by DGR News Service | Jan 9, 2019 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
On Monday, January 7th, Canadian federal police raided the Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidumt’en Territory on unceded indigenous land in what is commonly known as British Columbia, Canada.
The Access Point is the forward position of a pipeline occupation held primarily by the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. The Unist’ot’en have been occupying this part of their territory for nine years to block numerous oil and gas pipelines from destroying their territory.
On Wednesday afternoon, the RCMP lifted the roadblock and exclusion zone that had been in place since Monday morning. Several RCMP negotiators, as well as hereditary chiefs, passed through the barrier on the bridge over the Wedzin Kwah and are currently engaged in negotiations inside the healing center.
The latest reports confirm that the Unist’ot’en will comply with the injunction and allow some Coastal Gaslink employees onto the territory. It remains to be seen what form the struggle will take.
Fourteen land defenders were arrested on Monday including spokesperson Molly Wickham. She describes what happened in this video. All of the arrestees have been released as of 3pm Wednesday. You can donate to the legal support fund here.
Molly Wickham, Gitdimt’en spokesperson provides a detailed account of the police raid and arrests.
Media may use clips from this video ensuring context is maintained. Thank you all for your ongoing coverage.
Posted by Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidumt’en Territory on Tuesday, January 8, 2019
The RCMP attack is also described in this StarMetro Vancouver article:
After a lengthy, increasingly heated back-and-forth between the demonstrators and police, officers began cutting the barbed wire and started up a chainsaw. Camp members began to scream in protest; two young men had chained themselves to the fence below the view of the officers, encasing their arms in a kind of pipe that meant opening the gate risked breaking both of their arms… [the] checkpoint camp was abandoned behind a massive fallen tree and a barrier of flame on Monday afternoon as dozens of RCMP officers finally pushed past the barricade set up to bar entry to the traditional territories of the Wet’suwet’en people.
The Gidumt’en and Unist’ot’en are two of five clans that make up the Wet’suwet’en Nation. The traditional leadership of all five clans oppose the pipeline. However, the elected band council (a colonial leadership structure set up by the Canadian state) voted in favor of the pipeline.
More than 60 solidarity events took place across Canada and the world this week. Using the hashtag #ShutdownCanada, blockades have stopped major intersections, financial districts, bridges, and ports in Vancouver, Ottowa, Toronto, Victoria, Montreal, and elsewhere.
This situation has a long background and highly significant legal significance. Kai Nagata describes the situation:
Many Canadians have heard of the 1997 Delgamuukw decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, which recognized that Aboriginal title still exists in places where Indigenous nations have never signed a treaty with the Crown. In fact, the court was talking about the land where tonight’s raid is taking place.
Delgamuukw is a chief’s name in the neighbouring Gitxsan Nation, passed down through the generations. Delgamuukw was one of dozens of plaintiffs in the case, comprising hereditary chiefs from both the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en Nations.
Together those leaders achieved an extraordinary milestone in forcing the Canadian courts to affirm the legitimacy of their oral histories, traditional laws and continuing governance of their lands. But it wasn’t until the Tsilhqot’in decision in 2014 that the Supreme Court went a step further, recognizing Aboriginal title over a specific piece of land.
If the Wet’suwet’en chiefs went back to court all these years later, many legal scholars say the strength of their claim to their territories would eventually force the Canadian government to relinquish thousands of square kilometres within the Bulkley and Skeena watersheds – and stop calling it “Crown land”.
That’s why the TransCanada pipeline company acted quickly, to secure an injunction against Wet’suwet’en members blocking construction before the legal ground could shift under their Coastal Gaslink project.
The 670-kilometre pipeline project would link the fracking fields of Northeastern B.C. with a huge liquid gas export terminal proposed for Kitimat. Called LNG Canada, this project is made up of oil and gas companies from China, Japan, Korea and Malaysia, along with Royal Dutch Shell.
The BC Liberal, BC NDP and federal governments all courted the LNG Canada project, offering tax breaks, cheap electricity, tariff exemptions and other incentives to convince the consortium to build in B.C. Both Christy Clark and Premier John Horgan celebrated LNG Canada’s final investment decision last fall, calling it a big win for the province.
