Army Corps Engineers
180 on dapl after trump elected?!
but mod on coal export?!
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an 2 25
President Donald Trump has taken credit for distributing water to Southern California, but Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin said otherwise. In fact, she said in a post on X on Monday, the water went to farmers whose dormant crops did not need it.
“President Trump again said he ‘turned the water on’ in California and that water could have been used to fight the wildfires,” Griffin wrote. “A few facts: The water released by the Army Corps of Engineers from 2 dams in Central California has no way to reach Southern California. The sudden rush alarmed local farmers whose land was nearly flooded.”
She added: “The water is usually kept in reserve to help farmers in Central California during summer drought months. There are no crops that need the water right now. They are dormant. The water was released by the Army Corps of Engineers from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success but has no way to connect to the aqueduct to deliver water to Southern California to be used for wildfires (most of which are now no longer burning).”
READ MORE: 'Exaggerated his own made-up claim': CNN rapid-fire fact-check busts Trump’s presser talking points
Griffin was responding to a post from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency: “Congratulations to the Administration and DOI’s [Department of Interior] Bureau of Reclamation for more than doubling the Federally pumped water flowing toward Southern California in < 72 hours. Was an honor for the DOGE team to work with you. Great job!”
Trump repeated the claim during a press conference Monday.
More water from Northern California would not have changed the outcome of the fires that destroyed parts of Los Angeles, a spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom told the Los Angeles Times.
“There is no shortage of water in Southern California,” Newsom’s spokesperson, Tara Gallegos, said. “Water operations to move water south through the Delta have nothing to do with the local fire response in Los Angeles. Trump is either unaware of how water is stored in California or is deliberately misleading the public.”
READ MORE: 'Steamrolling anything in his way': How Trump is 'bulldozing state and local power'
Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) also questioned the move. “Unscheduled water releases require close coordination with local officials and safety personnel, as well as downstream agricultural water users, in order to reduce flood risks to communities and farms,” he wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Based on the urgent concerns I have heard from my constituents, as well as recent reporting, it appears that gravely insufficient notification was given, recklessly endangering residents downstream.”
“Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory!” Trump posted on X last week. “I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!
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521 desmog
Finally, this week five environmental groups filed a lawsuit in a Montana federal court alleging that the way the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues permits for oil and gas pipelines nationwide violates some of the country’s cornerstone environmental laws. The lawsuit is the most recent round in a nearly decade-long battle, sparked under the Obama administration, over how regulators approach the environmental impacts from oil and gas pipelines and the extent to which the public gets a say in the permitting process. Sharon Kelly reports.
https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/hey-army-corps-engineers-show-us-your-work-your-dapl-report
9/18
On April 15, Judge Brian Morris nullified water-crossing permits in Montana that were granted for the Keystone XL, a major setback for the long-embattled tar sands oil pipeline. The ruling came just days after Keystone XL owner TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, obtained billions of dollars in subsidies from the Alberta government as global oil prices plummeted.
The oil and gas industry has taken notice. Seemingly just a ruling on Keystone XL — the subject of opposition by the climate movement for the past decade — the ruling could have far broader implications for the future of building water-crossing pipelines and utility lines.
In his decision, Judge Morris cited a potential violation of the Endangered Species Act when he ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do a deeper analysis of potential impacts to protected species. Morris required the Corps to demonstrate whether or not it could construct the pipeline without harming endangered species, such as the Pallid Sturgeon or the American burying beetle. Instead, the Army Corps “failed to consider relevant expert analysis and failed to articulate a rational connection between the facts it found and the choice it made,” Morris ruled, when the Corps gave Keystone XL the initial green light.
The original July 2019 complaintin that case — filed by Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center for Biological Diversity — also argued that the Army Corps had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in using an obscure regulatory lever to fast-track the review process.
