Protesters at Youngstown injection well sentenced to probation
YOUNGSTOWN
Six environmental protesters who demonstrated at a city injection well entered plea agreements Thursday in Youngstown Municipal Court.
Anne Lukins, 21, of West Virginia; Lindsey Schwartz, 20, of Pennsylvania; Benjamin Shapiro, 26, of Cleveland; Jackson Kusiak, 19, of Massachusetts; Jeremy Bingham, 20, of Massachusetts; and Sean O’Toole, 61, of Warren were each taken into custody earlier this month and issued a summons for disorderly conduct outside D&L Energy Inc. in the 1000 block of Ohio Works Drive.
A seventh protester, Benjamin Marks, 19, of California, is scheduled for a plea hearing Feb. 2.
The protesters had blocked a water-disposal truck at the Youngstown business, which houses a brine-injection well. The wells are used to dispose of wastewater from fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a process in which water, chemicals and sand are blasted through pipes into rocks thousands of feet below the ground to unlock natural gas and oil.
The six defendants changed their pleas of not guilty to no contest on amended disorderly conduct charges.
“Each defendant has no criminal record. ...The exercise [was] civil disobedience,” said Atty. Rhys B. Cartwright-Jones, who represented them.
Prosecutors recommended a sentence of six months’ probation and payment of a $50 fine and court costs.
Cartwright-Jones called the prosecutor’s recommendation a “just and appropriate compromise.”
After Judge Elizabeth A. Kobly imposed the recommended sentence, there was applause in the courtroom, much of it from Occupy Youngstown members who expressed solidarity with the environmental protesters.
“This is just one part of the grass-roots movement,” said Susie Beiersdorfer, an Occupy protester and a part-time geology instructor at Youngstown State University.
In addition to the environmental concerns of fracking injection wells, Beiersdorfer said she’s frustrated that corporations, such as those who profit from fracking, have so much influence.
“I used to call it corporate greed, but it’s really corporate rule now,” she said.
Julia Fuhrman Davis of North Lima said she is concerned about a new injection well in Beaver Township and praised the protesters.
“They’re standing up against something that’s not right. This is hazardous to the environment,” she said.