Friends and Supporters: 

Environmental justice communities such as Gary and East Chicago, have a history of carrying an unequal and unfair burden of environmental contamination of our air, water and soil.  For over 100 years, the city of Gary has been disproportionately affected by decades of environmental abuse, neglect, and lack of regulation and enforcement. 

When a new polluter is seeking a home, they think of Gary because we have a reputation of being a “sacrifice zone” – an already heavily polluted dumping ground that has been permanently impaired by mass environmental exploitation and economic disinvestment. This has resulted in higher rates of cancer, asthma, pulmonary and respiratory diseases, stroke, diabetes, and children with neurological disorders and delayed development because of exposure to the industrial toxic chemicals we drink, breathe, and play in every day.

There are many reasons to oppose Fulcrum BioEnergy, a fuel refinery proposed for Buffington Harbor at the western lakefront area of Gary.  Protecting our greatest natural resource, Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for millions of people, is a priority on that list of reasons.  Fulcrum is proposing their plant to be located at Buffington Harbor where over 35,000 people (in homes, schools, and businesses)  live, work, study, worship, and play within a three-mile radius. Fulcrum will also make over 240 trips per day trucking garbage via Cline Avenue to their plant at Buffington Harbor -- increasing hazardous tire wear dust, road sediment, and tailpipe emissions along the way.  

There are many unanswered questions about the safety and effectiveness of Fulcrum’s unproven process to make low-carbon jet fuel from household garbage.  After eight years in development, Fulcrum’s pilot plant located in a Nevada desert is not yet operational;  Fulcrum has yet to produce a single gallon of the fuel they are proposing as a means to reduce carbon emissions in jets.  Fulcrum refuses to conduct a hazard analysis that will demonstrate the safety of this process.  And while Fulcrum’s trash feedstock gasification process has not yet proven successful, there are several other attempted waste-to-energy plants around the country and in the state of Indiana (one of which caught fire) that have tried similar processes and failed to date.

Today, Gary is in dire need of development that does not continue to increase the environmental damage already done in our Northwest Indiana urban communities. We need jobs that are safe, sustainable, and pay a living wage – and responsible development that contributes to the overall health and well-being of our people, and of our air, water, and soil.  Please consider signing this petition to ensure these basic human rights are given to all who live, work, study, worship, and play in the Northwest Indiana region.