However, without a four foot diameter (122cm) pipeline feeding fracked gas to the marine terminal, the LNG Canada project is a non-starter.
That brings us back to the Morice River, or Wedzin Kwa in the Wet’suwet’en language. This is where the rubber hits the road for “reconciliation”. Politicians are fond of using the word, but seemingly uncomfortable with its implications.
Politicians also talk a lot about the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, and how to enshrine it in B.C. law. Article 10 of UNDRIP states that “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories.” It is hard to see how tonight’s arrests are consistent with this basic right.
Pro-pipeline pundits are already working hard to spin this raid as the “rule of law” being asserted over the objections of “protestors”. They point to benefit agreements signed between TransCanada and many band governments along the pipeline route.
But under the Indian Act, elected councillors only have jurisdiction over reserve lands – the tiny parcels set aside for First Nations communities that are administered much like municipalities. That’s not where this pipeline would go.
What is at stake in the larger battle over Indigenous rights and title are the vast territories claimed by the Crown but never paid for, conquered or acquired by treaty. In Wet’suwet’en territory, those lands, lakes and rivers are stewarded by the hereditary chiefs under a governance system that predates the founding of Canada.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 15, 2018 | Mining & Drilling
A drilling site next to farms and homes in Weld County, Colo.
Stephanie Malin/Flight provided by LightHawk, CC BY-ND
by Stephanie Malin, Colorado State University / The Conversation
From the start, President Donald Trump’s administration has made dismantling regulations, especially for the oil, gas and coal industries, a top priority.
And though his claims of rolling back more regulations than any other administration are exaggerated, Trump’s team has tried hard to erase many environmental and energy-related rules.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Trump have teamed up with the Republican-led Congress to get federal agencies on the case, by streamlining environmental permitting and attempting other sweeping changes.
As an environmental sociologist who has spent hundreds of hours researching communities directly affected by oil and gas production, I find that many people living in these places feel that fossil fuel industries already had the upper hand before Trump took office.
Even among people who support drilling, many believe these industries need to be more regulated. The residents I have interviewed report feeling uncertain and vulnerable. They tell researchers like me they consider themselves powerless to control their surroundings or to protect the environment, their health or their property. Reducing regulations even more will only intensify these problems.
The fracking boom
Thanks to an oil and natural gas boom that began a decade ago, U.S. production of those fuels has hit new records. The nation now ranks as the world’s top natural gas producer. American oil output is beginning to rival Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Hydraulic fracturing and the directional drilling of shale rock formations, commonly called “fracking,” powered this surge. So did deregulation. Companies using these methods enjoyed significant exemptions from federal environmental regulations that date back to George W. Bush’s presidency and remained on the books throughout the Obama administration.
After the enactment of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the law that codified many of these exemptions, states became responsible for creating their own policies, procedures, budgets and enforcement plans – most of which weren’t in place before the boom got underway. The government exempted fracking from federal environmental regulations like the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act.
States could decide rules like setbacks from homes, zoning, water acquisition and disposal, and most other aspects of drilling. This made it easier and quicker to permit hydraulic fracturing, but the states had to scramble to determine how to regulate it.
As fracking spread into more densely populated areas, wells ended up within a few hundred feet of homes, schools, hospitals and other buildings in states like Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania and North Dakota. That made a big impact on people’s quality of life.
But in places like Denton, Texas, and Colorado’s Front Range – a booming region that stretches along the Rocky Mountains and includes cities like Fort Collins and Pueblo – the people who live in places most affected by these types of changes have no seat at the table. They live alongside oilfields and gas patches but have little power to affect what happens around them.
Oil and gas infrastructure like this can end up in the middle of Colorado communities. Stephanie Malin
Health hazards and other problems
As a result, there’s a mounting debate regarding state and local control over oil and gas development. Having spoken to people affected by fracking’s spread, I believe it’s clear why people are demanding a bigger say.
