From Stark
Coal-Free Bellingham has issued a press release reacting to the Court of Appeals decision that keeps their anti-coal-transport initiative off the ballot in November.
Here is the press release:
Yesterday, the Court of Appeals in Seattle announced that Coal-Free-Bellingham’s appeal would be denied. Coal-Free-Bellingham had asked for a stay of the Whatcom Superior Court order of August 3 which ordered the Bellingham Community Bill of Rights off the ballot. As a result of the denial of the appeal, the voters will not be allowed to express their views on the Bill of Rights in November.
“This decision is a loss to the community and to the world,” said Rick Dubrow, co-chair of the campaign committee for the Bill of Rights. “In our present circumstances, the only way for society to protect the natural ecosystems on which our lives depend is for each community to take on that responsibility. The federal and state governments are not doing the job that we need. “
“It is also a direct attack on the initiative process,” said David Maas, a member of the campaign Steering Committee. “By circumscribing yet again what the voters are allowed to vote on, the courts are attacking one of the fundamentals of our democracy and are working to prevent the structural changes that we will need for survival. This decision confirms the system’s calcification.”
Far from giving up, the NO COAL! group and its sister organization Living Democracy will be holding a retreat in the coming weeks to determine its next steps. It has taken on larger office space and is keeping staff in place.
“The threat of the coal trains is just one example of innumerable unsustainable practices encouraged by the current system,” said Stoney Bird, committee co-chair. “As responsible members of the community, we cannot sit by just because the inertia of the system mandates these harms. When the legal system mandates harm, it’s time to change the legal system.”
“The Court of Appeals did not elaborate, but seems to have adopted a new approach in Washington. The new approach prevents citizens from voting on initiatives when the initiatives challenge existing laws that are inadequate to protect the health and safety of community members,” said Breean Beggs, attorney for the NO COAL! group.
Under current legal concepts, the railroad company and other corporate participants in the coal project are not responsible for the harm that they cause to ecosystems or people in Bellingham or elsewhere.
Passing the Bellingham Community Bill of Rights in November would have recognized fundamental rights to clean air and water and to local self-government. It would also have recognized the rights of local ecosystems to flourish, and would have prohibited corporations from transporting coal within the City of Bellingham, among other provisions.
End press release
Two comments:
1. Attorney Beggs suggests that this case reflects a “new approach” in keeping people from voting on initiatives. But qualified initiatives have been kept off the Bellingham ballot on at least three previous occasions that I can recall. One of those cases involved an initiative backed by developers and commercial property owners who had hoped to overturn new city stormwater fees put in place to help reduce the impact of development on water quality.
2. ”Under current legal concepts, the railroad company and other corporate participants in the coal project are not responsible for the harm that they cause to ecosystems or people in Bellingham or elsewhere,” the press release says. While current law may not provide all the environmental protection that some people would like to see, it seems a bit of an exaggeration to say that corporations are “not responsible for the harm they cause.”
As you say, John, NEPA, SEPA, the Coastal Zone Management Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Shoreline Management Act, etc., may not be strong enough, but the goal is to fight and make them work for us, see that they are fully applied, the EIS addresses all issues and the public trust doctrine is alive and well. Scoping and commenting exist to be more than mere pretexts, and the Corps has lost 2 cases in the 9th Cir. in recent years in closely related cases: failure to conduct an EIS under NEPA for the BP pier expansion in 2000, and conducting EIS’s in a “piecemeal” process in the Tongue River case involving BNSF rail expansions in the PRB.
The preliminary Vessel Traffic Study recently completed in the Ocean Advocates v. USACE case re the BP pier expansion is devastating, and all these pieces are related to the proposed coal terminal at GPT (Protect Whatcom has argued to co-leads on the EIS the GPT and BNSF applications are incomplete for failure to discuss rail beyond the Custer Spur, and dubbed that “Tongue River IV”).
Stopping a coal terminal is complex and complicated, but not over by any means. We haven’t really started yet.
