Earthjustice DEIS Comment Letter- sign on opportunity

 Elma DEIS hearing, Oct 1, 2015

The letter below addresses the threat to our region posed by the proposed oil terminals in Grays Harbor, and has links that connect to an EJ comment letter to Ecology and the city of Hoquiam asking that the permits be rejected. Your comments at the petition site will be added to a general letter and forwarded on as official comment. 

Thursday Oct 8th will be the Aberdeen DEIS hearing where you can give comments in person. The hearing will be held at the D&R Theatre, 205 South I Street, Aberdeen, WA 98520

Rally at 5:00 pm in front of the D&R Theater! wear red

 

The hearing will have two sessions, from 1:30 – 4:30 pm and then again at 6:00 – 9:00pm.  Please attend one or both. The future of the Washington Coast is at risk.

See info here,  here and here for fact sheets and info on submitting written comments.

Please share this important link with your friends and neighbors!



Dear Friends:
We have a chance to stand up to the oil industry now and slow the dangerous expansion of oil transport in Washington.

Oil companies want to expand their Northwest operations by building oil shipping terminals on Washington’s coast and turning our region into a thoroughfare for crude oil transportation by rail and oil tanker.

Take action now to stop two terminals proposed for Grays Harbor, Washington, and protect your community from increased crude oil rail traffic, oil spills and carbon pollution. 

The proposed oil shipping terminals; the explosive, dangerous oil trains needed to feed them; and the continual parade of oil tankers and barges taking the crude over thriving marine waters would put the health and safety of communities, the local economy, tribal culture, and our ocean and coastlines at risk.

This is not the future we want.

A public comment period is underway right now on draft environmental reviews of the risks and harms from the proposed Westway and Imperium terminals in Grays Harbor. Let the Washington Department of Ecology and the City of Hoquiam know that we understand the risks we face with these oil industry proposals, and we don’t think they’re worth it.

The draft environmental reviews found that the risks of oil spills during rail transport, at the terminal site, and during marine vessel transport through Grays Harbor cannot be fully mitigated, and that if a spill occurred, the environmental damage would be significant.

Whether you live five or five hundred miles from Grays Harbor, the oil industry plans to bring more dangerous types of oil through the region, including volatile Bakken crude and toxic tar sands from Canada, increasing the risk of a derailment, collision, spill, fire, or explosion…putting people in Washington at risk.

There’s still time to stop these projects, but to win, we need to your help!

Take action now, then share this alert with five of your friends. Together we can protect our Northwest communities! 
 
Sincerely,
Kristen Boyles 
Attorney
Earthjustice, Northwest Office  
 

It’s Official: New York State Bans Fracking

It’s Official: New York Bans Fracking

Eco Watch    Cole Mellino       June 29, 2015

See additional coverage in Bloomberg and the FuelFix.    h/t Roger Straw

New York State officially banned fracking today by issuing its formal Findings Statement, which completed the state’s seven-year review of fracking.

“After years of exhaustive research and examination of the science and facts, prohibiting high-volume hydraulic fracturing is the only reasonable alternative,” said New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens in a statement. “High-volume hydraulic fracturing poses significant adverse impacts to land, air, water, natural resources and potential significant public health impacts that cannot be adequately mitigated. This decision is consistent with DEC’s mission to conserve, improve and protect our state’s natural resources, and to enhance the health, safety and welfare of the people of the state.”

Today, representatives of New Yorkers Against Fracking, Frack Action and the Sierra Club delivered this giant “Thank You” scroll signed by hundreds of state residents to the 2nd floor of the Capitol Executive Chamber.

The Findings Statement concludes that “there are no feasible or prudent alternatives that adequately avoid or minimize adverse environmental impacts and address risks to public health from this activity.” Two groups heavily involved in the campaign, New Yorkers Against Fracking and Americans Against Fracking, praised the decision.

Mark Ruffalo, an advisory board member of Americans Against Fracking, worked diligently to ban fracking in his home state and recently made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to encourage the U.S. to go 100 percent renewable by 2050. In a statement on the finalization of New York’s ban on fracking, Ruffalo said:

I applaud the Cuomo Administration for protecting the public health and safety of New Yorkers by finalizing the ban on high volume fracking. Governor Cuomo has set a precedent for the nation by carefully considering the science, which shows a range of public health and environmental harms, and doing what’s best for the people, not the special interests of Big Oil and Gas. Already, other states and countries are following New York’s lead, with prohibitions including Maryland, Scotland, Wales and just today a crucial county in England. Along with many New Yorkers, I look forward to working on advancing renewable energy and efficiency, showing the world that a cleaner, healthier, renewable energy future is possible. Today I’m proud and thankful to be a New Yorker.

Industry groups have, of course, threatened to sue but the attorneys at Earthjustice are confident that the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s exhaustive review “will withstand legal challenge” and Earthjustice pledges “to stand alongside the state in any legal challenge.”

“Today, nearly a year to the day after communities won the right to ban fracking, New York’s historic statewide ban on fracking is now the law of the land,” says Earthjustice Managing Attorney Deborah Goldberg, who represented the town of Dryden, New York, which won its precedent-setting fracking ban case one year ago tomorrow. “We salute Governor Andrew Cuomo’s refusal to bow to industry pressure. He had the courage to do what no other state or federal leader has had the courage to do: let the available scientific evidence dictate whether fracking should proceed in New York.”

New York now joins Vermont in outlawing the practice altogether, which has been banned in the Green Mountain state since 2012. As Ruffalo mentioned, this spring Maryland approved a moratorium on fracking in the state until October 2017. Scotland and Wales have also instituted moratoriums. And today a county in England rejected applications for fracking permits, which the Wall Street Journal says “effectively extends the moratorium on fracking in the U.K.” Meanwhile, Texas and Oklahoma both passed legislation this spring, barring local municipalities from instituting fracking bans.