A growing pool of scientific evidence indicates that living near oil and gas production can endanger public health. Rates of hospitalization, fatigue, certain childhood cancers and birth defects are higher, for one thing.
There’s also more air pollution, including methane emissions and smog, which have been linked to asthma in children. And communities near fracking operations are contending with loud noises, bright lights, vibrations and truck traffic, as well as contaminated water and soil.
Drilling and daily life
Colorado’s experience shows how oil and gas production can disrupt people’s daily lives, especially when the public is excluded from decisions about it. The state’s more than 50,000 permitted wells make Colorado a top producer of what the industry calls “unconventional” oil and gas. Its oil extraction has more than tripled since 2010, when the fracking boom began, and its natural gas production has more than doubled since 2001.
Like other states where oil and gas production has soared, Colorado struggles to balance the desires of drillers with local needs. In many communities, people living fracking sites say they are at risk. But Colorado’s state Supreme Court has ruled that only the state government can control where and when fracking may occur.
Weld County, which has small towns, subdivisions and rural areas where farmers raise cattle and plant grains and sugar beets, alone has at least 21,000 wells. It ranks 11th in oil production in the U.S. – and is the nation’s top agricultural producer outside California.
I belong to a team that unites social scientists, epidemiologists and statisticians. Together, we are completing a detailed study that measures how oil and gas drilling affects the quality of life in several Colorado communities. We have conducted surveys, in-depth interviews, ethnography and even taken blood and hair samples to examine how drilling may affect people’s stress levels and health, their daily lives and physical symptoms of stress, like elevated cortisol levels.
While doing this research, I have personally witnessed the toll that underregulation is taking. To collect our data, I’ve sat around kitchen tables and listened as people described their concerns about water quality, earthquakes and air pollution.
They are uncertain about how it affects the health of their children, grandchildren and elderly parents. I’ve visited once-idyllic homes, now set in the shadows of sound barrier walls standing 30 feet tall and stretching for hundreds of feet.
Sound walls from multiple drilling sites tower over a Weld County farmhouse. Stephanie A. Malin
No way out
Coloradans who want to stop fracking and drilling near their homes now have two options. They can draft agreements about protocols with a willing operator – a process that often requires expensive legal advice and lots of time. Or, residents can locate an acceptable alternative site that is equally suitable for production – which of course only pushes risks into someone else’s backyard.
But some people have little recourse. Consider the situation facing Bella Romero Academy, a Weld County middle school. Its students are primarily Latino and belong to low-income households. Many have undocumented relatives.
Despite efforts by activists to block drilling, a company called Extraction Oil and Gas aims to place 24 well pads and other infrastructure within about 1,300 feet of the school and even closer to its athletic fields.
When activists protested as the site was prepared for drilling, one was arrested. Extraction is now suing several of these activists, along with unnamed “John and Jane Does.”
Environmental injustice
The Colorado context illustrates the lived reality of what researchers like me call “environmental injustice” amid the oil and gas development also afflicting other states.
People who live near drilling may be exposed to a wide array of environmental and health risks. In this way, they experience “distributive injustice,” due to their exposure to more than their fair share of pollutants and hazards. Hundreds of studies have shown that people of color, low-income communities and otherwise marginalized groups in the U.S. are more likely to be exposed to disproportionate environmental risks and hazards from polluting facilities and industrial activities.
The public has little power to zone or regulate oil and gas production near their homes, especially in states like Colorado. This is a form of “procedural inequality.”
When local governments try to restrict oil and gas production, they can face steep penalties meant to discourage local control.
The Trump administration’s efforts to further reduce federal regulations will surely escalate these sorts of injustices. Instead of serving the interests of communities where oil, gas and coal production takes place, I believe that its actions will disempower and divide the public.
Photo taken from the roof of a study participant in Weld County, near 22 well pads that were relocated from a wealthier neighborhood. Dawn Stein
Stephanie Malin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 26, 2018 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance
“One person died and another was badly burned when a gas well exploded here last year,” my friend Adam says, pointing to an oil well set back a hundred yards from the road. We’re on the plains beneath the Front Range in Colorado, where the Rockies meet the flatlands. Oil country. Wells and fracking rigs are everywhere, scattered among the rural homes and inside city limits.
