Tag Archives: pipeline

Trespass near a pipeline, go to prison for 6 years? It could happen in Wisconsin.

Read more:  

Trespass near a pipeline, go to prison for 6 years? It could happen in Wisconsin.

Posted in Citizen, FF, Gandhi, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trespass near a pipeline, go to prison for 6 years? It could happen in Wisconsin.

Why Greenpeace activists dangled from a bridge in Texas — and face 2 years in prison

Original link:  

Why Greenpeace activists dangled from a bridge in Texas — and face 2 years in prison

Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Greenpeace activists dangled from a bridge in Texas — and face 2 years in prison

Mess with a Texas pipeline now and you could end up a felon

Excerpt from: 

Mess with a Texas pipeline now and you could end up a felon

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Paradise, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mess with a Texas pipeline now and you could end up a felon

Historically black community could face a toxic facility for Atlantic Coast Pipeline

Subscribe to The Beacon

The saga continues for the embattled Atlantic Coast Pipeline. On Tuesday, a Virginia board approved a controversial plan to build a natural gas compressor station in Union Hill, a historically black community in Buckingham County. The decision was met with uproar from opponents, who vowed to keep fighting in protests and in court.

“It’s a real tragedy that the board that has been appointed to protect our air makes a decision that seals the fate and disregards the ongoing health and welfare of an entire community,” said Chad Oba, chair of the Friends of Buckingham, an organization of Buckingham citizens, and a local resident that will be impacted by the decision.

“This is just another example of institutionalized racial discrimination,” she told Grist.

The state Air Pollution Control Board voted 4-0 in favor of a station permit for the approximately 600-mile underground pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina. The development is a joint venture from several energy companies, but Richmond-based Dominion Energy is leading the pack in building the $7 billion pipeline.

AP Photo / Steve Helber

“Today’s unanimous approval is a significant step forward for this transformational project and the final state approval needed in Virginia,” wrote Dominion spokesman Karl Neddenien in an email to the Washington Post. “We have a profound respect for this community and its history, and we will continue working together to build a better future.”

Here’s the rub: Pipeline opponents are concerned that exhaust from the compressor station will hurt the surrounding community, putting them at risk of a range of ailments including asthma. Rebecca Rubin, an air board member, was dismissed by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam less than a week after she raised concerns about the disproportionate impact of the pipeline compressor station on Union Hill (ahem, Dominion energy is the state’s biggest corporate political donor).

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Rubin writes that the compressor station’s designated location “would disproportionately affect a minority community, a classic environmental justice issue.”

Dominion Energy presented survey data based on broad Census Bureau information they say indicates the area surrounding the site is sparsely populated and made up of no more than 39 percent minority residents based on race. Company representatives argued that, based on those demographics, the neighborhood was“not an environmental justice community.

An anthropologist working with Friends of Buckingham, however, submitted the results of door-to-door research, finding that of the approximately 200 people who live within a one-mile radius of the site, 83 percent are racial minorities.

Supporters of the station say it will boost development in the rural area. In an effort to help build local support for the project, Dominion offered community improvement package valued at $5.1 million. The offer won over some residents but was not enough of an incentive for many residents of the Union Hill community, which was settled after the Civil War by free blacks and former slaves.

“The legacy of placing toxic facilities in places where they disproportionately affect poor communities of color is unjust and unacceptable and needs acute examination,” wrote stakeholders in an open letter calling for the permit’s denial. “It is not right to look the other way while this continues.”

One thing is clear: the battle is still a long ways from over. The project’s opponents will likely challenge the decision in state court, adding to the pipeline’s hodgepodge of setbacks. Notably, the plan was stalled after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the U.S. Forest Service did not have proper permissions for the pipeline to cut across the Appalachian Trail. (Dominion plans to appeal the decision.)

Despite the board’s approval of the natural gas compression station, members of the Friends of Buckingham County say they too plan to keep fighting. “We have not given up,” Oba added. “If anything, it’s given us more resolve.”

