Wednesday updates

                              h/t oiltransportationcampaign

Hearing on Inslee plan to charge big polluters draws divided crowd

By Jim Brunner Seattle Times political reporter

OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee’s sweeping climate-change bill drew hundreds to a packed public hearing Tuesday, putting the divided world view of supporters and opponents on full display throughout the Capitol.

An air of urgency filled environmentalists who sang songs and waved signs at passing lawmakers, and erected a display of a burning planet.....

North Dakota: oil producers aim to cut radioactive waste bills

via Yahoo News

Not the Radioactive waste, mind you, just the cost of dealing with it.

By Ernest Scheyder

WILLISTON, N.D. (Reuters) - North Dakota's oil industry is pushing to change the state's radioactive waste disposal laws as part of a broad effort to conserve cash as oil prices tumble.

The waste, which becomes slightly radioactive as part of the hydraulic fracturing process that churns up isotopes locked underground, must be trucked out of state.

That's because rules prohibit North Dakota landfills from accepting anything but miniscule amounts of radiation.....

Children Given Lifelong Ban on Talking About Fracking

Two Pennsylvanian children will live their lives under a gag order imposed under a $750,000 settlement.

By Suzanne Goldenberg     The Guardian   Alternet      January 26, 2015

Two young children in Pennsylvania were banned from talking about fracking for the rest of their lives under a gag order imposed under a settlement reached by their parents with a leading oil and gas company.

The sweeping gag order was imposed under a $750,000 settlement between the Hallowich family and Range Resources Corp, a leading oil and gas driller. It provoked outrage on Monday among environmental campaigners and free speech advocates.

The settlement, reached in 2011 but unsealed only last week, barred the Hallowichs' son and daughter, who were then aged 10 and seven, from ever discussing fracking or the Marcellus Shale, a leading producer in America's shale gas boom.

The Hallowich family had earlier accused oil and gas companies of destroying their 10-acre farm in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania and putting their children's health in danger. Their property was adjacent to major industrial operations: four gas wells, gas compressor stations, and a waste water pond, which the Hallowich family said contaminated their water supply and caused burning eyes, sore throats and headaches.

Gag orders – on adults – are typical in settlements reached between oil and gas operators and residents in the heart of shale gas boom in Pennsylvania. But the company lawyer's insistence on extending the lifetime gag order to the Hallowichs' children gave even the judge pause, according to the court documents.

The family gag order was a condition of the settlement. The couple told the court they agreed because they wanted to move to a new home away from the gas fields, and to raise their children in a safer environment. "We need to get the children out of there for their health and safety," the children's mother, Stephanie Hallowich, told the court.....   more here

Oil Report: Preparing WA for More Oil Shipments, Spills

 

Chris Thomas, Public News Service – WA     December 4, 2014 | Download audio

OLYMPIA, Wash. – The Washington Department of Ecology made recommendations this week for what the state could do to handle and fund the risks that come with increased shipments of oil by rail and water.

Its report says 3 million gallons a week already move through Washington by train, a number that's expected to balloon if new fuel-export terminals are built.

Three terminals proposed for Grays Harbor are on hold pending court-ordered environmental and public health reviews.

Kristen Boyles, the Earthjustice attorney on that case for the Quinault Indian Nation and conservation groups, says the Ecology Department's recommendations will spawn some legislation, but she predicts it won't go far enough.

"And I suspect that there will be any number of proposed bills,” she says. “I'm afraid that they will all be nibbling around the edges of the problem, instead of saying that we don't have to have this in our communities if we don't want it."

The Marine and Rail Oil Transportation Study makes a dozen recommendations, most of which involve finding permanent funding for more planners and inspectors, as well as equipment and emergency training for local first-responders. ....

.....[Boyles is] concerned the focus is on preparing for more oil shipments instead of preventing them.

"What is needed, I think, is a broader, bolder vision for stopping more crude-by-rail development, for preventing the building of new terminals, for protecting our waterways, for honoring our tribal trust responsibilities."...    read more here

Failure of Department of Ecology

We learned yesterday that on December 1, the Department of Ecology sent the Draft 2014 Marine & Rail Transportation Study to the legislature without anyone’s comments attached. 

As you know, they gave December 1, 5 PM as the deadline for comments.  Thousands of people attended hearings; thousands, representing tens of thousands sent in comments.

The vast majority of comments felt the study was woefully inadequate.  It is unacceptable for Ecology to have excluded Washington citizens’ concerns.  We urge you to send your Study comments to your state legislators.  You might preface your communication with your displeasure that Ecology failed to let our legislators know the concerns and wishes of their constituents.

Find your legislators contact info here.  We also urge you to write Dale Jensen and tell him that he must send all comments to the legislature now!  The “Focus Paper” Ecology has put out about the study, does not reflect the majority of people’s wishes:  putting a moratorium on marine and rail transport.

Jensen's contact info:  

Dale Jensen

Spills Program Manager

Department of Ecology

State of Washington

United States of America

360-407-7450 work

360-790-8143 cell

dale.jensen@ecy.wa.gov 

UPDATE: Marine and Rail Oil Transport Hearings- yesterday Spokane, tomorrow Olympia!

