Exxon, allies invoke 1st Amendment to fight climate probe

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (C) speaks at a news conference with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (R) and other U.S. State Attorney's General to announce a state-based effort to combat climate change in the Manhattan borough of New York City, March 29, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, center, joined a coalition of her colleagues seeking climate action and considering investigations of Exxon.
Credit: Reuters

Exxon, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and their allies are invoking free speech protections in a pugnacious pushback against subpoenas from attorneys general seeking decades of documents on climate change. Their argument is that the state-level investigations violate the First Amendment rights of those who question climate science. Neela Banerjee reports for the Pulitzer-Prize-winning blog insight Climate News: Exxon has sued to block a subpoena issued by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and in an unusual step, named as a defendant the Washington, D.C. law firm and attorney representing the territory in the inquiry. In its complaint against the Virgin Islands subpoena, Exxon wrote, “The chilling effect of this inquiry…strikes at protected speech at the core of the First Amendment.” In a pointed letter to Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker on April 20, CEI’s attorney called the subpoena “offensive” and “un-American,” and warned to “expect a fight.” Andrew Grossman, outside counsel for CEI, wrote, “You have no right to wield your power as a prosecutor to advance a policy agenda by persecuting those who disagree with you.” The conservative non-profit Energy & Environment Legal Institute, an ally of CEI, recently released emails that show that the attorneys general considering investigating Exxon were briefed by two environmentalists. E&E got the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Vermont attorney general’s office. Though such meetings with environmental and industry advocates are widely considered routine, E&E described the meetings as secretive collusion, an idea that has been echoed on conservative websites and among some mainstream media outlets. The AGs have not changed course amid the counterattack. But Exxon and its allies appear to be aiming as much at public opinion as at state law enforcement. After Inside Climate News and later the Los Angeles Times published stories last year detailing Exxon’s cutting edge climate research in the 1970s and its subsequent efforts to disparage climate science, the company initially argued it has conducted climate science without interruption for 40 years. It also answered a subpoena by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and produced 10,000 pages of records by the end of 2015. Now, its emphasis appears to have shifted. As the company tries to defend its climate contrarian stance, Exxon argues that it has voiced honest dissent on the science that a conspiracy of environmentalists and attorneys general wants to silence. “Our critics, on the other hand, want no part of that discussion. Rather, they seek to stifle free speech and limit scientific inquiry while painting a false picture of ExxonMobil,” spokeswoman Suzanne McCarron wrote in a post on the company’s blog on April 20 titled “The Coordinated Attack on ExxonMobil.” Exxon and CEI’s lawyers have experience waging long battles with government attorneys on controversial cases. Exxon’s law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and CEI’s attorneys, Baker Hostetler, represented the tobacco industry for years. Exxon’s firm also represents the National Football League as it deals with the scandal over its concussion research. Read the full story here Recent blog posts:
Christie looks to divert $20M in NJ conservation funding 
How Google’s celebrating Earth Day. How about you? 
Task force recommends changes to NJ beach-access law 
Should fracking states put something away for a rainy day? 
Former pesticide plant site in NJ added to Superfund list

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Christie looks to divert $20M in NJ conservation funding

                                                                                  Photo credit: Newsworks
The Christie administration’s diversion of $20 million from an open-space fund to pay salaries at state parks was condemned yesterday at a legislative hearing in what is emerging as an acrimonious side battle over next year’s budget.
Tom Johnson reports today in NJ Spotlight:

In a hearing before the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, open-space advocates argued such diversions were never contemplated by voters in the fall of 2014 when they easily approved a new constitutional amendment setting aside corporate business taxes to fund acquisition of undeveloped land and farmland preservation.

The diversion, which first took place in last year’s budget, would be repeated in this year’s fiscal spending plan for the state under a proposal submitted by Gov. Chris Christie. Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), the committee chairman and sponsor of the ballot question, called the rerouting of the funds “unconstitutional,’’ and possibly criminal.

RELATED LINKS
SENATE BILL S-969

Last month, the Office of Legislative Services issued a legal opinion that concluded the use of the funds to pay state employees’ salaries at parks is not authorized under language in the current budget, a position disputed by the Christie administration. It said the diversion is a permissible use of the funds consistent with the constitutional amendment.
Meanwhile, the Legislature has given final approval to a bill (S-969), now on the Governor’s desk, that would allocate $146 million over the next two years to fund open space, farmland, and historic preservation, but it includes no money for park salaries. Those operations traditionally have come out of the general fund.
“My belief is we probably will get a veto, maybe a conditional veto, but a veto,’’ Smith said of the bill. An identical bill won approval early in January in the lame-duck session, but was pocket vetoed by the governor without any explanation of why he objected to the measure.
Smith’s priority now is to begin allocating money from the new, approved open-space fund, none of which has been spent yet on its intended purposes. “How do we get to the finish line? You would think a constitutional amendment would have been enough,’’ he said.
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How Google’s celebrating Earth Day. How about you?

If you use any of the plethora of Google tools, like Chrome, Search, Google +, Blogger, etc., you likely were met today with a graphic reminding you that today is Earth Day. 


We like the four we’ve seen so far.

   
Are you, your business, or organization doing anything special this year to mark the event?
Click the ‘comment’ link below and share it with your fellow EnviroPolitics Blog readers.