Originally posted here: 

Historically black community could face a toxic facility for Atlantic Coast Pipeline

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Historically black community could face a toxic facility for Atlantic Coast Pipeline

Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

Construction on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is set to rev up next year. The project received a green light from the State Department late last week — the latest salvo in a contentious decade-long battle between indigenous communities and TransCanada, the pipeline’s developer.

On Friday, the State Department issued a 338-page supplemental environmental impact statement for an alternate route through Nebraska. The agency has determined that major environmental damage stemming from the $8 billion, 1,180-mile project would be “negligible to moderate.” According to the report, there will be safeguards in place that would prevent a leak from contaminating ground or surface water.

“Keystone XL has undergone years of extensive environmental review by federal and state regulators,” TransCanada spokesperson Matthew John said. “All of these evaluations show that Keystone XL can be built safely and with minimal impact to the environment.”

Dear reader, like what you see here?

Keep Grist’s green journalism humming along by supporting us with a donation today. All donations made between now and September 29 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

  

The review comes a little more than a month after a Montana court required the State Department to conduct a separate analysis — not part of the pipeline’s 2014 environmental impact study — of the updated route under the National Environmental Policy Act. The new route will be longer than TransCanada’s preferred route.

Following the release of the environmental assessment, TransCanada lawyers filed a response on Friday to address concerns by environmental and indigenous groups that are challenging the pipeline’s permit to cross into the U.S. from Canada in the Montana court.

But as TransCanada moves ahead with plans to construct the pipeline — which would carry up to 830,000 barrels of heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska — tribal communities living in its path remain steadfast in challenging the review’s conclusions.

“It’s a total disregard for the land, and the animals, and the people that reside on it and have for generations,” Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and a vocal opponent of major oil-pipeline projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline, told Grist. “I think the thing to remember is that the people who are building this pipeline — they don’t care because they don’t have to live here. But it’s not going to stop me from fighting back.”

Pipeline-opponents on the front lines like Spotted Eagle are gearing up for what comes next, pledging to fight until the pipeline project is halted for good. Earlier this month, the Fort Belknap Indian Community of Montana and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota sued the Trump administration after it granted the pipeline a permit which they claimed didn’t assess how it’s construction “would impact their water and sacred lands.”

Indigenous groups aren’t the only ones voicing their discontent — the Sierra Club called the new State Department report a “sham review.” “We’ve held off construction of this pipeline for 10 years, and regardless of this administration’s attempts to force this dirty tar sands pipeline on the American people,” said Kelly Martin, director of the group’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. “That fight will continue until Keystone XL is stopped once and for all.”

Members of the public have 45 days to comment on the State Department’s review, but Spotted Eagle is skeptical that the powers that be will even bother to consult with indigenous people residing in the pipeline’s route. “There is no regard to nation-to-nation relationships with tribes,” she says.

Continue reading here: 

Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Green Light, Jason, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

The private intelligence firm keeping tabs on environmentalists

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The flyer shows a mob of balaclava-clad activists dressed in black, lobbing bottles at an undefined target. They could be protesting anything, but for attendees at a petroleum industry conference in Houston earlier this year, it was pretty clear what the violent demonstrators were targeting: the fossil fuel industry.

The scary image of protesters was distributed by Welund North America, a private intelligence firm that promises to help oil and gas operators mitigate the threat posed by an increasingly sophisticated activist movement. On the back of the flyer an anonymous testimonial reads, “Since subscribing to Welund we’ve dramatically increased our ability to pre-empt and better manage activist engagements and minimize reputational damage.” Logos — presumably of Welund’s clients — listed on the flyer include a who’s who of Big Oil and Gas: Royal Dutch Shell, Kinder Morgan, Duke Energy, Dominion, and Chevron. Welund has even secured contracts with the Canadian government.