Tomorrow, Oct 30th, will see the second public event- this one in Olympia:

2014 Marine and Rail Oil Transport Hearing    (Join us! free bus info at this link)   

UPDATE:  

Dan Leahy just wrote:

Just got back from the Spokane hearing. If the study definition (transport) keeps people from saying that Gov. Inslee has direct control over whether to construct four oil terminals ( one via EFSEC and three via HIS Dept of Ecology), Ecology will have won and we will have lost the use of the public hearing forum. 

Ecology is so nervous about what they are doing that there were six fully armed state patrol troopers and three Spokane cops making sure the mainly elderly crowd didn't rush the stage given the complete banality of Ecology's presentation and the study itself.

If you can put my comment on your blog, please do.

Dan

Appears the Governor and Dept. of Ecology expect us to quietly accept their $300,000 charade. I for one, don't think so! -cwr

Another report from Spokane:

Yesterday was Spokane's chance to speak out and Mark Glyde of Resource Media  provided this report:

Good initial coverage of the rally and hearing on Governor Inslee’s oil by rail study. About 70 people braved the rain to show up at the rally and more than 200 attended the hearing where the vast majority testified against or voiced strong concern about oil transport and coal export.

KXLY-TV story (Spokane CBS affiliate): Interviews with King County Executive Dow Constantine and Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart on the dangers of oil trains to “people and property” and how they could displace inland agricultural products and slow them getting to market via ports on the coast:

http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/oil-train-protestors-march-on-downtown-spokane/29399448

Spokesman-Review story focuses on challenges of emergency response with great quotes from local fire chief Andy Hail:

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/oct/29/oil-train-wreck-would-be-challenge-spokane-deputy/

KHQ-TV (ABC Affiliate): Focus on huge increase in oil trains, number of people living near rail lines and potential taxpayer costs – technical difficulties bumped interview with Ben Stuckart

http://www.khq.com/clip/10786516/oil-train-report-prompts-concern

 

 

2014 Marine and Rail Oil Transport Hearing

Governor Inslee has commissioned a study to assess the health and safety risks of oil transport in Washington and is giving the public a chance to comment.

The hearing will include a discussion of this study as well as public and environmental health implications of oil and coal transport in Washington.

This is a critical opportunity to voice your concerns about the impact of oil and coal on the health of our communities. Let's tell the Governor we don't want crude oil transport and storage in Washington State!

Visit the Department of Ecology oil trains study webpage:

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/spills/oilmovement/2014MRStudy.html

October 30  5-10pm

Red Lion Hotel, 2300 Evergreen Park Dr. SW, Olympia, WA 98502

RSVP to Arnie Martin for a free bus ride.

It will pick up in Hoquiam, Aberdeen, Monte and Elma!

Email Arnie, arnold6.martin@comcast.net for details.

Directions to Red Lion here

Inslee's Draft Marine and Rail Oil Report: A Study in Mis-direction.

 

To: Interested Parties

Fr: Dan Leahy

Re: Inslee's Draft Marine and Rail Oil Report: A Study in Mis-direction.

I've waded through the October 1^st draft of Governor Inslee's study. I do find it extremely insulting that there is no mention of the significant statewide municipal, community, farm, union and tribal opposition to his proposed oil terminals, expanding oil refineries, explosive oil trains and the misuse of our public ports.

I've come to believe that the only force capable of saving our land, labor and commonly held resources is an alliance of sovereign tribes, organized labor, farmer unions and community based resistance groups working in concert with their local governmental jurisdictions.

Hopefully the Spokane and Olympia hearings on the 28^th and 30^th will build toward this alliance.

How Can Inslee's Study be Used?

The study can be an opportunity to create a love fest for the “beleaguered green governor” who pleads that he has no authority to regulate rail and wants us to back a doomed legislative agenda to expand agency study budgets while oil terminals get approved, oil refineries get expanded, and our rail system is turned into a permanent carbon corridor for the export of Alberta tar sands and Bakken crude.

Or, the study can be an opportunity to present a sharp critique of Inslee's refusal to support community demands by opposing state sponsored oil terminals, expanding refineries and a state bureaucracy collaborating with BNSF's mission to export through our public ports global pollution from the broken earth of Northern Alberta and North Dakota.

What's the purpose of Inslee's Study?

Mis-direction. It defines the problem as a federal issue and calls upon the US Coast Guard and the Federal Railroad Administration to do something. The USCG actually regulates marine traffic, but the FRA is an industry dominated entity with the current capability of inspecting less than 1% of rail activity and a policy of imploring railroads rather than regulating them. Calling upon the FRA to regulate rail would be like calling upon BNSF's owner Warren Buffett to stop making money. It's not what they do.

Worse, the study's authors wait until the very end of the report (p. 82)to tell us that “... the potential ways in which the crude by rail system and the increase in port activities with new facilities affects tribal treaty rights, the environment and the regional economy” are “ancillary”and not the “direct topic” of the study.

This study process is attempting to cap the direction of our movement and trade our future for a false climate agenda based on mitigating at the margins.