Known as Nationwide Permit 12, the permit only requires a short environmental analysis compared to the more robust environmental impact statement required under NEPA for other major infrastructure projects. But Morris also wrote that the decision applied not just to Keystone XL, but to all major federal projects aiming to utilize Nationwide Permit 12, calling for it to be “vacated pending completion of the consultation process and compliance with all environmental statutes and regulations.”
Just two days after this decision, Army Corps regulatory program Chief Jennifer Moyer wrote in an email obtained by the Associated Press that the agency should suspend the program indefinitely “out of an abundance of caution” until the issue is resolved legally.
The Trump administration has already requested a procedural halt on implementing Morris’ decision until its potential appeal weaves its way through the legal system.
“The Court has eliminated Nationwide Permit 12 for use by any utility line project anywhere in the country, which has extraordinary and immediate implications for numerous projects,” the U.S. Department of Justice attorneys wrote on behalf of the Army Corps.
The American Petroleum Institute (API), the lobbying and advocacy voice of the oil and gas industry, has also filed an affidavit in favor of putting a procedural halt to Morris’ ruling.
“The ability to provide reliable energy is even more important now during this sensitive and challenging time brought on by COVID-19,” Robin Rorick, Vice President of Midstream and Industry Operations for API, wrote in the affidavit. “The Court’s Order could threaten API’s members’ ability to continue numerous energy and infrastructure projects, affecting the health of numerous companies and job security in an already-strained economy.”
API also joined North America’s Building Trades Unions and Interstate Natural Gas Association of America in denouncing the ruling along similar lines.
'Single and Complete'
Nationwide Permit 12 historically was used for small “single and complete” projects crossing water parcels half an acre in size or smaller.
But in the aftermath of protests and civil disobedience actions taken against Keystone XL, the Obama administration began using that permitting process to split pipelines into hundreds or thousands of half-acre pieces. The process was a way around the more robust and democratic National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulatory process, which involves both a public commenting and public hearing phase. Nationwide Permit 12 was also used to push through the Dakota Access pipeline, as well as the southern leg of the Keystone XL, both greenlighted by President Barack Obama.
During the Obama era, environmental groups decried this as a form of “segmentation” and a way out of complying with NEPA, which they routinely challeneged in court with some success—though not enough to undo the legal lever. The bedrock environmental law is now under further attack by President Donald Trump, with the administration trying to remove climate change contribution as a factor analyzed under the law for major projects and aiming to narrow the scope of and time it takes to complete these environmental impact reviews.
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Since March 2017, the Trump administration has utilized Nationwide Permit 12 over 37,000 times, the AP reported. As it stands today, the Army Corps’ decision to halt use of the Nationwide Permit 12 fast-track tool has put 360 permit applications on hold.
“The reason that matters is that the public and the communities and everybody that lives there has the chance to get involved in the process,” Eric Huber, Senior Managing Attorney with the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, told DeSmog. “Otherwise, these special permits just allow a pipeline company to go out and start construction without notice to anybody or to take private property and just proceed and blast this through regardless of how the local community thinks of it.”
External corporate attorneys, too, have taken notice and expressed their own concerns about the ruling.
“The decision puts in limbo thousands of infrastructure projects nationwide that rely on [Nationwide Permit] 12 for the construction, maintenance, or repair of utility lines and poses particularly acute problems for the oil and gas industry, which relies on the permit to facilitate projects ranging from large interstate pipelines to smaller gathering lines at exploration and production sites,” wrote attorneys fromBrownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a firm with close ties to the Trump administration, in one such reaction to the ruling.
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s fossil fuel industry lobbying clients include the American Petroleum Institute, American Public Power Association, Freeport LNG, Talos Energy, Jordan Cove LNG, WPX Energy, and the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.
Another firm heavily involved in fossil fuel industry litigation and lobbying,Steptoe & Johnson, also weighed in on the ruling and wrote that it could have the impact of “extending permitting time frames for these types of projects” going forward. The firm’s fossil fuel industry lobbying clients include American Gas Association, Gas Technology Institute, and Peabody Energy.