In the past year, Welund has presented at several energy industry conferences and has also partnered with the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association — or TIPRO — to promote its intelligence-gathering services. The company bills itself as a leader in “understanding the activist threat” and in the past has provided intelligence on social movements and activist groups, including Greenpeace, Occupy Wall Street, and animal rights advocates.

Welund and its top North American officials ignored repeated requests for interviews and did not to respond to detailed written questions. But publicity materials and other documents reviewed by Mother Jones shed light on the company’s strategies.

Welund is part of a deeply controversial cottage industry of private intelligence firms that has flourished in recent years. According to one estimate, the global industry is now worth about $20 billion, and the agencies — sometimes with just a handful of employees — are popping up everywhere from Israel to Africa to the United States. Recent revelations have shown that Black Cube, an Israeli firm, gathered intelligence on Obama administration officials in an effort to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. Christopher Steele, the co-founder of Orbis Business Intelligence, another private firm, was responsible for the famous Trump-Russia dossier.

Welund, a U.K.-based company founded by a former MI6 special agent in 2007, has traditionally kept a low profile. Even its name, which is derived from Norse mythology, is little known beyond a small subset of industry and government contractors. Welund, which established a North America office in 2016, seems to rely heavily on its ties to industry and law enforcement. The firm’s vice president of operations, Travis Moran, is a former U.S. Justice Department special agent who previously worked as a senior counterterrorism investigator at Dominion Energy, one of the largest suppliers of electricity and natural gas in the United States.

The company depicts the environmental movement as one of the energy industry’s most dangerous adversaries — comparable to the challenges posed by international industrial espionage. “What we’re talking about here is an existential threat,” Moran told the audience of oil and gas executives in Houston.

The industry seems to agree. In November 2017, when Welund partnered with TIPRO to provide free access to its intelligence platform, the petroleum group’s president described activism as “one of the most disruptive and costly threats to the energy industry — in lost productivity, damage, legal and reputational risk.”


Welund’s effort to court the oil and gas industry comes at a time when battles over energy development have reached a fever pitch. Beginning in 2008 with the campaign to block approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was designed to carry tar sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, activists have focused on fossil fuel infrastructure as a target of both legal action and political protest. The movement claimed a major victory in 2015 when President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone project. (That decision was promptly reversed by President Donald Trump during his first few days in office.)

“The anti-fossil fuel movement is the No. 1 challenge threatening our industry, especially when they have sympathizers in the White House, Ottawa, and elsewhere in public office,” wrote the editor of the Pipeline and Gas Journal, an industry trade publication, shortly before the 2016 election.

Welund specializes in profiling these activist threats and maintains a “live archive” of original content that, it says, is used by dozens of international corporations, law enforcement agencies, and government bodies. Its subscriber-only intelligence platform appears to be largely composed of open source data — that is, news reports, online information, and strategic analysis — according to the firm’s contracts with the Canadian government. At industry gatherings, the company has emphasized the importance of continuously following social media to develop effective counter campaigns. The firm promises to closely monitor activists, and one of its Canadian contracts referred to the use of open and “other sources.” Canadian officials declined to say what those “other sources” included.

At the Houston conference, Moran described activists as traveling “professionals” who have more experience than the companies they are protesting. “We keep track of them,” Moran said. “You’ll see them at the Marcellus. You’ll see them at Bayou Bridge. That’s what they do.” The Bayou Bridge Pipeline is a controversial project in Texas and Louisiana; the Marcellus shale formation is the epicenter of fracking in the eastern United States.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

The firm has also presented alongside Gryphon Sensors, a subsidiary of defense contractor SRC, which is a pioneer in the field of commercial drones. Moran, whose Twitter handle is “dronin_on,” is a strategic partner at Gryphon and an advisory board member of the Texas-based Energy Drone Coalition, which focuses on the use of drone technology by the energy industry. According to Gryphon, its mobile drone security system, which can track hundreds of targets simultaneously, is “perfect for … law enforcement and critical infrastructure protection.”