I’m on my way home from volunteering with Buffalo Field Campaign outside Yellowstone National Park, and I’ve stopped in Colorado to see friends and learn more about the fight against fracking that’s going on here.
Adam explains to me that there are thousands of wells in the area, despite widespread opposition. Cities have passed laws against fracking, been sued by industry groups in response, and lost the lawsuits. Democracy is clearly less important than profits in the United States—but that’s no surprise to anyone who is paying attention.
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A few days earlier, Buffalo Field Campaign held the first annual Rosalie Little Thunder memorial walk through Yellowstone National Park.
We walked 8 miles past “the trap” where Yellowstone National Park uses tax money to trap and send to slaughter wild buffalo, past APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services) facilities where buffalo are captured, confined and subjected to invasive medical testing and sterilization, and past Beattie Gulch where hunters line up at Yellowstone’s boundary to shoot family groups of buffalo en masse as they walk over the Park’s border. As we walked, I watched two of Rosalie’s sisters holding hands as they walked together in honor of their sister.
Cresting a small rise, we came upon a group of more than a hundred buffalo, grazing and snorting softly to one another. As we approached the herd, indigenous organizer and musician Mignon Geli began to play her flute, accompanied by drums. As if they could sense the whispers from our hearts and the prayers carried in the music, the buffalo began to move south, further into the park and towards safety.
Safe for the moment. But by late March, that entire group may be dead. Yellowstone National Park workers—including biologists—will lure the buffalo into the trap, confine them in the “squeeze chute” for medical testing, and then ship them to slaughter. As I write this, there are about three hundred buffalo who have now been trapped, very likely including the one pictured above.
I’ve never seen a wild buffalo confined in a livestock trailer, but I’m told it’s a horrible thing. Some describe it as a metal coffin on wheels.
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Earlier today, I gave an interview to a radio show. The host asked me about why Deep Green Resistance focuses on social justice issues in addition to saving the planet. My response was to quote my friend, who explained it more concisely than I ever could when she said, “all oppression is tied to resource extraction.”
In other words, racism doesn’t exist just for the hell of it. It was created (and is maintained) to justify the theft of land, the theft of bodies, the theft of lives. Patriarchy isn’t a system set up for fun. It’s designed to extract value from women: free and cheap labor, sexual gratification, and children (the more, the better).
I wrote earlier that protecting the buffalo requires dismantling global systems in addition to local fights. That’s because the destruction of the buffalo today is tied into the same system of “resource” extraction. Buffalo can’t be controlled like cattle, and they eat grass, which makes ranchers angry. The ranching industry exists to extract wealth and food from the land. It does this by stealing grass and land from humans and non-humans, and privatizing it for the benefit of a few.
The story is the same with fracking. The people of the front range are dealing with atrocious air quality and poisoned water. Cancers and birth defects on one hand, and big fat paychecks on the other hand, will be the legacy of the short-lived fracking boom. That, and the destruction of the last open spaces that have been preserved from urban sprawl. No vote or political party can make a difference, both because the two major parties are thoroughly capitalist and fully invested in resource extraction, and because the U.S. constitution is set up to privilege business interests above all other considerations.
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There are differences of opinion at camp. These divides emerge during late night conversations around the woodstove and during long car rides. But looking at the rampant oppression and resource extraction we’re facing, it strikes me that we must remember to stick together. One of my friends says that we must practice radical forgiveness. Another often says that we must learn from how the buffalo take turns breaking trail in deep snow, the strongest taking the longer turns.
On the Rosalie Little Thunder memorial walk, indigenous activist Cheryl Angel spoke about how Rosalie’s fighting spirit lives on in each of us. She made a material change in the world that those of us who live have a duty to carry on.
At BFC, there is a quote from Rosalie that is often mentioned. She said, “Remind yourself every morning, every morning, every morning: ‘I’m going to do something, I’ve made a commitment.’ Not for yourself, but beyond yourself. You belong to the collective. Don’t go wandering off, or you will perish.”