Whoa is our flora and fauna without their bill of rights, how will they ever survive, don’t ya know!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
See
–http://www.ecy.wa.gov/geographic/gatewaypacific/20120709_BNSFletter.pdf (WA ECOL letter to BNSF saying just because BNSF thinks only NEPA applies, WA begs to differ and SEPA also applies to rail improvements at the Custer Spur
–http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/plan/current/gpt-ssa/pdf/20120515-safeguard-southfork.pdf (Safeguard the South Fork’s letter about BNSF’s permit application’s failure to address impacts beyond the Custer Spur)
At least Rick’s correct, in
“The federal and state governments are not doing the job that we need. “
Cash for Klunkers, and local lawyers too. I suppose ecosystem damage, from one of the largest corporate law firm’s in the world, didn’t happen either?
Your Liberal Local Favorite Justice…4+4=8? Souter say Ricks a liar?
As Hazelwood left, he instructed the remaining officer, third mate Joseph Cousins, to move the tanker back into the shipping lane once it came abeam of Busby Light. Cousins, unlicensed to navigate in those waters, was left alone with helmsman Robert Kagan, a nonofficer. For reasons that remain a mystery, they failed to make the turn at Busby Light, and a later emergency maneuver attempted by Cousins came too late. The tanker ran aground on Bligh Reef, tearing the hull open and spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound.
After Hazelwood returned to the bridge and reported the grounding to the Coast Guard, he tried but failed to rock the Valdez off the reef, a maneuver which could have spilled more oil and caused the ship to founder.1 The Coast Guard’s nearly immediate response included a blood test of Hazelwood (the validity of which Exxon disputes) showing a blood-alcohol level of .061 eleven hours after the spill. Supp. App. 307sa. Experts testified that to have this much alcohol in his bloodstream so long after the accident, Hazelwood at the time of the spill must have had a blood-alcohol level of around .241, Order 265, p. 5, supra, at 256a, three times the legal limit for driving in most States.
In the aftermath of the disaster, Exxon spent around $2.1 billion in cleanup efforts. The United States charged the company with criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, 33 U. S. C. §§1311(a) and 1319(c)(1); the Refuse Act of 1899, 33 U. S. C. §§407 and 411; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, 16 U. S. C. §§703 and 707(a); the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, 33 U. S. C. §1232(b)(1); and the Dangerous Cargo Act, 46 U. S. C. §3718(b). Exxon pleaded guilty to violations of the Clean Water Act, the Refuse Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and agreed to pay a $150 million fine, later reduced to $25 million plus restitution of $100 million. A civil action by the United States and the State of Alaska for environmental harms ended with a consent decree for Exxon to pay at least $900 million toward restoring natural resources, and it paid another $303 million in voluntary settlements with fishermen, property owners, and other private parties.
Yes, LB, and that means we have to vote. Vote, vote, vote! It was conservative appointees to the S.Ct. who reduced the awards to the AK fishermen, et al., so who we vote for does matter. The makeup of the S.Ct. sucks, but this is not the first time in our history that has been true, nor the first time we’ve waited to get the right court to make the right rulings (think Brown v. Bd. of Ed.).
Neither muddying the waters nor checking out is the answer, though the right loves to use the former as a strategy to convince the left that’s what we should do. And it’s been pretty darned successful for them.
I’m tired of it. Here, locally, there’s a lot we can do that has nothing to do with the Exxon Valdez or the recent court of appeals ruling. This is not a fait accompli.
Unfortunately, CFB has practiced the ‘FIRE, READY, AIM’ approach so far. They have essentially good intentions, but need now to determine who are their enemies so that inherent potential allies may be attracted.
Decisions on GPT will impact us all in ways that have only begun to be determined.
Now the clear task is ask the questions which need to be answered, then get the answers.
Public awareness certainly helps, but only if the message being conveyed is unity of effort.
It’s time certain CFB leaders understand that and modify their behavior and rhetoric accordingly. A circular firing squad doesn’t ensure the sort of justice we all expect or deserve.
Good luck on that one JW!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Vote, Vote, Vote…TW?
Actually any “Bill of Right’s” normally is used to overule any vote…that why it’s called a Bill of Right’s…by example in this Nation…the Constitution grant’s the Power, (1789), the Bill of Right’s Limits the same,(1791).
Here in Washington…Article 1, Section 1, discusses the “RIGHT” of the “INDIVIDUAL.”
Let us begin, about 2000 years ago, vote, vote, vote?
Living Democracy? What a concept!