Permian Highway Pipeline in Texas
The legal precedent set in the Keystone XL case is already playing out in federal courts.
On April 30, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuitin the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against the Army Corps of Engineers over another controversial pipeline. The complaint says the Army Corps did not comply with NEPA in issuing a Nationwide Permit 12 to the 428-mile Permian Highway gas pipeline. It also argues the agency is not currently in compliance with the order in the Keystone XL case because it has continued to allow pipeline construction under the contested Nationwide Permit 12 program.
“It is outrageous that the Corps approved this project without public notice or opportunity to comment on their permits,” Rebecca McCreary, a Sierra Club attorney, said of the Permian Highway pipeline in a press release. “Nationwide Permit 12 allows for no public hearings or participation by the local communities before the Corps permits construction to start, nor is there public notice or comment on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permits allowing harm to the endangered species along the route. The Corps should stop this project immediately.”
Owned by Kinder Morgan, Permian Highway is a pipeline slated to carry gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Texas’ Permian Basin east across the state. Kinder Morgan told DeSmog it was aware of the lawsuit, but declined to comment on it and the broader Nationwide Permit 12 issue.
Permian Highway has already seen issues with spills into water systems, with one late March incident spilling 36,000 gallons of drilling slurry — including a carcinogenic additive — into groundwater.
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Responding, the Hays County Commissioners Court voted on April 22 to rescind road permits given by the Texas county to allow Kinder Morgan to drill underneath county roads as it builds the pipeline. And Kinder Morgan, too, has suspended construction on this portion of the pipeline as it “determines the best path forward” in the aftermath of the spill, the company told Houston Chronicle.
The City of Austin, City of San Marcos, Hays County, Travis County, and others also filed their own Endangered Species Act lawsuit in February,arguing that the pipeline could threaten protected Golden Cheeked Warblers, two salamander species, and their habitats.
Keystone XL Decision Looms
In the Keystone XL case in Montana, Morris recently deniedthe Army Corps a procedural stay in the case. TC Energy, for its part, wants the decision struck down as it applies both to its own pipeline and for the permitting program at large.
“If TC Energy does not receive authorization from the Army Corps by early July, its construction plans will be significantly impacted,” Gary Salsman, a TC Energy vice president for the Keystone XL project, wrote in his April 29 affidavit. “Currently, TC Energy is evaluating potential options that would be available to it in that circumstance, each of which have significant adverse consequences.”
Those “potential options,” Salsman wrote, include a potential construction delay across Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska; a change in construction plans this year to avoid the waters it is currently slated to cross that are impacted by the vacating of Nationwide Permit 12; or ending construction all together. He added that if construction does not begin in 2020, it could cost the company $750 million to $1.3 billion.
Morris could make a decision on how broadly his Nationwide Permit 12 decision applies as soon as May 8. Regardless of the outcome, Morris' next move will likely face an appeal from either side.
TAGS:
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck
National Environmental Policy Act
3/25/20
In a major victory for opponents of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday that prior environmental assessments failed to fully consider the impact of the project. The Army Corps of Engineers will now have to undertake a more thorough review.
The pipeline crosses the Missouri River just upstream from the reservation of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota. The tribe gained international attention starting in the summer of 2016, as thousands flocked to the reservation in support of the tribe's opposition to the pipeline. The project was approved by the Trump administration and completed in June 2017.