Permaculture and resistance, restoration and direct action, working inside the system and revolutionary action, aboveground and underground—we all must work together to tear down the brutal empire we live within, and to build a new world from the ashes.
To repost this or other DGR original writings, please contact newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 22, 2018 | Repression at Home
Featured image: On August 31, 2016, “Happy” American Horse from the Sicangu Nation locked himself to construction equipment as a direct action against the Dakota Access pipeline. Credit: Desiree Kane, CC BY 3.0
by Steve Horn / DeSmog
On the heels of Iowa and Ohio, Wyoming has become the third state to introduce a bill criminalizing the type of activities undertaken by past oil and gas pipeline protesters.
One of the Wyoming bill’s co-sponsors even says it was inspired by the protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the Dakota Access pipeline, and a sheriff involved in policing those protests testified in support of the bill at a recent hearing. Wyoming’s bill is essentially a copy-paste version of template legislation produced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
At the organization’s December meeting, ALEC members voted on the model bill, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which afterward was introduced in both Iowa and Ohio.
Like the ALEC version, Wyoming’s Senate File 74 makes “impeding critical infrastructure … a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten (10) years, a fine of not more than one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00), or both.” Two of the bill sponsors of SF 74, Republican Sens. Eli Bebout and Nathan Winters, are ALEC members. SF 74 has passed unanimously out of its Senate Judiciary Committee and now moves onto the full floor.
ALEC‘s model bill, in turn, was based on two Oklahoma bills, HB 1123 and HB 2128. The Sooner State bills, now official state law, likewise impose felony sentencing, 10 years in prison, and/or a $100,000 fine on individuals who “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.” As DeSmog has reported, the Iowa bill has the lobbying support of Energy Transfer Partners — the owner of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) which runs through the state — as well as that of the American Petroleum Institute and other oil and gas industry companies.
ALEC brings together primarily Republican Party state legislators and lobbyists to enact and vote on “model” legislation at its meetings, which take place several times a year. Within different task forces at these meetings, corporate lobbyists can voice their support or critiques of bills, while also getting a vote. Those bills often then are introduced as legislation in statehouses nationwide, as in this latest example in Wyoming.
Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Wyoming has helped the state vastly increase its natural gas production and spurred pipeline build-out. However, multiple studies in recent years have also linked fracking-related activities around the small town of Pavilion to groundwater contamination.
Image: Center for Media and Democracy
Targeting ‘Ecoterrorism’
Wyoming’s bill, like the ALEC model bill and one of the Oklahoma bills, includes language implicating any organization “found to be a conspirator” and lobbing a $1 million fine on any group which “aids, abets, solicits, encourages, hires, conspires, commands, or procures a person to commit the crime of impeding critical infrastructure.”
State Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Leland Christensen, a Republican and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said when he introduced the bill that legislative language was needed to hold accountable those “organizations that sponsor this kind of ecoterrorism.”
The fiscal note for the Wyoming bill says that the “fiscal impact to the judicial system is indeterminable,” while also discussing the prospective costs of incarcerating people under the auspices of the legislation.
“The Department of Corrections states that the impact of the bill is indeterminable as there is currently no way to accurately estimate the number of offenders that will be sentenced pursuant to the bill,” reads the fiscal note. “Each year of incarceration currently costs the state approximately $41,537 per inmate, including medical costs. Each year of community supervision costs the state approximately $2,000 per inmate.”
ALEC Model Confirmed
One co-sponsor of the Wyoming bill, its sole Democratic supporter, Rep. Stan Black, told WyoFile.com that the bill was inspired by what took place at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and that SF 74 was based on the ALEC model bill.
Shortly after ALEC members voted to adopt the Oklahoma legislation as a model bill, Oklahoma’s HB 1123 was also adoptedby the corporate-funded Council of State Governments (CSG) as a piece of “Shared State Legislation” (SSL) at its own annual meeting held just a week later.
