A group of students have sided with many of the state’s largest environmental groups in opposition to the Public Service Board’s decision to put a fracked gas pipeline through Addison County, Vt.

The fracked gas pipeline would obtain gas and oil from shale rock, according to the BBC News. 

UVM Students Against the Pipeline has held regular events and movie screenings to recruit members and educate the community on the subject, according to the Dec. 3 UVM Students Against the Pipeline news release. 

UVM Students Against the Pipeline member senior Daniel Graham said the state’s largest environmental groups and over 96 percent of the roughly 2,000 comments that were sent in to the Public Service Board are in opposition. 

“What I’m seeing on the ground is growing opposition, pure and simple. Thousands of community members, students, professors, landowners, business owners and farmers have united in a coalition against this extension,” Graham said in the Dec. 3 news release. 

The students noted the public health and environmental consequences of deepening Vermont’s dependence on imported fracked gas, citing examples such as Youngstown, Ohio, which never experienced an earthquake prior to the start of fracking. Since then, there have been 109 recorded earthquakes, one reaching a magnitude of 3.9 on the Richter magnitude scale, according to the news release. 

Despite their efforts, the decision to proceed with the fracked gas pipeline was reached by the Public Service Dec. 23, senior UVM Students Against the Pipeline member Juliana Chase said. 

“We’re not giving up without a fight of course,” she said. “And it doesn’t change the destructive and unnecessary nature of fracking, but necessarily it changes perspective and the reality of what the fight against fracking is really up against.”