Can you say "bad idea?" There are weeks when there seems to be no shortage of them, or of bad ideas parading around as good ideas, or of absolutely go

Can you say "bad idea?" There are weeks when there seems to be no shortage of them, or of bad ideas parading around as good ideas, or of absolutely god-awful heinous ideas shrouding themselves in the sheep's clothing of a good-idea title. We are, unfortunately, certain that the list below only scratches the surface of the bad idea bank account. So, troops, rest up this holiday weekend, because, come Tuesday, there's a LOT of work to be done:

The 400-pound Gorilla: TPP

TPP

Why the hell are they smiling?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a secretive trade agreement and the scariest of scary bad ideas, could put our actual sovereignty at risk. One may feel that industry already runs our government via massive campaign donations, lobbyists and ALEC-written laws; TPP would make it official. TPP would offer corporations global control above sovereign governments.

The trade agreement affects the anti-fracking community directly in that it would undo any protections from local fracking bans or community bills of rights. How can we respond? Please attend the upcoming forum, What You Can Do to Impact the Biggest Trade Deal Ever. The forum will be held Tuesday, May 28th, 6:30- 9pm, at ALL SOULS UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH (enter Reidy Hall via garden at 1157 Lexington Avenue, between 79th and 80th Streets, Manhattan).

Gutted: A Crucial Water Monitoring Program

Water sampling station NYC 2

DNA INfo reports that a citywide program that has for decades monitored drinking water for contaminants, measured storm water runoff, and aquifer levels, has just been defunded.

Reporter Patrick Wall notes that, among other crucial uses, "The National Weather Service consults the system’s real-time water-level gages during storms." Scientists use the date to "track climate change and rising sea levels."

A related article in The Huffington Post notes that "The data collection has been funded and conducted cooperatively by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the USGS for over 30 years. Historically, the DEP [had] covered the majority of the cost of the program. Funds to continue data collection are not available in the USGS budget either, so data collection activities will cease."

We're not quite sure how to get this program refunded. Right now we're just alerting everyone we know, especially legislators we're visiting. We urge you to alert YOUR representative and write to DEP commissioner Carter Strickland.

Not so Fast: Bill Will Expedite Pipeline Approvals

As far as the gas industry is concerned, it's taking too damn long to rape and pillage the earth and steamroll over objecting citizens. Lucky for them, some Congressmen are happy to oblige their pillage. Using the usual canned excuses (it will create jobs and affordable energy), they're out to fast track projects into approval before they're even on the public's radar.

HR1900, The Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act, would require a soup-to-nuts review within one year's time. The bill states, "The Commission shall approve or deny a certificate of public convenience and necessity that is sought under this Act not later than 12 months after providing public notice of the application."

What FERC considers "public notice" is a joke, especially when projects are designed to cross federal, state, municipal or park lands that avoid notification of private landowners. When a pipeline or compressor station hits a community, the learning curve is steep; it can takes months for citizens to figure out the complex FERC system and digest technical documents.

A fast tracked mandate would ensure minimal public awareness.
Make sure your rep hears your objections to this bill ASAP!

HR1587: More Pipes on Federal Land

-Tom Reed

Southern Tier Congressman Tom Reed supports HR1587

HR1587, "The Energy Infrastructure Improvement Act," named––as these Death Star bills usually are––as if it's a good thing, gives the Department of Interior the option to allow gas or oil pipelines through federal lands without an Act of Congress.

Not that Congress seems to have any qualms about doing so, as in the case of the Rockaway Lateral, which Congress approved to cut through Gateway National Park in February.

This legislation, introduced by Tom Marino (R-PA) will make it even easier for pipelines to strangle open spaces. Marino was ironically quoted saying, “No one’s safety should be dependent on the Congress’s expediency––or lack thereof.”

The bill was introduced with three original co-sponsors, including Rep. Tom Reed (NY-23) whose district stretches across the southern tier from the Great Lakes almost to Binghamton and includes the delicate Finger Lakes region.

You know what to do. Here's how to get hold of Reed, and here's where to find your own rep.

Now for something completely different: A Good Bill!

duffernetter

A.M. Rosenthal at the Cooper Union Radon Forum. Copyright Duffernutter.com

Sane Energy Project extends sincere thanks to Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, for her leadership in launching a bill that would protect New Yorkers from potentially dangerous levels of radon in the city's natural gas supplies.

A6863 requires utilities statewide to monitor and mitigate radon before gas is delivered to consumers. (The Senate same-as, S4921, is sponsored by Staten Island rep, Diane Savino.) In video from the recent Cooper Union forum, Lung Cancer & New York City Kitchens, Rosenthal explains the provisions of the bill, and urges citizens to support it. To show there is widespread support for the measure, she says we need to "inundate" electeds with calls to action.

Reporter Eilen Stukane details the background and merits of the bill in The Villager. Stukane reiterates Rosenthal's suggestion that, "If the bill is to be signed into law, New Yorkers who support it, must e-mail, snail mail, text or call their representatives . . . and cite the bill numbers."

So have at it! Find your Assembly rep here, and your State Senator here. Calls are preferred but we can also submit a petition signature for you. SIGN HERE!

And BTW, We think there's a better solution

Chasing down every new outrage is no fun, and we'd sure like to not have to do it. We think that real change is needed; a new system that will empower citizens to make energy choices themselves, at the community level, in a truly democratic way. As Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) has said, "We don't have a fracking problem, we have a democracy problem." For a fast summary of how our system is set up to prevent citizen input, and what a solution might be, we suggest this video of CELDF founder Thomas Linzey.

Sane Energy Project will be working in coming months on an initiative, to be announced soon, that we hope will lead us out of this quagmire of beating back the industry onslaught bill by bill. (Stay tuned.) In the meantime, we are not yet living in a brave new world, so we keep on, visiting electeds, signing petitions, being a nudge, while we work towards a long-term solution.

Question: Will the Moratorium Extend Leases?

When it comes to choosing between defensive measures, a debate between moratorium versus ban has come up again and again. If you polled the people on this mailing list, chances are most of them would say that stopping drilling in New York State by any means possible is a good thing. But if you knew that a moratorium might extend leases and benefit drillers, would you still want one? Upstate activist, Mike Bernhard, makes that argument, urging activists to hold out for a true ban or criminalization. Mike argues that:

New York State, despite the reputation of its ongoing moratorium-by-executive-action, has been very friendly to the efforts by gas companies to cheaply retain their leasehold, despite economic conditions that might cause them to be abandoned.

• The state has accepted applications to drill that extend leases.
• The state has not challenged the assertion of force majeure by gas companies.
• A moratorium will likely serve to extend again the leasehold that the gas industry needs to wait out the current condition of low prices and a lack of export facilities.
• Only a statewide ban on / criminalization of fracking will definitively end fracking in New York.

In this view, a moratorium allows drillers to extend cheap leases and build out infrastructure here, while they concentrate drilling equipment in Pennsylvania, a sequence of obvious economic benefit to them. If residents of the Southern Tier, the area of the state most under threat by fracking, are worried about a moratorium, that's a powerful consideration for the rest of us.

Agree/Disagree? Want to learn more? Email Mike directly at: mikebernhard@frontiernet.net.

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