Online Petition to Defeat the 4th Amendment

 

The Air We Breathe

Your help is urgently needed.  Please click here to sign our online petition to the members of the 30th Legislature of the Virgin Islands concerning their August 7th vote on the 4th Amendment to the HOVENSA Concession Agreement.  

The People of the Virgin Islands have not had the time or the opportunity to have real input into a decision that will impact their health and their environment—and that of their children—for  decades to come.

Please join us in petitioning those we have elected to represent us.  Tell the 30th Legislature to defeat the 4th Amendment on August 7th and to provide the People of the Virgin Islands with sufficient time and opportunity to do their due diligence and to make their voices heard concerning the future they and their children will live with for a very long time.

The People Must be Heard

“The…Proposed Fourth Amendment to the HOVENSA Concession Agreement Does Not Reflect the Wishes and Desires of the People…” 

Governor deJongh, his advisers, and the Legislature have not honestly solicited input from the People on an amendment that will impact everyone in the USVI for many years to come; therefore, they have no right to say that the government has finalized or will ratify any decisions at this point.   But, they have scheduled just one hearing for St. Croix at 1:00 pm on Monday, July 22, at the Fritz Lawaetz Complex Legislative Hall. Furthermore, the Legislature plans to vote on this critical amendment in just two weeks on August 7, 2013, basically robbing the People of any real opportunity to make their voices heard.  All concerned people of the USVI should attend the hearing on Monday and request more time for our communities to share what we the People desire to do about the future of HOVENSA and its relationship with our government. 

As the governor and HOVENSA and outside consultants have had more than 15 months to negotiate the 4^th Amendment--with no input from the People--we the People deserve an equal amount of time to do our Due Diligence so that we can request the Legislature to make an informed decision on our behalf.  If there is no compromise in the time, then the Legislature must check the executive branch as a balance of power and vote the 4^th Amendment down on August 7^th. 

At present HOVENSA and the government already have a contract that split and divided our social and political community in 1998.  Our government succumbed to their political and economic power and gave them what they wanted, but that agreement did obligate HOVENSA to fulfill their promises and responsibilities.  A contract is to protect both parties, but if the People are now going to be held hostage to a new contract without respecting and holding HOVENSA to their obligations under the third concession, then it is obvious that it is HOVENSA, its partners, the governor, and the legislature under duress, who are running these islands and not the People and the government representing the will of the People, as it should be. 

HOVENSA does not desire to sell the refinery but wants to operate the site as a storage facility only; at the same time it seems that Hess Oil itself would like to get out of the refinery business altogether.  If this is the case, rather than forcing them to sell the refinery, our government should have them clean up the site and should negotiate with them to reach an agreement that will be of mutual benefit to all parties, particularly the People, the land, and the future of the Virgin Islands.  

Right now, we the People must decide how we can utilize this opportunity to make a major socio-political-economical change for our future, and we need for all the concerned people of the Virgin Islands to participate in this process. Our immediate concerns and issues that need to be resolved are: affordable power and water and renewable energy, affordable and healthy organic food, clean air, affordable land and home ownership, quality education, economic diversification, employment and business training and job opportunities. 

We the People can use this issue of the 4^th Amendment to the HOVENSA Concession Agreement as an opportunity to address some of these issues, for in reality what we have before us is two of the world's largest fossil fuel and petroleum industries that are breaching their contractual obligations to the People of the Virgin Islands.  We the people must utilize this window of opportunity wisely.

We need Green and not Greed.

Click here to read the proposed 4th Amendment to the HOVENSA Concession Agreement.

"Stop Feeding WAPA's Furnaces with Dollar Bills"

dirty paradise

Testimony presented to The Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection earlier this year and reported in the St. Thomas Source, confirmed that “Virgin Islanders pay some of the highest electric rates in the United States.”   

According to WAPA Executive Director, Hugo Hodge Jr., dire “cash shortfalls" are the result of “massive spikes” in the price of the oil that the authority burns to produce electricity, even "as these costs "outpace the revenues collected under the LEAC," or levelized energy adjustment clause.    


Testimony given by St. Croix engineer, Gustav James, P.E.,  however, identified the real problem as WAPA’s generators, which “don't just burn expensive fuel, they do so inefficiently.”  James’s calculations from his own WAPA bills revealed that WAPA generators run at 18 percent efficiency, a figure not far off from the 21 percent efficiency reported by Hodge.  

 James made a number of specific recommendations, including replacing WAPA’s current generating turbines with “new, more efficient reciprocating generators [that] would pay for themselves in less than a year in savings. That would make financing extremely attractive, and allow an initial LEAC reduction even as the new units were being paid for.”  

Citation:

Baur, John. "WAPA Conversion Could Cut LEAC 30 Percent in 2014." St. Thomas Source. 22 Feb 2013: n. page. Web. 7 Jul. 2013. <http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2013/02/23/wapa-conversion-could-cut-leac-30-percent-2014>.

 

Picture Citation:   

BFM, . dirty paradise. 2012. Photograph. http://thebarefootmom.wordpress.com/, St. Croix, USVI. Web.   7 Jul  2013.<http://thebarefootmom.wordpress.com/category/the-st-croix-years/the-not-so-good/page/2/>.

The full text of James’s testimony has been made available online by Senator Craig Barshinger at http://tinyurl.com/lwb466x

Nyeleni 2007

Convened in Mali in 2007, the message of the Forum for Food Sovereignty still resonates in 2013:

"Since 1996 governments and international institutions have presided over globalization and liberalization, intensifying the structural causes of hunger and malnutrition. These have forced markets open to dumping of agricultural products, privatization of basic social and economic support institutions, the privatization and commodification of communal and public land, water, fishing grounds and forests....

In contrast to the proposed International Alliance Against Hunger, which is worse than “more of the same medicine”, we counterpose the unifying concept of Food Sovereignty as the umbrella under which we outline the actions and strategies that are needed to truly end hunger."

Source: Food Sovereignty: A Right for All

[see full document at http://www.nyeleni.org/spip.php?article125]

"Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users.

Food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal - fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food.

Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes and generations."

Source: Declaration of Nyeleni

[see full document at http://www.nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290]