One of the state legislative officials sitting on CSG‘s Committee on Shared State Legislation, North Dakota’s Republican Rep. Kim Koppelman, has a long history of involvement with ALEC, and throughout 2017 he spoke critically of the Indigenous-led movement against the Dakota Access pipeline.
ND Rep. Kim Koppelman; Photo Credit: North Dakota Legislature
“One of the major issues we dealt with was several bills introduced in response to the violent protests at the site of the Dakota Access pipeline,” Koppelman wrote in a February 2017 article halfway through the North Dakota Legislature’s session. “As you may know, peaceful protests led by Native American tribes began this summer but they attracted others from throughout the nation and deteriorated into illegal occupation of sites on federal land, trespassing on private land, blocking of roadways and some incidents of violence.”
At the beginning of 2017, Koppelman co-sponsored three pieces of North Dakota legislation, which crack down on pipeline protests. Two of them passed and are now state law.
The bills “struck a good balance to ensure everyone’s constitutional right to peacefully protest, which we cherish, but to provide for appropriate consequences when anyone crosses the line into anarchy, terrorizing or destruction of property,” wrote Koppelman in his article. “These bills have been fast tracked to give law enforcement the tools they need.”
After DeSmog filed an open records request pertaining to Koppelman’s ALEC and CSG efforts in this area, he told DeSmog, “I have no documents or records concerning the subject of your request but, even if I did, you should be aware that, under North Dakota Century Code Section 44-04-18.6, communications and records of a member of the North Dakota Legislative Assembly are not subject to disclosure.”
In a follow-up email exchange, Koppelman told DeSmog that he “had no role in bringing the bill” to CSG and does not know who did so.
“Frankly, I don’t even specifically recall the bill you’ve inquired about, without going back to review it,” Koppelman told DeSmog. “I also don’t recall who may have supported or opposed it at that meeting, either on the Committee or among the members of the public in the audience.”
For the ALEC bill, Koppelman also said he could not speak to its origins as a model or who has pushed it at the state-level since becoming a model. When asked by DeSmog if CSG records the Shared State Legislation meetings or keeps minutes, Koppelman said that he does not believe so “because the result of meetings and the committee’s work is in the published volume” of Shared State Legislation which CSG disseminates annually.
CSG has in the past, though, kept meeting minutes of its SSL voting sessions, doing so as recently as 2014. Those minutes included an attendance list, which listed nearly three times the number of lobbyists present as state legislators and showed industry attendees representing both the American Gas Association and the Consumer Energy Alliance.
According to a letter obtained and published by HuffPost, the ALEC model bill has also enjoyed the backing of the American Gas Association, American Chemistry Council, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), and Marathon Petroleum.
Industry, Cops Push ALEC Bill in Wyoming
According to a follow-up story by WyoFile.com, the Wyoming Senate Judiciary Committee had Wyoming Business Alliance lobbyist Cindy DeLancey, rather than the lead sponsor, Sen. Christensen, introduce the bill in front of the committee.
Before taking over as head of the Wyoming Business Alliance, DeLancey worked as a director of government and public affairs for BP, where she did “government and public affairs support for the Leadership Team of the Lower 48 North Business Unit,” according to her LinkedIn profile. DeLancey’s Wyoming Business Alliance biography also shows that she formerly served as the chair of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming’s Government and Public Relations Committee. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Wyoming Business Alliance steering committee members include representatives from the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy, and Jonah Energy. Petroleum Association of Wyoming leadership committees consist of representatives from companies such as Devon Energy, Chesapeake Energy, BP, Anadarko Petroleum, and other companies, while its board of directors lists officials from those companies, plus ExxonMobil, EOG Resources, Halliburton, Williams Companies, and others.
WyoFile.com has reported that, according to a document received from Sen. Christensen, the Petroleum Association and other oil and gas companies have also come out as official supporters of the bill, along with law enforcement representatives. The Wyoming bill’s official backers include the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, the Wyoming Business Alliance, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, the Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), Holly Frontier Corporation, Anadarko Petroleum, and ONEOK.
According to a special events calendar obtained by DeSmog, the Wyoming Business Alliance hosted a reception at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens on February 12, just days after Wyoming bill SF 74 was introduced on February 9.
