hAPPY LABOR DAY!

​Ingleside holds generations.  Like many smaller American towns, many families have lived in the area since it was less “town” and more “cows”.  This provides an unusual and unique advantage- residents know what the town looked like twenty years ago, forty years ago, even further back.
Family photos and snapshots from local events create a visual history and context to Ingleside that cannot be replicated in a larger city.  Best friends, neighbors, and high school sweethearts overlap in these albums until it isn’t just an individual family’s memories anymore, but a living, breathing memoir of every decade that passes.
Labor day is intended to be a day to pause and appreciate the hard work each of these generations has put in, and will continue to do.  To say “Thank you” for the commitment to family, community, and the town itself.
Unfortunately, this Labor Day is tainted by the oncoming threat of harmful industry in the area.  As the potential for ammonia plants and dangerous air permits loom, many members of Ingleside have voiced their memories of what it was like to live here before.
Before the risk of air pollution, before the risk of toxic fumes two miles from an elementary school, before a foreign company tried to buy up Ingleside to build a plant that would not pass the environmental standards in their own company.
At a recent city council meeting one local resident mentioned trying to cast a net at Live Oak Pond with his son, a place he himself had often fished as a boy, without any success and that his skin had become irritated where it touched the water.
The signs of pollution have already begun to show themselves.  Enbridge, a business known for it’s history of EPA violations, has already set its sights on us.
This is not the Ingleside we have worked for.  This is not the way our labor should be rewarded.
Energy bills are skyrocketing, water is being treated as a luxury purchase, and farmland is being sold by the acre for more housing. 
Large industrial companies like Enbridge and Yara have taken an interest in Ingleside because of its Gulf access and the hope that the residents don’t care enough to pay attention to the risks.  They attempt to buy off residents with nice social media posts and a few gifts for teachers and students.
One of these gifts fit inside a red backpack.  It contained the emergency supplies given to teachers in case of a disaster at the proposed ammonia plant called Project Yaren.  The primary piece of this gift was plastic sheeting which the teachers were instructed to tape around their windows to prevent fumes from entering the classroom.
If there were an accident, teachers would have six and a half minutes from the time of the incident to react.  
Is this what their labor is worth?  Six and a half minutes to be alerted, secure their windows and doors, and shelter in place with the children of Ingleside.  This will also affect the surrounding communities in Rockport, Aransas Pass, and Portland.  
When faced with this, it’s hard to feel this is a day to celebrate.
But Ingleside has proven time and time again that it is, in a word, resilient.  This is not the first attempt to change the town into something the residents do not recognize.  With each petition signed, town hall attended, and public comment made, the people of Ingleside prove that they will not be bought out with gifts and empty promises.  Your hard work is what has held the town together through the generations, what has created the memories found in those photographs.  And that hard work is exactly what Labor Day was meant to celebrate.
Help us protect Ingleside and the hard work you have put into your home town by signing this petition to speak against the three new air permits Enbridge is requesting, which would allow them to further pollute local air.  Your signature can help stop these harmful industries before Ingleside becomes another casualty of permit violations and pollution.

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