Feds claim ‘lies and deceit’ on part of NJ Bridgegate pair

Kelly and Baroni.jpg - Amy Newmak and Kevin R. Wexker Record photographers
Bridget Anne Kelly, Bill Baroni- Amy Newman & Kevin R. Wexler photos

Two former top aides to Governor Christie knew they were engaged in wrongdoing when they closed access lanes to the George Washington Bridge to punish a political rival because they lied about it, federal prosecutors said in court papers filed Friday night.

Abbott Koloff reports in The Record today:
 


An in-depth look at the scandal over the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge and related aftershocks. Click here to launch.
Former Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to the governor, created a massive traffic jam to punish Fort Lee Democratic Mayor Mark Sokolich and engaged in “lies and deceit” by creating a cover story that the lane reductions were part of a traffic study, the prosecutors said.
The filing by U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman and his office was in response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss federal charges against them, which include the alleged misuse of Port Authority resources.
The defendants argued that the charges should be thrown out because, among other things, they are based on vague federal laws that have been twisted to fit the facts of the case. They also said that they did not have “fair warning” that a federal statute applied to their actions, according to court papers.
Baroni and Kelly were indicted on multiple counts related to the lane closures last year while another former top Port Authority executive, David Wildstein, pleaded guilty to his part in the alleged scheme. Authorities say they orchestrated the closure of two of three access lanes to the bridge for four days beginning on Sept. 9, 2013 with the intention of punishing Sokolich for not endorsing Christie’s bid for reelection as governor.
 
Christie has not been implicated by federal prosecutors and has denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme until long afterward.
 
Prosecutors said in Friday’s filing that the attempt by Baroni and Kelly to conceal the true purpose of their actions “negates their contention that they lacked fair warning that their conduct was wrong.” They said the use of a “sham” story about a traffic study to explain the closures was a “lie” that demonstrated “conscious wrongdoing.”
 

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No rail strike in NJ; massive commuting mess averted

Did you hear that collective sigh of relief resounding across northern New Jersey?

Yes, the threatened rail strike that would have resulted in car-choked traffic lanes on New Jersey to New York bridges and tunnels is no longer a worry for thousands of commuters.

 NJ Transit officials and its rail unions have reached a tentative agreement on their long-simmering contract dispute, a day before a planned strike that threatened to paralyze the region.  

Steve Burkert, spokesman for the transit workers union coalition, announces that an agreement has been made averting a possible strike by 11 rail unions working for NJ Transit. Friday March 11, 2016. Newark, NJ, USA (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)


Larry Higgs reports for NJ.com:

No immediate details on the settlement were announced Friday night, or when union members might vote on the proposed accord, but for now commuters can breathe a deep sigh of relief. Gov. Chris Christie added there would be no immediate fare hike.
Union spokesman Stephen Burkert first announced the settlement Friday night.
“Thankfully for the commuters of NJ Transit, the crisis is averted,” Burkert said. “We’re going home to our families.”
Speaking at press conference immediately afterward, Christie also would not get into details of the proposed settlement until union officials had a chance to review its points with membership.
“That’s the appropriate thing to do,” he told reporters.
Christie, who had been in Newark most of the day, said he had been confident there would be a settlement and called “all the hysteria” of the recent days “ginned up”  by the media.
“These things,” he said, “always come down to the end.”
A strike would have affected 105,000 daily riders to New York who would have had limited options to get to work Monday, and would have cost businesses millions. The last NJ Transit strike was in March 1983. It lasted 34 days.


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Three hour hearing on drilling cases before PA’s top court

Natural gas drilling rig - Lindsay Lazarski-WHYY
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court wrestled on Wednesday in Philadelphia with how to scrutinize government actions that affect publicly owned natural resources and citizens’ environmental and property rights in two cases with roots in shale gas drilling but with potential repercussions for other forms of development.
Laura Legere of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes today:
During a dynamic morning session that lasted nearly three hours, the justices peppered attorneys on all sides with questions both sweeping and practical — such as whether the environmental rights described in the state constitution are fundamental rights and whether lawmakers have singled out the gas industry for special treatment.
One case, Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation v. Commonwealth, concerns the state’s decision to lease publicly owned forestlands for gas development and use the money to balance budgets.
The other, Robinson Township v. Commonwealth, challenges several provisions in the state’s updated oil and gas law, including the validity of the state’s centralized method of reviewing municipal gas drilling ordinances and limitations on sharing information about gas development fluids that might affect drinking water or public health.
Six of the court’s seven justices heard oral arguments in the cases, including three who were presiding over their first days of arguments since being elected to the high court last year. Justice Michael Eakin, who was suspended in December, did not participate.
The justices seemed inclined to go back to the text of the state’s environmental rights amendment — Article 1, Section 27 of the constitution — to discern what should be expected of the government as the steward of Pennsylvania’s public natural resources. They did not give any clear sign of how they would define those standards.
In a surprising move, one of the Commonwealth’s attorneys Sean Concannon encouraged the court to do away with the current three-part harms and benefits balancing test that has for decades been the shorthand method for judging whether government actions comply with the state’s environmental rights amendment.
But he urged the court to adopt a reasonable replacement that will not stifle economic development or infringe on property rights.


