[CRNMC] Good News of Bad News

Mon Jan 5 07:20:23 PST 2015

Hi Baile,

Thanks for sending this. We all knew what the risks were of following the
Community Rights path. I think that there is little potential for finding
natural gas deposits in Mendocino County. If any are discovered by the oil
and gas corporations, I think we will be sued - that is if we get Measure S
encoded.

Your post just is one more example of the massively corrupt
political/economic/facist system that the U.S. is. My understanding is that
the community rights movement is a challenge to the unjust system that we
humans and the natural world are are being oppressed by. As I see it, our
mission is to expose the corruption and change it.

regards
Ed

On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 9:47 PM, Baile Oakes <baileoakes at gmail.com> wrote:

> From Today's NY Times:
>
>
> U.S. <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html>Heavyweight
> Response to Local Fracking Bans
>
> By JACK HEALY
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/jack_healy/index.html>JAN.
> 3, 2015
> Photo
> A natural gas well in Longmont, Colo. CreditLuke Sharrett for The New
> York Times
> Continue reading the main story
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-bans.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0#story-continues-1>
> Continue reading the main story
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-bans.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0#story-continues-1>
> Continue reading the main story
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-bans.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0#story-continues-1>Share
> This Page
>
> LONGMONT, Colo. — This northern Colorado city vaulted onto the front lines
> of the battle over oil
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleum-and-gasoline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> and
> gas drilling two years ago, when residents voted to ban hydraulic
> fracturing from their grassy open spaces and a snow-fed reservoir where
> anglers catch smallmouth bass.
>
> But these days, Longmont has become a cautionary tale of what can happen
> when cities decide to confront the oil
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleum-and-gasoline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> and
> gas industry. In an aggressive response to a wave of citizen-led drilling
> bans, state officials, energy companies and industry groups are taking
> Longmont and other municipalities to court, forcing local governments into
> what critics say are expensive, long-shot efforts to defend the measures.
> Continue reading the main story
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-bans.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0#story-continues-2>RELATED
> COVERAGE
>
>    - [image: Members of New Yorkers Against Fracking celebrated the
>    governor’s decision outside his Manhattan office on Wednesday.]
>    Citing Health Risks, Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York StateDEC. 17, 2014
>    <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/nyregion/cuomo-to-ban-fracking-in-new-york-state-citing-health-risks.html>
>    - [image: A drilling site in Denton, Tex., where residents are pushing
>    to pass a referendum that would prohibit hydraulic fracturing.]
>    Denton Journal: In Texas, a Fight Over Fracking OCT. 8, 2014
>    <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/business/in-texas-a-fight-over-fracking.html>
>    - [image: Dresser-Rand's corporate magazine.]
>    Siemens Makes $7.6 Billion Bet on Fracking in U.S.SEPT. 22, 2014
>    <http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/siemens-makes-7-6-billion-bet-on-fracking-in-u-s/>
>
> While the details vary — some municipalities have voted for outright bans,
> and others for multiyear suspensions of fracking — energy companies in city
> after city argue that they have a right to extract underground minerals,
> and that the drilling bans amount to voter-approved theft. They also say
> state agencies, not individual communities, are the ones with the power to
> set oil and gas rules.
> Photo
> Kaye Fissinger, who managed the campaign to ban hydraulic fracturing in
> Longmont. CreditMatthew Staver for The New York Times
>
> Because the cases are being fought one by one at the state level, they are
> not expected to set any immediate nationwide standard on whether homeowners
> and local leaders have the power to keep drilling rigs out of their towns.
> But they are being watched as legal litmus tests as more governments plunge
> into the acrimonious debate over fracking, the process of pumping huge
> amounts of water, sand and chemicals underground to release oil and gas
> buried in shale rock.
>
> New York State’s move to ban fracking
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/nyregion/cuomo-to-ban-fracking-in-new-york-state-citing-health-risks.html> last
> month, for example, was foreshadowed by a ruling
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/nyregion/towns-may-ban-fracking-new-york-state-high-court-rules.html> in
> June by the state’s highest court that towns could use their zoning laws to
> outlaw the practice. In the wake of New York’s announcement, anti-fracking
> activists in California, Maryland and Pennsylvania, among other states,
> renewed their calls for bans.
>
> Citizens’ groups and environmental organizations say residents have the
> right to live on suburban streets and walk their children to school without
> worrying about methane leaks from wellheads, or traffic and noise from the
> drilling rigs and tractor-trailers that haul machinery and water to
> fracking sites. Other property owners and residents, of course, embrace
> fracking as an economic powerhouse that has provided thousands of jobs,
> enriched local governments and opened new economic opportunities in rural
> communities.
> Continue reading the main story
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-bans.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0#story-continues-3>
>
> Here in Colorado, the energy industry, which argues that cities lack the
> authority to outlaw fracking, has already won rulings overturning three