It remains unclear however, whether the 1,200-mile pipeline, which ships crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois, will have to be shut down during the new assessment by the Corps, a process that could take years....
trms 3/20 on covid mercy hosp ships and build temp hospitals
| Oakland | CA | Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal | Coal | 2015 | City banned the storage and handling of coal in 2016. The lease was canceled after a federal court overturned the ban in 2018. Lawsuits are currently underway. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boardman and Clatskanie | OR | Morrow Pacific Coal Export Terminals | Coal | 2012 | Withdrawn after state denied key permit in 2014 |
| Clatskanie | OR | Kinder Morgan Coal Export Terminal | Coal | 2012 | Withdrawn in 2013 after electric utility expressed concern about coal dust |
| Coos Bay | OR | Project Mainstay | Coal | 2011 | Withdrawn in 2013 |
| Coos Bay | OR | Jordan Cove LNG | Liquefied Natural Gas | 2004 | Federal permit rejected in 2016. State water-quality permit, required for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineerspermit, rejected in 2019. The company may appeal or file a new application. |
| Warrenton | OR | Oregon LNG | Liquefied Natural Gas | 2004 | Project began as an import proposal. Withdrawn in 2016 |
| Anacortes | WA | Shell Refinery oil-by-rail | Oil | 2013 | Withdrawn in 2016 |
| Bellingham | WA | Gateway Pacific Terminal | Coal | 2011 | Withdrawn in 2017 afterArmy Corps of Engineers denied permit |
| Bellingham | WA | BP export terminal expansion | Oil | 2000 | BP built an extension of its oil export facilities in 2001, without first undergoing an environmental review. A citizen-filed suit in 2005 forced an Army Corps of Engineers environmental review. The final impact statement is still incomplete. |
| Hoquiam | WA | County International Bulk Export Terminal | Coal | 2015 | Withdrawn in 2016 |
| Longview | WA | Millenium Bulk Terminals | Coal | 2012 | State rejected key permit in 2017, and a federal lawsuit ensued. As of April 2019, a federal judge had dismissed portions of the lawsuit but other aspects remained under consideration. |
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The records raise concerns that law enforcement agencies are preparing to stifle any protests even before they've begun, said Alex Rate, legal director of the ACLU in Montana.
"What we're concerned about is the surveillance and crackdown on peaceful protesters," Rate said. The records suggest law enforcement officers were given anti-terrorism and social media trainings in preparation for anticipated construction of Keystone XL and any related protests. "I think it would come as news to many people that the government is doing this to prepare for environmental protests about legitimate issues," he said.
The group submitted public records requests to six federal offices and agencies in January, but received only a small number of records in response so far. Some agencies have said they have no records matching the request, while others have yet to respond.The Army Corps of Engineers provided some records but withheld others, saying they were exempt from disclosure because they would interfere with a law enforcement proceeding, among other reasons....
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05092018/standing-rock-tribe-dapl-dakota-access-pipeline-oil-spill-risk-report-army-corps
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is defending its claim that the Dakota Access pipeline has no significant environmental impact, but it issued only a brief summary of its court-ordered reassessment while keeping the full analysis confidential.
The delay in releasing the full report, including crucial details about potential oil spills, has incensed the Standing Rock Tribe, whose reservation sits a half-mile downstream from where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River.
The tribe said the Army Corps is stonewalling, and it said it will continue to oppose the pipeline. Meanwhile, oil continues to flow through the pipeline two years after opponents set up a desperate encampment to try to block the project. In June 2017, a federal judge ordered the Corps to reassess the potential environmental harm posed by the pipeline, saying it had failed to "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."
The Corps responded in an Aug. 31 memo saying it sought additional information from Energy Transfer Partners, which owns and operates the Dakota Access pipeline, as well as from Standing Rock and other tribes, but did not find "significant new circumstance[s] or information relevant to environmental concerns."
Tribal leaders blasted the reassessment and could choose to challenge it in court.
"The Army Corps' decision to rubber-stamp its illegal and flawed permit for DAPL will not stand," Mike Faith, Jr., chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe,said in a statement. "A federal judge declared the DAPL permits to be illegal, and ordered the Corps to take a fresh look at the risks of an oil spill and the impacts to the Tribe and its Treaty rights. That is not what the Army Corps did."
