St Louis Based-Arch Coal agrees to pay $2M to settle pollution lawsuit

2010 lawsuit that environmental groups filed over selenium pollution

By AP reposted from: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/arch-coal-agrees-pay-2m-settle-pollution-lawsuit

 

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(via Arch Coal)

St. Louis-based Arch Coal, Inc. will pay $2 million to settle a 2010 lawsuit that environmental groups filed over selenium pollution from six West Virginia coal mines.

The coalition announced the agreement Monday, saying it holds Arch responsible for damage and requires the St. Louis-based company to fix it.

Arch didn't immediately comment. The case involves subsidiaries Coal-Mac Inc. and Mingo Logan Coal Co.

The consent order in U.S. District Court requires Arch to pay $1.8 million within 30 days to the West Virginia University College of Law for its Land Use and Sustainability Clinic. The other $200,000 goes to the federal government.

Arch also agrees to begin installing equipment to reduce selenium discharges and monitor treatment at its mines in the future. Any future violations could cost the company $25,000 apiece.

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Canadian Tar Sand Pipeline Political Corruption

Keystone Pipeline Lobbyist Had Cozy Relationship With State Department Staffers, New Emails Show

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal continued their assault Monday on what they consider a corrupt federal approval process for the project, releasing dozens of new email messages between State Department employees and a lobbyist for the company behind the pipeline, TransCanada.

The emails, part of a growing cache obtained by the environmental group Friends of the Earth, focus on the interaction between TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliott, a former deputy campaign director for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid, and representatives of the State Department, which is currently weighing approval of the Keystone XL project.

While no emails between Clinton and Elliott have been released, the newest messages reveal a cozy and solicitous relationship between Elliott and State Department staff -- particularly one member of the senior diplomatic staff at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Marja Verloop.

"The emails between Verloop and Elliott are extremely friendly and illustrative of a cozy and complicitous relationship," Friends of the Earth said in a memo released Monday morning. "They are filled with emoticons and contain an invitation to visit Ottawa's 'winter wonderland,' acknowledgment that Elliott obtained his job as a lobbyist 'precisely' because of his connections, and an offer by Verloop to hand-deliver an invitation to Elliott. The emails also indicate that Elliott succeeded in securing multiple meetings between TransCanada and high-level officials at the State Department."

In one particular exchange from September of last year, Verloop is seen cheering for Elliott after he secured support for the pipeline from Democratic Montana Senator Max Baucus. "Go Paul!" Verloop writes. "Baucus support holds clout."

A previous cache of emails concerned interaction between Nora Toiv, a special assistant to Secretary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. Friends of the Earth suggested those emails provided "evidence of agency bias" and showed that "the State Department was doing favors for TransCanada during the Keystone XL review."

Last week, Friends of the Earth called on the Justice Department to open an investigation into Elliott for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires that "persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities."

State Department officials have previously argued that the email exchanges only demonstrate that Elliott -- an aggressive lobbyist by any light -- was nonetheless unable to gain audience with key agency decision makers, and was instead routed to lower-level staff with no influence over the permit application.

Friends of the Earth argued in a letter to DOJthat Elliott failed to register.

The $7 billion, 1,700-mile proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry crude oil from Alberta across the border with Canada in Montana and traverse five other states before reaching refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Because the project would cross an international border, a permit is required from the State Department.

Intense opposition to the pipeline project by a variety of environmental groups and, increasingly,citizens in states where the pipeline would run, have delayed the issuance of a permit for years, but the State Department is expected to render a decision on the project before the end of this year.

Friends of the Earth, along with the Center for International Environmental Law and Corporate Ethics International, sued Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last May after repeated attempts to obtain correspondence between Elliott and the agency through the Freedom of Information Act were rebuffed.

In late August, however, the State Department began to comply with the request, delivering 34 pages of emails. Friends of the Earth says more documents are expected.

reposted from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

#FeelTheBern

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Time to Face the Facts Regarding Climate Change - Opinion - St. Norbert Times

Time to Face the Facts Regarding Climate Change -

Basic research regarding the Earth's average temperature tells us so. Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history, and the vast majority of experts in the field of climate change agree that human action is the primary cause of the increasing temperatures.

But despite the facts, certain political leaders in America refuse to accept the truth. Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry, a skeptic regarding climate change, recently said, "I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling in to their projects" at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

This tactic used by Perry as a way of explaining scientific data has apparently taken its toll on the American public. In a recent poll conducted by Gallup, it was found that 48 percent of Americans now believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated, up from 41 percent in 2009 and 31percent in 1997.

The fact that climate change is widely unacknowledged and understated by the American public frustrates me. In a world where information is at our fingertips and solid facts are so readily available, how can one refuse to accept such proven and important data? The answer is that the American public will not accept such an inconvenient truth as climate change until our leaders in this country accept it.

If the United States is truly the world leader it claims to be, then it's about time that its leaders act the part and take a real stand on climate change. After all, it's mostly our problem to begin with, and therefore our responsibility. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans make up just four percent of the world's population, but produce 25 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution from fossil-fuel burning—which is more than China, India and Japan, combined.

Within the problem that climate change poses, there is also opportunity. The United States is the most technologically advanced nation in the world, and has the means to find alternative energy solutions. By using legislation to curb green-house gasses, our nation's leaders can create a demand for clean energy, generating manufacturing jobs in the process. In addition, by producing our own clean energy within our borders, we can reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

The time to act is now. If we ignore the facts any longer, we put our country and our environment at risk of dire consequences. We also risk missing out on the promising future that clean energy can bring. Americans need to come to terms with the fact that climate change is real, and that it's here to stay, unless some significant changes are made regarding how we power the country.

How can we expect the general public to buy into a solution if the political leaders do not believe in the facts of global warming? America's resolution starts with acknowledging the problem as a nation. That means cutting all of the political rhetoric that surrounds the issue of climate change, so that we can take real, momentous steps toward solving the problem.