by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 19, 2012 | Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
The Great Basin Chapter of Deep Green Resistance participated in a demonstration in solidarity with the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade today in Salt Lake City.
The Tar Sands blockade has been obstructing the construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would eventually carry oil from the Tar Sands in Alberta to the refineries of the Gulf Coast. Working primarily in rural areas of Texas in collaboration with locals, activists from Tar Sands Blockade have been suspended high in trees for 57 days, blocking the route of the pipeline construction.
Activists from DGR today took part in a rally in Salt Lake City at the Bureau of Land Management office where Tim DeChristopher executed his direct action to halt illegal oil and gas leases in December 2008.
Utah is currently under threat from many capital-intensive industrial projects. It is the proposed site of the second Tar Sands project in North America, which would destroy large portions of wilderness in remote eastern portions of the state. The Salt Lake City region is home to several oil refineries and deepest open-pit mine in the world, and the valley (home to 2 million people) has some of the worst air quality in the country.
Utah Governor Gary Herbert has brought forward a plan to increase the construction of roads and other industrial projects in wilderness areas of southern Utah that many are calling a land grab. In other part of the bioregion, ongoing coal mining, water theft, and the aftermath of uranium milling is devastating communities, particularly indigenous communities and the poor.
The Great Basin chapter of Deep Green Resistance is a new group organizing in the region that is committed to fighting against these injustices. We advocate for the dismantling of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, and industrial civilization – and we have a plan to confront power, without compromise.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 17, 2012 | Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Ken Ward, Jr. / West Virginia Gazette Mail
Patriot Coal has agreed to phase out mountaintop removal and other forms of strip mining, in a move Patriot officials say is in the best interests of their company, its employees and the communities where it operates.
In a deal with citizen groups and environmentalists, Patriot said it would never seek new permits for large-scale surface mining operations, according to details of the settlement that were made public in federal court Thursday afternoon.
St. Louis-based Patriot can continue some existing and smaller mining projects, but must also implement a cap on surface production and eventually stop all strip mining when existing coal leases expire.
Ben Hatfield, president and CEO of Patriot, said the plan should help his company emerge from bankruptcy, focus on underground mining, and curb mountaintop removal’s effects on coalfield communities.
“Patriot Coal recognizes that our mining operations impact the communities in which we operate in significant ways,” Hatfield told U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers. “We believe the proposed settlement will result in a reduction of our environmental footprint.”
The deal does not require Patriot to immediately close any mines or lay off any workers. The company must cut corporate-wide surface production starting in 2014, and gradually reduce it to no more than 3 million tons annually — less than half of 2011 surface output — by 2018.
Patriot, the second largest producer of surface-mined coal in West Virginia, becomes the first U.S. coal operator to announce plans to abandon mountaintop removal, a controversial practice linked to serious environmental damage and coalfield public health problems.
“Patriot’s decision that mountaintop removal and other large surface mines are not in its best interests is the inevitable conclusion for any mining company that actually has to pay the costs of the environmental harm it creates,” said Joe Lovett, an Appalachian Mountain Advocates lawyer who negotiated the deal with Patriot on behalf of the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
Lawyers for both sides unveiled the settlement — which has quietly been in the works for months — during a surprisingly low-key hearing in U.S. District Court in Huntington.
Unlike most developments involving West Virginia’s coal industry, elected officials and other government leaders did not rush Thursday to issue public statements offering their views on the Patriot settlement.
From The West Virginia Gazette Mail
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 24, 2012 | Mining & Drilling
By Paul Foy / Associated Press
Utah gave its final approval Wednesday for the first commercial tar sands project in the U.S., handing a victory to a Canadian company that aims to start producing 2,000 barrels of oil next year in the start of what could grow into a larger operation.
The Utah Water Quality Board upheld the decision of state regulators and turned back an appeal from a Moab-based environmental group that vows to take up its fight in the state courts.
Living Rivers has fought the project every step of the way, arguing that tar sands mining will contaminate groundwater in a largely undeveloped area of Utah’s Book Cliffs region that drains into the Colorado River.
State regulators and the company insist the eastern Utah desert is so dry there is no significant groundwater to pollute. An administrative law judge agreed, sending a recommendation for approval to the Water Quality Board, which held hours of arguments before upholding a crucial state permit Wednesday by a vote of 9-2.
U.S. Oil Sands Inc. has said it was raising the money it needs to start digging after working since 2005 to obtain or defend its state approvals. Executives said they planned to produce oil from a 62-acre mountaintop pit starting in late 2013. The Calgary, Alberta-based company holds leases on 50 square miles of Utah trust lands sprinkled with gooey bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum.
Read more from The San Francisco Chronicle:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 16, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation
By Candice Bernd / TruthOut
More than 50 blockaders tried to re-enter the site of what has become a historic standoff Monday, to expand and support the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade tree village in east Texas.