In recent years, anti-pipeline advocates have been targeted by law enforcement agencies and private security contractors employed by the industry. In late 2012, the FBI opened an investigation into anti-Keystone activists. More recently, according to the Intercept, private security contractors and FBI informants infiltrated the activist camp at the heart of the Native-American-led protest movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.

None of those controversies involved Welund, which cautions energy firms against using covert or illegal methods to obtain intelligence, arguing that such tactics are likely to do more harm than good. In Houston, Moran referred to the PR mess Energy Transfer Partners found itself in after contracting with private security firms that used aggressive tactics in encounters with protesters campaigning against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Moran advised companies enlisting the services of private security contractors to “make sure you have a policy that they understand.”


Industry now has a staunch ally in the White House, but activists have continued to engage in high-profile civil disobedience campaigns and legal challenges designed to thwart or delay pipeline development, often at great cost to the oil and gas firms.

Environmentalists have also made life difficult for energy companies in Canada — as well as for the government agencies those firms often work with. In 2016, protesters disrupted a National Energy Board hearing in Montreal, resulting in several arrests and forcing the regulatory body to cancel two days of hearings on TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, which was slated to run from Alberta to refineries and shipping terminals in New Brunswick and Quebec. TransCanada eventually terminated the project.

And that’s exactly what Welund is seeking to prevent. The company appears to have worked on behalf of clients involved in some of the most controversial projects currently moving forward: Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline, designed to carry fracked gas from the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia to processing facilities in Virginia and North Carolina; and the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which would greatly expand the capacity for shipping tar sands oil from Western Canada.

Dominion, Moran’s former employer, is facing strong headwinds as it seeks to complete its pipeline. Activists have already set up an encampment in an old growth forest known as Miracle Ridge that is in the project’s pathway and is scheduled to be cleared this year. This follows weeks of tree sits — including one by a 61-year-old-woman that garnered national attention — protesting the nearby Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Kinder Morgan, apparently also a Welund client, was facing similar opposition when it decided to abandon its Trans Mountain project. In March, the company’s CEO described the anti-pipeline movement as “much more intense” and “more organized” than ever before. Two months later, in an unprecedented move, the Canadian government agreed to intervene and purchase the pipeline for $3.4 billion. The sale closed this summer, and construction has been underway on about 600 miles of pipeline connecting Alberta’s tar sands with export terminals near Vancouver.

Opposition to the project has persisted, including from British Columbia Premier John Horgan, whose government has joined a First Nations lawsuit challenging the decision to approve the pipeline. The conflict has sometimes been described as Canada’s Standing Rock.

“People can just expect resistance to this project to grow,” Greenpeace activist Mike Hudema told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “Already we’ve seen over 200 people risking arrest and getting arrested to try and oppose this project, and those numbers are going to continue to increase as it moves forward.” In late August, a Canadian court ruled that the NEB had not properly consulted with First Nations groups and temporarily halted the project.

Welund did not respond to questions about its apparent work for Dominion and Kinder Morgan and whether that work related to the Atlantic Coast or Trans Mountain pipelines. Dominion declined to comment for this story. Kinder Morgan said it does not comment on security-related issues.

Last year, as Canada’s National Energy Board was evaluating Kinder Morgan’s application to build the Trans Mountain Pipeline, the agency signed a contract with Welund to monitor social media activity and provide the government with weekly updates on activist threats, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

The contract, which came just months after protesters shut down the NEB hearings on the Energy East pipeline, focused on helping the agency manage threats to “personnel, critical assets, information and services” as it prepared for upcoming public events, many of them related to the Trans Mountain project. The contract included access to Welund’s intelligence platform, email advice and warnings from Welund researchers, the Welund weekly banking digest, something called the “Welund Weekly Activist Overview,” and up to 50 hours of “bespoke services,” which focused on information specific to the safety and security of the agency’s staff and activities, according to the NEB. (Welund had already been providing the NEB with some form of intelligence and analysis for some time.)