John 19:19 And Pilate wrote a title…19:21 Then said the Chief Priests…write not King of the Jews, but that he said , I am King of the Jews…
about 1000 years later….vote, vote, vote….
John, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland…after the great Canturybury Cathedral escapade of Democracy,
when all the King’s Horses and all the Kings men…coulden’t put John back togather again….
John Roberts…explaining the 1st, over, and over, and over againm
Hoseanna Tabor v. EEOC VOTWE, VOTE, VOTE? 0-9 it’s too simple!
A Controversy between church and state over religious offices is hardly new. In 1215, the issue was addressed in the very first clause of Magna Carta. There, King John agreed that “the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.”
Cite as: 565 U. S. ____ (2012) 7
Opinion of the Court
The King in particular accepted the “freedom of elections,”a right “thought to be of the greatest necessity and importance to the English church.” J. Holt, Magna Carta App. IV, p. 317, cl. 1 (1965).
Vote, Vote, Vote, 0, 0, 0?
I’m Jewish. Local elections matter because who’s sitting on the county council matters. Likewise, national elections matter becuase who’s sitting on the Supreme Court matters. What’s your point?
LB, you’re beyond creeping me out.
Loving the article and more importantly, Pilates. It sometimes feels Can not have enough of it!
Thanks for the tip, Terry, on the vessel traffic study. I found a link for it on the Coal Train Facts site. The downloadable pdf is entitled, “Assessment of Oil Spill Risk due to Potential Increased Vessel Traffic at Cherry Point, Washington.” I will read this in preparation for scoping (the public comment period) for the Environmental Impact Statement.
Since the EIS is being shaped by the ethics-washed company, CH2M Hill, I do not have much hope of its being more than a “mitigations –loaded green light for Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffett – public enemies that should be behind bars.
Citizen initiatives like Coal-Free Bellingham are the only way to reign in the psychopathic global corporatocracy driving destructive projects like Gateway Pacific Terminal. When such initiatives will succeed we do not know. The public is too fast asleep to protect itself from the planet’s destruction.
Yea we need another vessel traffic study, just like the county’s sinking ship of state, and their roundabout’s too.
The municipal corporatcracy…oh yes explain it to us Insight?
Like Chief Justice Wait another minute why we study it again…Thus, as to ferries, Lord Hale says, in his treatise De Jure Maris, 1 Harg.Law Tracts, 6, the king has
a right of franchise or privilege, that no man may set up a common ferry for all passengers without a prescription time out of mind, or a charter from the king. He may make a ferry for his own use or the use of his family, but not for the common use of all the king’s subjects passing that way, because it doth in consequence tend to a common charge, and is become a thing if public interest and use, and every man for his passage pays a toll, which is a common charge, and every ferry ought to be under a public regulation, viz., that it give attendance at due times, keep a boat in due order, and take but reasonable toll; for if he fail in these, he is finable.
So if one owns the soil and landing-places on both banks of a stream, he cannot use them for the purposes of a public ferry except upon such terms and conditions as the body politic may from time to time impose, and this because the common good requires that all public ways shall be under the control of the public authorities. This privilege or prerogative of the king, who in this connection only represents and gives another name to the body politic, is not primarily for his profit, but for the protection of the people and the promotion of the general welfare. [p127]
And, again, as to wharves and wharfingers, Lord Hale, in his treatise De Portibus Maris, already cited, says:
A man, for his own private advantage, may, in a port or town, set up a wharf or crane, and may take what rates he and his customers can agree for cranage, wharfage, housellage, pesage; for he doth no more than is lawful for any man to do, viz., makes the most of his own. . . . If the king or subject have a public wharf, unto which all persons that come to that port must come and unlade or lade their goods as for the purpose, because they are the wharfs only licensed by the queen, . . . or because there is no other wharf in that port, as it may fall out where a port is newly erected, in that case, there cannot be taken arbitrary and excessive duties for cranage, wharfage, pesage, &c., neither can they be enhanced to an immoderate rate, but the duties must be reasonable and moderate, though settled by the king’s license or charter. For now the wharf and crane and other conveniences are affected with a public interest, and they cease to be juris privati only, as if a man set out a street in new building on his own land, it is now no longer bare private interest, but is affected by a public interest.