Several managed to break through police lines to attempt to re-supply activists who have been occupying trees in the pathway of the Keystone XL pipeline since September 24. The rest of the blockaders rallied nearby, blocked by police and TransCanada’s hired security, who have formed a human barrier around the pipeline easement.
Two blockaders have locked themselves to construction equipment, and six blockaders have been arrested so far today.
Blockaders have been trying to negotiate with security hired by TransCanada to get food and water to activists occupying the trees in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline, to no avail. Now they are taking a stand together to get supplies to the activists occupying the tree-sit so they may maintain their standoff.
The activists were gathered at the location in Winnsboro after spending the weekend at a direct-action camp hosted by Tar Sands Blockade. Activists traveled from across the country and were trained in climbing, media relations, organizing and body blockade techniques.
“Coming out here had been one of the more inspiring things that I have done in years now,” says Toby Potter, a member of the environmental organization, Earth First!
Potter helped lead workshops over the weekend for camp participants in lockdowns and body blockades. “It gives me a lot of hope, seeing all this resistance from the area … and from around the country, and knowing that there’s [sic] other fights against tar sands at the same time.”
Potter helped camp participants erect a 30-foot wooden tripod used by activists who sit at the top of it during a blockade action. Many of the weekend’s campers participated in Monday’s blockade in Winnsboro to defend the tree village.
TransCanada filed a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) last week, naming 19 individual defendants, three organizations, and another six unidentified tree-sitters. The broad civil action seeks an injunction, declaratory relief and damages.
Most of the defendants have been arrested in previous Tar Sands Blockade actions. Ron Seifert, the Blockade’s media spokesman, was also named, although he has not yet been arrested in connection with the ongoing protest. Actor Daryl Hannah, who was arrested while defending Area Landowner Eleanor Fairchild’s home, is not named in the SLAPP suit. Fairchild, however, is named in the suit.
Another activist, going by the name Kevin Redding due to security concerns, recently escaped arrest at a secondary tree-sit the Blockade launched last week at West End Nature Preserve outside Mt. Vernon, Texas, where TransCanada had announced plans to cut trees.
“I’ve lived in Texas my whole life, and when I heard about TransCanada putting the pipeline through, I didn’t like the idea of any part of Texas having a tar sands pipeline going through it,” Redding told Truthout. “I’ve been here for a long time, and I don’t plan on going anywhere.”
Redding said local police tried to intimidate him, as he sat in a tree, with threats that he would be charged with terrorism. When company representatives said they would under-bore through the preserve, rather than cut trees in the ecologically sensitive area, the activist left the site, unobserved.
Monday’s action comes on the heels of an ongoing police crackdown not only on the tree-sitters, but also on journalists trying to tell their story. Two New York Times reporters were detained Oct. 10 while covering the tree-sit. They were released after identifying themselves as media.
Read more from TruthOut: http://truth-out.org/news/item/12121-fresh-recruits-more-arrests-begin-week-four-in-texas-tar-sands-blockade
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 15, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Terri Hansen / Intercontinental Cry
A fleet of boats piloted by Native and non-Native fishers gathered today in the waters off Xwe’chi’eXen (Cherry Point, Wash.) to stand with the Lummi Nation in opposition to the proposed Gateway Pacific coal terminal at Xwe’chi’eXen.
“We have to say ‘no’ to the coal terminal project,” said Cliff Cultee, Chairman of the Lummi Nation. “It is our Xw’ xalh Xechnging (sacred duty) to preserve and protect all of Xwe’chi’eXen.”
A ceremony of thankfulness, remembrance and unity was held on the beach during the event. Lummi Indians maintain the largest Native fishing fleet in the United States, and Lummi fishers have worked in the Cherry Point fishery for thousands of years.
If constructed, the terminal would be the largest coal terminal on the West Coast of North America. It would significantly degrade an already fragile and vulnerable crab, herring and salmon fishery, dealing a devastating blow to the economy of the fisher community.
“This is not about jobs versus the environment,” said Jewell James of the Lummi Nation’s Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office. “It is about what type of jobs are best for the people and the environment.”
Another gathering of Lummi Indians and non-Indian residents from the local and regional community was held at Xwe’chi’eXen on Sept. 21 to call for the protection and preservation of Xwe’chi’eXen, which is the location of a 3,500 year old village site, and a landscape that is eligible for registry on the National Register of Historic Places.
A Lummi Nation Business Council Resolution declared Lummi “will continue to safeguard our ancestral and historical areas” and the ability of its members to “exercise treaty, inherent and inherited rights.”
The Lummi Nation is participating in a broad intertribal coalition to defeat the project and to ensure that the natural and cultural legacy of Xwe’chi’eXen is protected in perpetuity.
From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/native-and-non-native-fishers-join-lummi-nation-in-opposing-proposed-coal-terminal-at-cherry-point/