On March 1, ALEC will also host a reception at the Nagle-Warren Mansion Cheyenne, according to that calendar, with invited guests asked to RSVP to Wendy Lowe or David Picard. Picard currently has no oil and gas industry lobbying clients, according to his lobbying disclosures, but his lobbying firm’s website says he formerly did so for companies such as Shell, BP, and Marathon. He did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
According to lobbying disclosure forms, Lowe works as a lobbyist for Williams Companies, a major pipeline company with over 3,700 miles of pipeline laid in Wyoming. Lowe also formerly served as associate director of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, according to her LinkedIn Profile.
Credit: Wyoming State Legislature
Lowe, the private sector chairwoman for ALEC in Wyoming as of 2014, won the state chair of the year award from ALEC in 2012. She has also previously received corporate-funded “scholarship” gifts to attend ALEC meetings as an official Wyoming representative, according to a 2013 report published by the nonprofit watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy.
An ALEC newsletter from May 2011 shows that, at an ALEC event Lowe co-hosted in 2011 in Wyoming, she praised the organization for “creating a unique environment in which state legislators and private sector leaders can come together, share ideas, and cooperate in developing effective policy solutions.”
The Center for Media and Democracy also reported in 2014 that Lowe, a former Peabody Energy lobbyist, gave a presentation titled, “Increasing Travel Reimbursement Income” at an ALEC meeting in Chicago in 2013. But Lowe told DeSmog that, although she attended the Senate hearing on the bill, she did not know about it until it was proposed and is not lobbying for it.
National Sheriffs: DAPL Full Circle
At a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Wyoming bill, Laramie County Sheriff Danny Glick also came out in support of the legislation, warning that a situation similar to Standing Rock could happen in Wyoming.
“One of our Niobrara county commissioners already has graffiti going up — ‘No DAPL’ — in that area up there,” Glick said at the hearing, referring to the shorthand for the Dakota Access pipeline. Glick, an Executive Committee member and Immediate Past President of the National Sheriffs’ Association, was one of the most supportive sheriffs pushing what has been characterized as a heavy-handed and militaristic reaction by law enforcement to the activism at Standing Rock.
Under the direction of Glick, Laramie County sent officers to the Dakota Access protests under the auspices of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), triggered after North Dakota’s Republican Governor Jack Dalrymple issued an emergency order on August 19, 2016. Glick too, spent time at Standing Rock and spoke at a press conferencealongside Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier on October 6, 2016.
Laramie County Sheriff Glick. Credit: National Sheriffs’ Association Facebook Page
Glick, who attended a roundtable meeting at the White House in February 2017 with President Donald Trump and other sheriffs, was also previously CC‘d on a set of emails obtained by DeSmog and Muckrock in which the National Sheriffs’ Association and public relations firms it had hired wrote talking points in an attempt to discredit those who participated at Standing Rock. Those talking points said to describe the anti-pipeline movement as rife with “anarchists” and “Palestinian activists” who used violence and possessed “guns, knives, etc.”
‘Worst Instincts of Power’
Critics say the Wyoming bill could have far-reaching and negative impacts, if it becomes law, both in terms of criminal sentencing and for First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, for example, has come out against the bill on both grounds.
The Sierra Club in Wyoming agreed, saying in an email blast that the bill is “explicitly designed to crush public opposition to projects like the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines, by preventing the kind of protests that occurred at Standing Rock.”
Even people representing industry interests and within the Republican Party have come out against the bill as it currently reads.
“This bill appeals to the absolute worst instincts of power,” Larry Wolfe, a Wyoming attorney who represents the oil and gas industry, said at a hearing about the bill, according to WyoFile.com. “We the powerful must protect things that are already protected under existing law.”
Republican Senator Cale Case largely echoed the concerns put forward by Wolfe.