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Task force recommends changes to NJ beach-access law

New Jersey’s shore communities could use some of the money they collect in beach badge fees to fund additional public access points to the shoreline under a proposal from a task force studying ways to improve the state’s beach access law.
Wayne Parry reports for The Associated Press:
The panel recommends increasing the overall amount of access points by returning to previous standards that mandated them every quarter-mile, instead of the current standard of every half mile.
The task force was comprised of business interests and some of the state’s leading public access advocates, and it became necessary after a court last December struck down New Jersey’s beach access regulations. A hastily passed bill restored the state Department of Environmental Protection’s authority to impose access regulations, but did not get into ways to improve public access.
Recommendations made by the business side of the panel include exempting utilities and some industry that bar public access on safety grounds from having to fund access points elsewhere, and eliminating or reducing fees for compliance with public access mandates.
Not surprisingly, most of the recommendations were supported by one half of the panel and opposed by the other. It will fall to the state senate and Environment Committee to craft a bill setting forth new beach access standards, something its chairman Sen. Bob Smith, a Middlesex County Democrat, predicted would happen in the fall. The bill would apply not only to beaches and bays, but to urban waterways throughout the state.

Read the full story here

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Should fracking states put something away for a rainy day?

Natural gas drilling rig -WHYY photo by Lindsay Lazarski

States at the center of the recent oil and gas boom should prepare for the inevitable bust and put drilling revenues into permanent trust funds, says a new report from the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings.
Marie Cusick reports in StateImpact:

The researchers singled out Pennsylvania and argue it should enact a severance tax on gas production. Drillers currently pay a per-well impact fee, which has generated more than $860 million over the past four years. This year the fees are expected to bring in $185.5 million– the lowest amount ever.

“Pennsylvania would be wise to levy a severance tax on its oil and gas industry and deposit a portion of that in a permanent trust fund,” the authors write.
They note taxes from oil and gas development are affected by global energy markets and become a volatile revenue source if they are not in a well-managed fund. They also cite what’s known as the “resource curse,” in which economies based on natural resources grow more slowly than diverse economies.



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Former pesticide plant site in NJ added to Superfund list

Atlantic City Press graphic

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday that it has added the former Kil-Tone Company site in Vineland, N.J. to its Superfund list of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. Pesticides were manufactured at the now defunct facility, and groundwater and soil at the site, including soil in the yards of nearby homes, is contaminated with arsenic and lead.

The Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter responded to the news by blaming New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection for knowing about the site for 30 years but doing noting to address it.

“We are glad to see the EPA step in, but we hope the Kil-Tone site doesn’t end up like the Shieldalloy facility,” said NJ Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel. We need to a complete clean-up, not a cap like what the EPA is doing in Millville.

“Instead of cleaning up the site the Shieldalloy Superfund Site in Newfield, they are capping it, leaving tons of toxic material in the ground that will leach into the environment. Eventually the caps will fail, allowing these dangerous materials to pollute the groundwater and harm the community,” Tittel claimed.

  

In a news release on Kil-Tone, the EPA said:

Pesticides were manufactured at the now defunct Kil-Tone Company facility, and groundwater and soil at the site, including soil in the yards of nearby homes, is contaminated with arsenic and lead.
“The EPA is committed to protecting residents from the high levels of arsenic and lead at this site,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator. “The EPA has contacted community members and residents throughout the process to address the pollution. Now we can do the additional sampling needed to determine the best way to clean it up.

”Arsenic is known to cause cancer, as well as many other serious health problems. Lead is a toxic metal that can cause damage to a child’s ability to learn as well as a range of adverse health effects in adults.
Even at low levels, lead can cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems in children.


The Kil-Tone Company manufactured pesticides, which included arsenic and lead, from approximately 1917 to 1926 on the property at 527 East Chestnut Avenue in Vineland, N.J. In 1926, the Kil-Tone Company sold the property to Lucas Kil-Tone Co., a New Jersey company, which is believed to have continued manufacturing pesticides at the property until at least 1933. The property is currently occupied by an unrelated and active business.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection investigated the site in August 2014 and took soil and groundwater samples. The state’s discovery of high concentrations of arsenic and lead in the soil at the property and several neighboring residential properties prompted the referral of the site to the EPA for additional investigation in November 2014.

The EPA confirmed that soil at both the former Kil-Tone property and in the yards of nearby homes had unacceptable levels of arsenic and lead. In April 2015, the EPA collected surface water and sediment samples along the Tarkiln Branch to the confluence with the Maurice River. Sampling results show elevated levels of arsenic and lead related to the Former Kil-Tone Company Site.

In June 2015, the EPA sampled soil at 48 additional residential properties located near the site. An additional 31 residential homes located within the flood plain of the Tarkiln Branch were sampled in November 2015. The results show elevated levels of arsenic and lead at residential properties located within the floodplain of the Tarkiln.

The EPA has shared the sampling results with the affected residents and businesses and held a public meeting in July 2015. The EPA advised residents in April 2015 on immediate actions they should take to reduce potential exposure to the contaminated soil in their backyards.

This month EPA began work to reduce, in the short term, the potential exposure from the elevated levels of arsenic and lead at the residential properties by placing sod, stone, mulch or another barrier at the impacted areas. A final cleanup will be determined and carried out in the future.

The Superfund final designation makes sites eligible for funds to conduct long-term cleanups. The EPA received a letter from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection supporting the inclusion of this site to the Superfund list.


Related news stories:
 EPA adds Vineland Kil-Tone site to Superfund list Kil-Tone site added to Superfund list 
Vineland residents warned against Kil-tone contamination 

 

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