Within the Canadian government, Welund’s services were touted by Lee Williams, who at the time was the head of security at the NEB. In a June 2016 email, Williams introduced his counterpart at the National Research Council — a Canadian government body that oversees research and development and often works closely with the private sector — to a Welund representative.

“We’ve been using their services for almost a year,” Williams wrote, “and find both their web content and bespoke services very beneficial.” A few months later, the NRC’s security branch entered into a $28,250 contract with Welund. In one document related to the contract, an NRC employee highlighted the firm’s “domestic and international military and counter-terrorism experience” and targeted data collection “through open and other sources.”

Williams has since left the NEB, according to government records. In recent promotional materials, Welund has listed a person named Lee Williams as a company contact. A Welund employee confirmed that a Lee Williams currently serves as an executive with the company but didn’t know whether he is the same Williams who worked for the NEB. Company spokespeople did not respond to written questions about Williams. Welund’s Williams did not return repeated phone calls and text messages. The NEB said it does not comment on HR-related employee matters.

The National Research Council declined to be interviewed for this story but said that Welund had a one-year service contract with the agency to provide country-specific risk assessments and alerts. This information, according to an emailed statement from the NRC, was used to assess the safety of travel and to brief employees in advance of international trips.

In response to a public records request for specific Welund materials — including copies of the weekly activist overview — provided to the NEB as outlined in the contract, the agency said it had no additional records in its possession.

Karen Ryhorchuk, an NEB spokesperson, said the agency sometimes conducts security assessments in advance of public events in order to safeguard personnel, assets, information, and services. Welund, she said, assisted the NEB in managing security threats and risks. “Information provided to the NEB by Welund was from [publicly] available, open source data from conventional media and social media outlets,” Ryhorchuk wrote in an email.

The NEB’s contract with Welund expired at the end of 2017 and has not been renewed. But early this year, the agency awarded a similar contract to Falling Apple Solutions, which was founded by Eppo van Weelderen, a retired Lieutenant-Colonel in the Canadian army. Falling Apple has the same Alberta address as Welund, and van Weelderen is listed as one of Welund’s directors. According to the NEB, the contract with Falling Apple, a self-described engineering and project management firm, was terminated after only three months. When I reached van Weelderen by phone and told him what I was writing about, he hung up.

Meanwhile, privacy advocates are growing increasingly alarmed about the Canadian government’s use of intelligence firms — especially after a recent request by the NEB for contractors who could evaluate security threats by monitoring social media on an even broader scale. In June, Ron Deibert, a political science professor at the University of Toronto and director of the Citizen Lab, which studies the intersection of technology and human rights, wrote an open letter warning that the hoovering up of massive amounts of data in the name of protecting critical infrastructure could have a chilling effect on free speech.

“The system proposed … is inherently oriented toward mass data collection and analysis, and will, by definition, have significant collateral impacts on the rights and interests of individuals who pose no security threat,” he wrote. The NEB ultimately withdrew the proposal.

For its part, Welund may disagree with the heavy-handed methods employed against the Dakota Access protesters, but it still holds a rather ominous view of environmental activism. “It’s threatening your operations, it’s threatening your finances, it’s threatening your reputation, and it’s threatening your viability,” Moran said in Houston.

The Houston conference was mostly celebratory, with discussions of greatly expanding oil production and pipeline capacity. There were presentations refuting the science of global warming and information sessions with representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management. David Blackmon, editor of Shale Magazine, gave a talk titled, “The Trump-Driven Sea Change in Federal Energy Policy.” Chris Wallace of Fox News delivered the keynote address.

But, when Moran took the stage, the tone was decidedly darker. Showing the audience an image of a masked tree-sitter protesting a pipeline project, he warned them about the financial impact of activism. “If you’re not aware of this, if you’re not aware of how effective they can be … if you’re not ahead of the game,” he said, “this can be your fate.”