“New Yorkers can celebrate the fact that we won’t be subjected to the toxic pollution and health risks fracking inevitably brings,” said Alex Beauchamp, northeast region director for Food & Water Watch. “By banning fracking, Governor Cuomo stood up to the oil and gas industry, and in so doing became a national leader on health and the environment. He set a standard for human health and safety that President Obama and other state leaders should be striving for.”

Fed Judge: Railroads Responsible for Costs of Oil Spills, Disaster Planning

CA Fed Judge: Train Companies Must Prepare for Oil Spills

Public News Service - CA | June 26, 2015 | Download audio

 

 PHOTO: Companies running oil trains in California will be required to have a spill-response plan. Photo credit: vladyslav-danilin/shutterstock

June 26, 2015

Railroad companies soon won't be able to carry oil in California unless they have a safety plan - and put aside lots of money to cover any future spills. That's because a federal judge in San Francisco dismissed an industry lawsuit last week against California's new railroad safety law.

Patti Goldman, managing attorney for Earthjustice, said the precautions required are common sense.

"All other industries, like the tankers that carry the oil, the refiners, the pipelines, all of them prepare these oil-spill response plans," she aaid. "It's time for the railroads to do the same."

Railroad companies had argued that federal law pre-empts states' regulation of the railroads.

Goldman said the companies now will have more incentive to get the training, equipment and communications systems in place to prevent the worst-case scenario.

"They improve their practices. They can't get financial assurances if they're being really risky," she said. "And they figure out how to handle the oil better so that they won't have a spill."

California's railroad safety law will go into effect once regulations are finalized.

Suzanne Potter, Public News Service - CA

Ruling Protects California Law Holding Railroads Responsible for Oil Spills, Disaster Planning

Victory: Railroads must show financial responsibility, safety plans for hazardous fuels they transport in California 

EarthJustice   June 19, 2015

San Francisco, CA —Yesterday, a federal judge dismissed a legal challenge to a California law that requires railroads to commit to oil spill response plans and demonstrate financial solvency in state efforts to reasonably prepare for the risk of oil car derailments and disasters such as those seen this year in West Virginia, Ontario and Illinois.

Reacting to a dramatic surge in crude oil trains coming into the state and threatening state waters, California passed a law last year requiring that railroads and other entities that transport oil across the state prepare comprehensive oil spill response plans and demonstrate financial responsibility to clean up a worst-case oil spill. The railroad industry sued the state, seeking to prohibit enforcement of the law, arguing that federal rail laws preempt any state regulation of the railroads. Earthjustice, representing a coalition of concerned citizen groups, sportfishermen, and environmental organizations, joined in the State of California’s defense of the law.

The ruling allows the state to implement regulations requiring increased accountability from railroads in light of the exponential expansion of crude-by-rail shipments across the nation and the resulting risks and incidents of derailments, spills and explosions. In his ruling, Judge Troy Nunley of the Eastern District of California dismissed the railroads’ challenge as premature, since the law they challenged has not yet been implemented.

“States have the authority—a duty even—to demand that railroads have plans in place to respond to disasters and protect waterways from oil spills,” said Earthjustice attorney Tamara Zakim.  “California’s law is a sensible response to the flood of Bakken crude and Canadian tar sands oil entering the state by rail and the threat those shipments pose, and the Court has done the right thing by dismissing railroads’ baseless challenge.”

Earthjustice represented San Francisco Baykeeper, Communities for a Better Environment, the Sierra Club, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Association of Irritated Residents and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in defense of the law.

Read the legal document.

Senators call for permanent PHMSA director; NY blocks tar sands expansion without EIS

Senators call for permanent director to oversee pipeline and crude-by-rail safety

Central Kitsap Reporter   May 21, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators concerned about the potential dangers of oil being transported via rail sent a letter calling on President Obama to nominate a permanent administrator to head the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the agency responsible for overseeing pipeline and crude-by-rail safety.

"It is important to states like ours that PHMSA have a permanent administrator to ensure accountability, to develop long-term plans for pipeline transport and crude-by-rail safety, and to respond quickly when things unfortunately go wrong," the Senators wrote.

Washington senators Maria Cantwell, D-WA, and Patty Murray, D-WA, joined by Senators Jon Tester, D-Mont., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., all signed the letter.

"We rely on this Agency to protect our citizens and our environment from damaging spills and accidents, while also ensuring the flow of energy products to those who need them."....    more here

The Port of Albany.  Photo courtesy of Andy Arthur

Cuomo Administration Blocks Massive Tar Sands Oil Facility Expansion in Albany 

Department of Environmental Conservation to require full environmental review of Global Companies’ proposal

 

eNews Park Forest  May 22, 2015

Albany, NY — In the face of a court challenge from a broad coalition of environmental and community groups and massive community opposition, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) yesterday halted Global Companies’ proposed expansion of its massive Albany oil train facility to handle tar sands oil. Citing project changes, new information, questions about the project’s ability to meet air quality, and impacts to the neighboring residential community, the DEC issued a letter today notifying Global it would rescind its prior finding that the project would have no significant environmental impacts and that a full environmental review will be required.

The expansion would have allowed Global to pump tar sands oil out of railcars, store and heat it in storage tanks on-site at the Port of Albany, and transfer the oil onto barges for transport down to the Hudson River to East Coast refineries.

Earthjustice, on behalf of the Ezra Prentice Tenants Homes Association, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter and Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit last year demanding the DEC rescind its prior finding that the project would have no environmental impact and require a full environmental review. The lawsuit is still pending in state court......     more here