> fracking prohibitions.
>
> “You have to take a hard line on this,” said Tisha Schuller, president of
> the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, which is leading the charge to strike
> down the regulations here. “A ban does not address our underlying energy
> needs. It clarifies the agenda of activists, which is, ‘We don’t want any
> oil and gas development, although we as a community will continue to
> consume oil and gas.’ ”
> Photo
> Tisha Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, which
> is leading the charge to strike down the ban. CreditMatthew Staver for
> The New York Times
>
> Ms. Schuller added, however, that her group’s “overwhelming priority” was
> working with communities, not suing them. To that end, she said, it has
> helped forge more than 20 agreements between energy companies and
> communities across the state that seek to balance concerns about noise,
> traffic and other side effects of drilling with the right of property
> owners to tap their mineral resources.
> Continue reading the main story
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-bans.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0#story-continues-5>
> Continue reading the main story
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-bans.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0#story-continues-5>
>
> Longmont, which sits near the juncture of rolling plains and jagged
> mountains, has spent about $136,000 fighting — unsuccessfully so far — to
> defend a 2012 measure that outlawed fracking. In July, a district court
> judge tossed out the ban, and the city is appealing.
>
> A judge also overturned a fracking ban last year in Fort Collins, Colo.,
> and denied pleas from the city to keep the ban in place while local
> officials went to court to defend a five-year fracking moratorium. In
> Broadview Heights, Ohio, energy companies are suing the town — and
> residents are suing the energy companies in return — over a bill of rights
> that outlawed fracking and the disposal of its byproducts.
>
> In Denton, Tex., one day after voters passed the state’s first ban on
> fracking in November, the measure was met with lawsuits from the Texas
> General Land Office and the Texas Oil and Gas Association. An official on
> the commission that regulates oil and gas in Texas told The Dallas
> Morning News
> <http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/11/craddick-railroad-commission-will-continue-permitting-in-denton-not-ruling-out-action-against-ban.html/> that
> she would still issue permits to companies hoping to drill in Denton, even
> while the ban remained on the books.
>
> In Longmont, energy companies and fracking opponents had skirmished before
> over plans to drill near new subdivisions and a golf course. But in 2011,
> opposition grew widespread after residents learned of a proposal to drill
> near Union Reservoir, a glassy lake that reflects the mountains. In
> November 2012, a campaign by environmental groups led to a ban not only on
> fracking, but also on the storage or disposal of any fracking waste.
> Photo
> Lafayette, Colo., whose City Council decided not to appeal a legal
> judgment against voter-approved drilling restrictions. The initial court
> battle cost the city $62,000. CreditMatthew Staver for The New York Times
>
> “People thought it was quixotic,” said Kaye Fissinger, a retired Longmont
> resident who managed the campaign. The industry spent about $500,000 on
> commercials and brochures that year, more than 10 times what the activists
> raised to pass the ban. But, Ms. Fissinger said, “ ‘Impossible Dream’ has
> always been one of my favorite songs.”
>
> Much more than $500,000 was at stake. City officials and energy companies
> estimated that Longmont was floating atop as much as $500 million of oil
> and gas — resources that were locked away. While the ban did not explicitly
> outlaw drilling, industry officials said the prohibition on fracking
> removed a crucial step needed to tap the oil and gas.
>
> “There’s absolutely no question that what the city did is illegal,” said
> Dale Bruns, a consultant for TOP Operating Company, the main oil and gas
> operator in Longmont, which is suing the city. “Longmont just repeatedly
> shoots itself in the foot. You’ve got a bunch of people who are just
> adamant that fossil fuel is bad, and it’s terrible for Longmont. This
> minority group has fired up the public with false claims.”
>
> Bryan Baum, a former mayor who opposed the ban, predicted that it would
> fall at every level of appeal, including at the Colorado Supreme Court,
> because only the state can regulate drilling. Now, as the case heads to
> higher courts, Mr. Baum said he believed many in town were developing
> buyer’s remorse about the ban.
>
> “If we took that same vote, I think it would come out differently,” he
> said. “It’s cost the city a lot. It’s not just the money that it costs to
> defend these — it’s the opportunities and the industries it could’ve
> brought to our community.”
>
> While the Longmont City Council voted unanimously in August to defend the
> fracking ban, other towns have decided it is just too costly a fight. After
> Lafayette, Colo., lost an initial legal judgment on its voter-approved
> restrictions on oil and gas development, the Council voted, 4 to 3, to give
> up and drop further appeals.
>
> There are only about 12 active wells in Lafayette, leftovers from the
> 1980s, but the community sits on the fringe of Colorado’s oil boom and
> wanted to make sure the drilling did not encroach. Even though the ban was
> largely symbolic, it drew a quick challenge from the Colorado Oil and Gas
> Association and was overturned. After that battle, which cost $62,000, the
> Council members had had enough.
>
> “It’s a scare tactic,” said the mayor, Christine Berg, who voted to
> continue the legal case. “We’re a small community. We’re 25,000 people, and
> we’re fighting this battle. We’re stuck between these legal threats and
> what our constituents want, which is a say in the future of their
> communities.”
>
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>
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