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with support from the H.D. Lloyd Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Read the article:

The private intelligence firm keeping tabs on environmentalists

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, The Atlantic, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The private intelligence firm keeping tabs on environmentalists

Trump’s national security agenda to have big environmental impacts on both borders

The Trump administration axed climate change from its national security strategy, with huge implications for how America adapts to the threats of a warming world. But that’s not the only way we’re seeing the environmental fallout of Trump’s national security agenda.

Along our borders with Canada and Mexico, conservation and climate justice fights are getting tangled up with national security interests. To the south, Trump’s proposed wall threatens dozens of endangered species, like the Mexican gray wolf. And in the north, Canada’s purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline hinges in part on a U.S. assessment of national security threats.

The wall

The Department of Homeland Security essentially has a get-out-of-federal-law pass that allows them to ignore environmental regulations. In the case of the border wall, the department can move forward with construction without an environmental impact analysis and won’t be subject to following the Endangered Species Act or National Environmental Policy Act.

This capacity to be above the law has enormous impacts for the survival of species found along the U.S.-Mexico border. Leading scientists, including Paul Ehrlich and E.O. Wilson, published an article on the dangers in the journal BioScience last week. More than other 2,500 other scientists signed onto a call to action urging Homeland Security to follow federal law, evaluate the environmental impact of its border wall, and take action to mitigate the harm.

SANDY HUFFAKER / AFP / Getty Images

The wall would restrict the movement of communities and scientists working on conservation on both sides of the border, says lead author Rob Peters. Beyond the human angle, “any sort of barrier to the free movement of animals is a threat to their existence,” Peters says. “The borderlands are not the empty wastelands that so many people think they are. They’re incredibly rich in biodiversity.” According to the report, the wall would impact up to 62 species listed as critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The pipeline

Meanwhile, up north, it’s now up to federal authorities, with Trump making the ultimate decision, to allow or veto Canada’s purchase of Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain Pipeline.

Kinder Morgan halted non-essential spending on the pipeline expansion this spring and was ready to drop the project completely. That’s when the Trudeau administration announced it was going to foot the bill to keep the flailing project alive.

So, why does that require Trump’s approval? Canada’s purchase of TransMountain includes the acquisition of an offshoot pipeline: the Puget Sound Pipeline, which moves oil from British Columbia to Washington state. As a result, the deal can’t move forward without national security clearance from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments. It’s also subject to review by the State Department, which issues presidential permits for cross-border liquid pipelines.

Normally, those procedures are pretty cut-and-dry. But under the Trump administration, experts say, anything goes. “Once upon a time, there was a set of regulations that could tell you more or less what the considerations were. I don’t think those are operative at all right now,” says Tom Sanzillo, director of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “I think whatever the president wants he’ll do,” Sanzillo says.

In its 2017 National Security Strategy, the Trump administration mentions streamlining federal approval of pipelines as a good thing for Americans. But these are weird times; trade tensions and Trump’s fighting words with Trudeau over the summer could make the U.S. president an unlikely trump card for those hoping the pipeline deal will die.

There are legitimate concerns about Canada owning a slice of American energy infrastructure, according to Clark Williams-Derry, director of energy finance at Seattle-based think tank Sightline Institute (Williams-Derry was also the webmaster for Grist back in 1999). “This is the only case for a foreign government to outright own a U.S. pipeline. It’s a little bit unsettling,” Williams-Derry says.

If Trump decides he doesn’t want to Canada to have the Puget Sound Pipeline, it would deal a significant blow to the Kinder Morgan Deal. But both Williams-Derry and Sanzillo say that although it would further delay the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, it wouldn’t altogether kill it. With $3.5 billion on the line, Kinder Morgan and Trudeau’s government could find a way to take the Puget Sound Pipeline out of the deal in order to bypass U.S. intervention on the purchase.

The looming threat

And if the pipeline expansion is successful and leads to significantly more crude oil pumping out of Alberta’s tar sands, there’s another huge threat to consider: “Climate change is certainly a threat to national security,” says Williams-Derry. “If a hostile foreign power said, ‘We’re going to devastate Miami or we’re going to increase the chance of a major incident on the Gulf Coast,’ we would say, ‘No way. Absolutely not.’”

