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

How crude-by-rail — and other debates — are censored

How crude-by-rail — and other debates — are censored

Valero seeks to modify its Benicia refinery to bring in two 50-car trains a day of crude oil.

By Lois Kazakoff    January 2, 2015   SF Gate

When I wrote in November about how the mayor of Benicia was effectively muzzled from speaking about a pending city decision with nationwide importance, I thought the debate was over climate change. Now I learn the real concern is over democracy itself.

My Nov. 18 blog post concerned the City Council’s decision to make public an opinion on whether the mayor should be allowed to speak freely with voters about Valero’s application to convert its Benicia refinery to receive crude from the Baaken Oil Shale by rail. The decision is huge because fracking the crude is only profitable if the oil can reach refineries and the global market. Benicia’s refinery and port are key components to success.

Locally, Benicians and Californians living along the rail lines are fearful of train cars filled with the highly volatile crude rumbling through their communities twice a day. It’s a highly charged dispute that has drawn in Attorney General Kamala Harris, who chastised the city for only studying the effects on Benicia and not the effects along the entire rail line through California.

When the City Council voted to make public the opinion, written by an attorney hired by the city attorney, the decision was Mayor Elizabeth Patterson had overstepped her bounds.

Why? Because local politicians can advocate for new laws, but when they are holding a public hearing or ruling on a permit — acting more like judges than legislators — the permit applicant’s right to appear before an unbiased body trumps the legislator’s right to freely express an opinion.

Peter Scheer, the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, writes in Sunday’s Insight section that this growing practice of advising City Council members to censor themselves is deleterious not just to political debate over important and engaging local issues but to democracy. By giving City Councils this dual role and then advising them to censor their own speech, we discourage civic participation  on the concerns constituents care about most.

Can local legislators speak freely to voters? It depends

By Peter Scheer      Jan 2, 2015   SF Gate

.....The line separating legislative from quasi-judicial decisions is barely discernible to lawyers who practice in the government arena — much less to the amateur politicians who predominate on legislative bodies of cities, counties, school districts and the like.

Moreover, even in cases where the line is ultimately visible, elected officials may have no way of knowing, well in advance of the decision, whether the issue will be presented to the council as a legislative matter or a quasi-judicial matter.

Faced with this uncertainty, many council members do the only safe thing: They censor themselves.....    more here

Kansas derailment raises vital rail safety questions

Rail safety is back in the spotlight after a new warning from federal regulators.

CBS News       January 3, 2015

The National Transportation Safety Board is urging railroads to take immediate action following its investigation of a derailment in Kansas. No one was hurt in the derailment, but it raised new questions about whether America's rail network -- carrying cargo and passengers -- is as safe as it could be, CBS News' Mark Albert reports.   [video at site]....

..."What we know is the regulators are behind the curve," said former NTSB chair Deborah Hersman, who sounded the alarm about crude oil shipments in April. "We're losing cars. We're losing millions of gallons of petroleum, and we aren't prepared."

Eight days later, train cars carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire along the James River in Virginia.
more here

Mayor Muzzled About CBR/ Alberta Spills and Leaks Unreported

Mayor muzzled from speaking about crude by rail

SF Gate    By Lois Kazakoff on November 18, 2014

Opponents in the national debate over climate change will enter the ring tonight in the City Council Chambers of the small riverside city of Benicia (Solano County). City Attorney Heather McLaughlin has thrown down the gantlet with this small item on the City Council agenda.

 CONSIDERATION OF WAIVING THE ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE FOR

THE OPINION REGARDING MAYOR PATTERSON AND THE CRUDE

BY RAIL PROJECT. (City Attorney)

Buried in the legal language is a debate over Mayor Elizabeth Patterson’s First Amendment Right to communicate with the citizens of Benicia about Valero’s pending land use application to modify its refinery to receive crude by rail rather than crude by tanker ship. At stake is a robust democratic discussion over a decision that will affect not just Benicia but every community on the rail line between the Bakken Oil Shale fields in Montana and the Dakotas and Valero’s Benicia refinery.
McLaughlin has written a confidential opinion on the mayor and the crude by rail project. It is her view that she cannot release the document unless the majority of the five-member City Council waives the attorney-client privilege by which she is bound. “At least three have to decide to make the opinion public,” she told me....

... Early this summer, when the city attorney advised the mayor that she should not send e-mail “e-alerts” to her constituents about Valero’s pending environmental impact report so as not to give an appearance of bias, Patterson hired an attorney. In a letter, the law firm wrote that the mayor did not have a disqualifying conflict of interest in the Valero matter. And further, quoting state law, “As a public official you certainly not only have ‘a right but an obligation to discuss issues of vital concern’ to your constituents and to state your ‘views on matters of public importance’.”...
read more here

There's Been HOW Many Pipeline Spills in Alberta in The Last Four Months??

Daily Kos   11/17/14
....Alberta, Canada is basically a petro state. Oil and gas production rule everything and it's happening everywhere in the north of the province. Pipelines criss cross most of Alberta. As a result, leaks of wells, facilities and pipelines are a constant thing all over the province.

But we Canadians almost never hear about them. Our main media, CBC, does not provide any coverage of the many, many spills and gas releases that happen every month, nor the efforts to clean up the messes...

.... West Coast Native News (WCNN) has been quietly keeping tabs on all the spills and leaks. What they have found is shocking!!....   see site for interactive map link
read article here

 

Port Association Fails to Silence Port of Olympia

Hi Folks,                                                                                                     10/15/14

The Washington Public Ports Association's attempt to silence the Port of Olympia has failed.  The Port Association's Executive Committee should resign in disgrace for its effort to silence debate on this important public policy issue.

The Port of Olympia passed resolution #2014-07 in August, 2014 calling upon the Port of Grays Harbor to reconsider its proposal to build three marine terminals for Bakken shale oil and requesting the City of Hoquiam to deny construction permits for all three of the proposed terminals.

In response, the Executive Committee of the Washington Public Ports Association, a trade association with no statutory authority to do so, sent letters to the homes of two Olympia port commissioners, George Barner and Sue Gunn, saying they were "writing to censure you for your support and passage of this resolution."

I've attached the Port of Olympia's October 14th response to the Association.

The Executive Committee of the Washington Public Ports Association is:

Tom Albro, President (Port of Seattle)

Roy Keck, Vice President (Port of Benton)
Jerry Oliver, Past President (Port of Vancouver)
JC Baldwin, Past Present (Port of Chelan)

Troy McClellan, Secretary (Port of Everett)

Sincerely,
Dan Leahy
1415 6th Avenue SW
Olympia, WA 98502

'A Government Of Thugs': How Canada Treats Environmental Journalists:

The federal government places numerous obstacles in the way of those who try to disseminate information about the Canadian tar sands. Many believe this has amounted to a full-on war.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/23/3428984/canada-war-on-environmentalists/