancel plans to put kids at risk by digging an 1,800-acre mine under a high school.
• In Alaska, CREDO members successfully pressed the state Department of Natural Resources to reject a permit for the Wishbone Hill strip-mine north of Anchorage. The company withdrew the permit application rather than face increased scrutiny.
• In Pennsylvania, more than 8,000 CREDO members submitted public comments to the EPA asking that it require the toxic Portland coal plant to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 81% within three years.
• In New Mexico, after more than 4,500 CREDO Action members sent public comments, the EPA decided to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from the coal-fired San Juan plant by more than 80%.
• In North Dakota, after CREDO Action members submitted public comments, the EPA said it would seek to take partial control of the state’s air quality program to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from the Milton R. Young and Leland Olds coal plants.
• In Texas, the proposed White Stallion coal plant would have drained 20 million gallons of water a day from the Lower Colorado River, but CREDO Action members’ messages persuaded the Lower Colorado River Authority to deny the plant’s request for water.
• In Michigan, the S.S. Badger, a coal-powered car ferry on Lake Michigan, dumps 3.8 tons of toxic coal sludge into the lake every day. When the ship’s owners fought the EPA’s order to stop dumping the sludge overboard by the end of 2012, CREDO members urged the EPA to stand firm and it did.

Parks and Forests. CREDO members are passionate about defending our natural resources, and they raised their voices when there was talk of putting a landfill next door to the famed Joshua Tree National Park in California. That landfill would take in 20,000 tons of garbage per day, six days a week, for 117 years. More than 95,000 citizens signed our petition asking Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to intervene and protect the desert ecosystem. The Interior Department did just that, opposing the development, which was before the U.S. Supreme Court. When national forests were under threat from logging, road building and oil and gas exploration because the timber industry and conservative states attacked the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protected 60 million acres from development, CREDO members acted to save the rule. In November, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reinstated the rule after it was blocked by a judge in Wyoming.

Fracking. We also pushed back heavily against the issue of High Pressure Hydraulic Fracturing—or fracking, for short. Fracking is a method of drilling for natural gas by pumping a mixture of water and toxic, cancer-causing chemicals deep underground, and it's already responsible for poisoning the groundwater in states across the country. More than 40,000 activists in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware signed our petition to their governors and President Obama opposing the plan to lift the fracking ban in the Delaware River Basin, a plan that would endanger the drinking water of 15 million people. In the three days before a meeting of the commission that could lift the ban, CREDO activists made nearly 3,000 calls to their governors’ offices and the White House, successfully halting the lifting of the ban.

2011 Activism home