 
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Jury awards $4.2 M to two Pa. families in fracking lawsuit

A Pennsylvania jury handed down a $4.2 million verdict in a lawsuit centering on water contamination from negligent shale gas drilling in Dimock, PA, a tiny town that made international headlines for its flammable and toxic drinking water, Sharon Kelly reports today in the DESMOG Blog.

The defendant in the lawsuit, Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., had strenuously denied that it had caused any harm to the plaintiffs or their drinking water. In 2012, the company reached a settlement with roughly 40 other residents along Carter Road in Dimock, but the terms of that settlement were never made public and included a “non-disparagement” clause that prevents those who settled from speaking out about their experiences with Cabot.

The verdict, which was reported by the Associated Press, comes as long-awaited vindication for the Hubert and Ely families, who had refused to settle in part because they wanted their voices heard, they said at a press conference when the trial began in Scranton on February 22.

The lawsuit had stretched on for roughly seven years, and the plaintiffs were at one point forced to represent themselves in court after being unable to find legal counsel following the settlement of the vast majority of the plaintiffs.

The Huberts and the Elys still live on Carter Road, hauling their water by truck – a chore that became far more cumbersome in the winter when hoses often froze and water tanks must be heated, Scott Ely, a former Cabot subcontractor turned whistleblower, had testified.

The Ely family, which owns the land on which the Huberts reside, would receive $2.75 million and the Hubert family $1.49 million, one local television station is reporting. Because the lawsuit had been narrowed dramatically before trial, the plaintiffs were not permitted to pursue Cabot for any harms done to their health, but only for the damage to property and the personal nuisance that the water contamination had caused.

The case has been closely watched by the oil and gas industry, which has often reached secret settlements in claims of drilling and fracking contamination – creating uncertainty about the frequency and extent of accidents and misconduct.

State and federal environmental regulators have cited non-disclosure agreements as a major hurdle preventing a full assessment of the risks related to the shale oil and gas drilling rush.

The lawsuit pitted solo practitioner Leslie Lewis and attorney Elisabeth Radow against a team of litigators and attorneys from Norton Rose Fulbright, a London-based law firm which in 2014 was the seventh highest-grossing law firm in the world.

 

 
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Radioactive contamination detected at PA metal shredder

Environmental agencies in two states have determined that scrap contaminated with low levels of radiation was shredded at a PSC Metals facility in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Some of the scrap was later shipped to Ohio and triggered readings from radiation monitors at three facilities there.

Recycling Today reported on March 2:
The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) has issued several news releases pertaining to the incidents, with the most recent one issued Feb. 27, 2016. The agency indicates the radioactive scrap was detected at PSC Metals yards in Canton and Massillon, Ohio, and at a Tube City (TMS International) facility in Mansfield, Ohio.

According to the ODH, the department had radiation protection staff on-site at all three facilities in late February to conduct radiation testing and to ensure planning for the safe disposal of the contaminated scrap metal.

The contaminated scrap metal has been contained securely and does not pose a health risk to facilities’ employees or the general public, says Gene Phillips of the ODH Bureau of Environmental Health and Radiation Protection.

Phillips singles out the role of radiation monitors in detecting the contamination. “As a precaution, many scrap metal processing facilities have radiation alarms to monitor and detect radiation in incoming shipments for the safety of their employees and the general public,” he comments.

The source of the radiation is under investigation.
Phillips says, “Radiation can occur in scrap metal for a variety of reasons, including because the owner who sends it for recycling does not realize that the [obsolete] equipment contains small radioactive sources.”

Radiation surveys of contaminated scrap metal delivered to PSC Metals in Massillon showed a highest reading of 25 millirem per hour, equivalent to the radiation dose from two-and-a-half chest X-rays within one hour, ODH says.


 
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Two major drilling cases before Pa’s supreme court today

 
                                                                                        Ty Wright/Bloomberg                    
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in Philadelphia today in two major gas drilling cases with implications far
beyond the shale fields.
Laura Legere reported yesterday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
One case deals with the remnants of a landmark challenge to the state’s modern gas drilling law, while the second takes up significant state constitutional issues about public environmental rights that the court revived with a 2013 decision on the drilling law.
Advocates for business groups and some government agencies are hoping the state’s high court will settle the “flurry of confusion” left by the decision in the drilling law case, Robinson Township v. Commonwealth, and reassert decades-old expectations about the government’s role as the steward of public natural resources.
Conservation groups and environmental legal scholars hope the court will cement the central 2013 opinion in the Robinson Township case and set a path for courts to embrace the environmental rights described in the state constitution.
 

 
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