The tribe says it hasn't been able to view the Corps' full reassessment. Instead, the Corps released a two-page memo that mentions a larger analysis of potential environmental impacts, but that report is undergoing a confidentiality review prior to release. The Army Corps and the U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to requests for additional information.
"It's dismaying that they are keeping that confidential, because what they released doesn't tell us anything," Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice, an attorney representing the Standing Rock tribe, said. "We all need to see what's in that [report] before any decisions are made."
Memo Fails to Address Oil Spill Risk
A key omission from the Corps' memo was detailed technical information about a worst case scenario spill from the pipeline into the Missouri River and the risks such a spill would pose to members of the Standing Rock reservation, Hasselman said. The reservation is just downstream from where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River, the tribe's water supply. The tribe says it has struggled to get detailed information about potential spills and spill response plans from Energy Transfer Partners.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
If the tribe concludes that the Army Corps' recent reassessment of environmental impacts posed by the pipeline was insufficient, and they decide to challenge the findings in court, there is still a chance they could stop the pipeline, though the odds of such an outcome are slim.
"Once the pipeline is constructed and the oil is flowing, it's very difficult for courts to have the stomach to overturn decisions that resulted in that outcome," said Sarah Krakoff, a professor of Native American law at the University of Colorado Law School. "This administration won't last forever and when there is different direction from above to the Army Corps and other agencies, then maybe the decisions about the pipeline can change."
Tribes Are Challenging Other Pipelines, Too
The recent memo by the Army Corps comes amid recent successes and capitulations by other tribes challenging pipelines elsewhere in North America.
On Aug. 30, First Nations in British Columbia won a lawsuit against the Canadian government and the Trans Mountain Pipeline company that halted the proposed $7.4 billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would ship tar sands crude oil from Alberta to British Columbia. The court determined that the Canadian government's environmental impact and public interest assessment for the project was flawed and failed to consult Indigenous peoples.
On Aug. 31, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota signed an agreement with pipeline company Enbridge and accepted an unspecified sum to allow the company to construct its proposed Line 3 pipeline through the tribe's reservation.
The Band was faced with having the pipeline skirt their reservation or pass directly through it, something Indigenous advocates say was a choice between two evils.
Prior to the agreement, the Band, along with other Minnesota tribes, had challenged a favorable environmental assessment of the pipeline by the state's Public Utilities Commission. The Fond du Lac Band dropped its legal challenge to the environmental assessment as part of the agreement, according to Frank Bibeau, legal counsel for Native environmental advocacy group Honor the Earth.
"You shouldn't have to trade your ecosystem to have quality of life and decent infrastructure, and that is basically what tribes are being forced to do," Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth's Executive Director, said.
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The Standing Rock tribe has filed a lawsuit against the U.S Army Corps of Engineers for using the controversial Nationwide Permit 12 to fast-track authorization of the hotly contested Dakota Access pipeline.
Slated to carry oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from North Dakota's Bakken Shale basin to Patoka, Illinois, the plaintiffs say not only was the Army Corps' permitting of the Energy Transfer Partners and Enbridge Corporation jointly owned pipeline a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Water Act, but also a violation of the National Historic Preservation Act's (NHPA) Section 106.
A review of court documents for the case currently unfolding in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. has revealed that the tribal liaison for Energy Transfer Partners tasked with abiding by Section 106 passed through the revolving door and formerly worked for the Army Corps. The finding also raises key ethical questions in the field of archaeology.
That liaison — Michelle Dippel — technically works for a Dakota Access LLC contractor named HDR, a company which helps pipeline companies and other oil and gas industry infrastructure companies secure permits for their projects. Dippel, the South Central Region Environmental Services Lead for HDR, began her career as a project manager for the Army Corps' Fort Worth District and also formerly worked for the natural gas pipeline company Spectra Energy.
An archaeologist by academic training and a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists, a biographical sketch for Dippel tracked down on the Florida Department of Transportation's website lists her job sub-title as “Project Streamlining” on behalf of the DOT.