And climate change is a concurrent threat for species at the border. The wall would hamper their efforts to adapt, especially in places like in the Southwest where animals may migrate to cope with drought. “We can’t say exactly how [climate change] is going to affect them,” says Rob Peters. “But we sure as hell can say it ain’t going to be good.”

Continue at source:  

Trump’s national security agenda to have big environmental impacts on both borders

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump’s national security agenda to have big environmental impacts on both borders

Indigenous-led, anti-fossil fuel protests are shutting down banks in cities across the globe.

The demonstrations call on households, cities, and institutions to withdraw money from banks financing projects that activists say violate human rights — such as the Dakota Access Pipeline and efforts to extract oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada.

The divestment campaign Mazaska Talks, which is using the hashtag #DivestTheGlobe, began with protests across the United States on Monday and continues with actions in Africa, Asia, and Europe on Tuesday and Wednesday. Seven people were arrested in Seattle yesterday, where activists briefly shut down a Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo.

The demonstrations coincide with a meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, involving a group of financial institutions that have established a framework for assessing the environmental and social risks of development projects. Organizers allege the banks have failed to uphold indigenous peoples’ right to “free, prior, and informed consent” to projects developed on their land.

“We want the global financial community to realize that investing in projects that harm us is really investing in death, genocide, racism, and does have a direct effect on not only us on the front lines but every person on this planet,” Joye Braun, an Indigenous Environmental Network community organizer, said in a statement.

See original: 

Indigenous-led, anti-fossil fuel protests are shutting down banks in cities across the globe.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, solar, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Indigenous-led, anti-fossil fuel protests are shutting down banks in cities across the globe.

A judge rules that rushing approval for the Dakota Access Pipeline violated the law.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg issued a ruling Wednesday that deemed the previous environmental review process inadequate. His decision comes in response to a legal challenge filed by Standing Rock Sioux in February, after President Trump greenlit the pipeline shortly after his inauguration.

Specifically, the judge said the Army Corps of Engineers, which must approve pipelines that cross water, “did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial.” According to Jan Hasselman, the Earthjustice attorney representing the tribe, the ruling represents possibly the first time that a federal judge has dinged the Army Corps for not considering environmental justice concerns.

The Army Corps must now do additional review. Hasselman is unsure what form that will take. “Do they just try to paper this over with a supplemental or revised environmental assessment, which is likely to lead to more litigation?” he says. “Or do they go back to the environmental impact statement process?”

The tribe has argued for months that the pipeline would endanger their drinking water and ancestral lands. Since oil began flowing in March, the pipeline has already leaked several times. Oil will continue flowing for now, but Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault II said the tribe “will ask the Court to shut down the pipeline operations immediately” while it undergoes further environmental review. A ruling could come on that demand in as soon as six weeks.

Related: Read Grist’s investigation of the paramilitary tactics used to track and target pipeline opponents.

Continue reading here: 

A judge rules that rushing approval for the Dakota Access Pipeline violated the law.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A judge rules that rushing approval for the Dakota Access Pipeline violated the law.

Here’s how the Standing Rock Sioux will keep fighting Dakota Access — in court

By some accounts, the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline now looks unwinnable. Standing Rock became a ghost town last week after police raided and razed the prayer camp that once hosted thousands of water protectors. Earlier this month, the Trump administration fast-tracked approval to build the final section of the pipeline and cancelled the environmental impact statement ordered by President Obama. Construction is nearing completion and oil could flow through the pipeline as early as March 6. For the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, time is running out — fast.

The Sioux’s best shot at stopping Dakota Access now lies in court. It may be a long shot, but a legal win is still possible, some advocates say.

A legal challenge filed by the tribe on Feb. 14 charges pipeline builder Dakota Access, LLC, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with a range of environmental, cultural, and treaty-based violations. It asks a federal judge to rule on whether the Army Corps broke laws and treaties by allowing construction of the last leg of the pipeline under Lake Oahe, a reservoir along the Missouri River in North Dakota.