“This country has been through WWII, civil unrest in the 1960s and a heck of a lot more, but we didn’t need legislation like this,” Case conveyed in an email to WyoFile.com. “Good laws already exist to protect property without this chilling impact on free speech.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 4, 2017 | Lobbying
by Protect Orange County and Stop the Minisink Compression Station
In a move that is being widely celebrated by both activists and national environmental rights groups, this afternoon, the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit in NY issued an emergency stay of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) “Notice to Proceed with Construction”, issued on October 27, 2017 to the Millennium Valley Lateral Pipeline. The stay halts construction activities until a hearing can be held by a three judge panel.
The pipeline is intended to serve a controversial fracked gas power plant under construction by Competitive Power Ventures in Orange County NY. The battle between the State of New York and FERC over approval of the pipeline reflects an escalating conflict between impacted communities and environmental activists on the one side, and the powerful gas industry along with FERC, an agency described by opponents as a “rubberstamp” arm of the industry, on the other. Opponents of pipeline projects across the country argue that FERC systematically disregards adverse environmental impacts and see the authority of the state’s as the only means to control what they consider “reckless” approvals.
The stay is the latest legal salvo by NYS in response to repeated attempts by Millennium Pipeline to upend the state’s sole authority under federal law to determine 401 Water Quality Certification. In August, 2017, the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation pursuant to the Federal Clean Water Act, a Section 401 Water Quality Certificate for the construction of the Millennium Valley Lateral Pipeline. The 7.8 mile pipeline would traverse NY wetlands and endangered species habitat in Orange County, NY, while supplying fracked gas from PA to the plant.
Taking their cue from an administration with little regard for the rule of law, on September 15, 2 Trump appointed FERC commissioners overrode NYSDEC’s authority over the water quality permit. FERC’s authority under the Natural Gas Act does not the pre-empt the authority of a state over the Clean Water Act. “It’s like trying to use a U.S. passport to drive a car in NYS”, says Pramilla Malick, of Protect Orange County, the community group leading the opposition. “While FERC may have siting authority, only the state can permit any activity that could impact water quality.”
Last week the agency pushed the envelope further by issuing the notice to proceed with construction of the pipeline despite pending motions by the NYSDEC before the commission. Malick expressed outrage at this action. “FERC routinely violates the fourteenth amendment rights of citizens but this is the first time they’ve ever violated the due process rights of a state.”
In an earlier statement Malick described FERC’s approval as an “Act of war against both the State of New York and the Federal Clean Water Act”. Her group urged Governor Cuomo to fight FERC’s federal overreach.
Malick lauded state leaders today, “We are deeply grateful to Governor Cuomo, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and General Counsel for NYSDEC, Thomas Berkman for courageously fighting for the state’s right to protect its natural resources despite the heavy handed rebuke of the gas lobby.”
Today’s stay was issued with some urgency, as word spread in the local community that Millennium, acting swiftly on FERC’s illegal notice, began marking tree clearing areas that opponents claim would destroy a significant amount of endangered species habitat as well as a mating eagle’s nest. Activists vowed to take any actions necessary to prevent construction from beginning.
Citizens and environmentalists have long been urging Governor Cuomo to take action to shut down CPV, which is situated in Wawayanda, NY, on the edge of NY’s renowned Black Dirt farmland, and near pristine water resources. Opponents of the CPV project assert that this populated and environmentally sensitive location will suffer irreparable harm from the plant’s daily emissions, in a region with declining energy demands.
Upon news of the stay Protect Orange County issued the following statement:
“Now more than ever, as we witness the dire global consequences of climate change; as clean water, air and soil resources are sacrificed to the greed of polluting fossil fuel giants; as our current administration in Washington, DC, continues to deny climate science, rolling back environmental protections, obstructing efforts to move toward clean energy, while winking at the lawlessness of big energy polluters, we need responsive and courageous local leaders to defend our resources with every means that the law allows. Today, our state leaders, led by the Governor, advanced the interests of the citizens of Orange County and New York State by acting decisively on behalf of the people, and not in the interest of corporate polluters.”
Ironically also in yesterday’s news the Senate confirmed the remaining two FERC nominees creating a complete 5 member commission. Environmentalists had hoped the nomination process would included hearings on a long list of abuses by the agency over the rights of impacted communities.