“What you have is this well-supported decision from a past administration to do more and give a full consideration to treaty rights, and then the second administration throws it in the trash,” says Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice, who’s representing the tribe in its lawsuit. “That’s just not how it works.”

“It’s absolutely not over,” says Kyle Powys Whyte, a professor of philosophy and community sustainability and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. He’s been closely tracking the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and he thinks the tribes fighting the project have a good legal case. “Absolutely I think there’s a chance to stop this thing.”

One of the Sioux’s main legal complaints is that construction of the pipeline near its reservation and through sites it considers sacred would violate the tribe’s treaty rights — specifically, its rights under the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties. At the heart of the matter is the Sioux’s right to self-determination and tribal sovereignty. Tribes like the Sioux are independent, self-governing nations like any other in the world. And the sovereignty of tribal nations preexists the United States, just like the nations themselves.

Many Native Americans believe that this sovereignty is now under extreme threat. The administration of Donald Trump may be the most hostile to Indian tribes since that of Andrew Jackson, who caused the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, argues Matthew Fletcher, a professor of law at Michigan State University and a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

The tribe’s legal motion also charges that the Army Corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act by terminating an environmental review of the pipeline, and violated the Clean Water Act as well.

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has joined the Standing Rock Sioux in its legal challenge, and on Feb. 22, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe filed its own motion in the case, calling on the court to reject the Army Corps’ permit for pipeline construction. Several other allies, such as the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, have filed amicus briefs supporting the Standing Rock Sioux’s legal case.

Hasselman believes the Sioux have strong legal claims that could lead to the pipeline’s approval being overturned. If the current legal motion fails, he says the tribe will appeal in federal circuit court. Even if oil starts flowing in the pipeline in the interim, it could still be shut off down the line, Hasselman told the Bismarck Tribune.

And tribes are waging other legal battles against the pipeline too. On Feb. 9, the Cheyenne River Sioux filed a motion to temporarily halt construction on the grounds that the pipeline would violate their right to religious freedom by desecrating the sacred waters of Lake Oahe.

“I really hope that the case for religious freedom works,” Powys Whyte says. “This can’t possibly be a country where someone’s business idea can trample someone’s constitutional right to practice their religion.”

The Oglala Sioux Tribe joined the fray on Feb. 13 with its own lawsuit claiming that the pipeline threatened its treaty rights to safe drinking water.

The Cheyenne River Sioux’s religious claim was heard on Feb. 28, and a judge intends to rule on it by March 7. Other motions should be considered in the coming weeks. Still, it could take months, if not years, for all of these cases to move through the courts.

Even if pipeline opponents’ lawsuits are not successful in stopping the pipeline, Powys Whyte sees other gains that have come from the #NoDAPL fight. Standing Rock has provided a template for an indigenous-led movement against projects that pose threats to the environment and to tribes’ sovereignty — a template that could prove crucial to activists over the next four years. He points to two other battles for indigenous rights that will be heating up in coming months: the resistance against the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Tohono O’odham Nation’s staunch opposition to Trump building a border wall on their reservation in Arizona.

Powys Whyte urges non-indigenous environmentalists to get educated about Native American history and tribal rights, and to consult with tribes and incorporate their concerns into campaigns. “Part of the reason why non-indigenous activists are coming late to the Dakota Access fight is because they weren’t aware of the vulnerability and susceptibility Native tribes have,” Powys Whyte says. To learn more, he recommends reading the Native Appropriations blog and the Standing Rock syllabus.

“Literally, if more people supported democratic tribal sovereignty, we wouldn’t have something like the Dakota Access Pipeline happening,” Powys Whyte says.

Read the article:

Here’s how the Standing Rock Sioux will keep fighting Dakota Access — in court

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s how the Standing Rock Sioux will keep fighting Dakota Access — in court