Pennsylvania Town Fights Big Coal on Mining Rights

by John Hurdle. Published by Reuters June 15.
A small Pennsylvania town is trying to ban coal mining in a battle being played out across the state as rural communities try to assert control over mining, gas drilling and other businesses.

Blaine Township, a community of 600 about 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, hopes to trigger a legal battle that could determine the rights of municipalities throughout the United States to control corporate activity.

Some legal experts say the township is highly unlikely to win that fight. For now the dispute is in federal district court, where major energy companies have sued the township over three ordinances that would ban coal mining and require companies in any business to disclose their activities to local officials.

Penn Ridge Coal LLC, a unit of Alliance Resource Partners, and Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co., a unit of Allegheny Energy, say Blaine's laws violate their corporate rights.

The companies say the ordinances would prevent them from mining 10.6 million tons of recoverable coal beneath the township -- enough to supply electricity for 2 million people for a year.

The township has gone further than any of the 120 U.S. municipalities -- most of them in Pennsylvania -- that have passed ordinances to curb corporate activity such as factory farming or spreading sewage sludge, said its lawyer, Tom Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

Of three townships sued by corporations over their ordinances, only Blaine has refused to back down, Linzey said.

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, towns are resisting efforts by energy companies to extract natural gas from the massive Marcellus Shale formation amid fears that toxic chemicals used in drilling are contaminating ground water and endangering human health.

Creeks Diverted
In Blaine, residents are seeking to prevent coal mining -- which they expect to begin there in 2011 -- because they fear it will ruin their houses and disrupt water supplies, as they say it has in surrounding areas.

They want to block longwall mining, a technique that rips tons of coal from underground without putting anything in its place, causing the land above to sag. The practice, which has been used in coal-rich southwest Pennsylvania since the 1970s, has cracked the walls, roofs and basements of homes and opened fissures in the land, diverting or draining creeks and ponds.

In neighboring Morris Township, Tammy Bowman pointed to a pile of broken wood and concrete -- all that's left of an outbuilding she said was destroyed by shifting ground from mining beneath her 19th century farmhouse.

"It just started to drop and drop," she said. "It got so bad, you couldn't even walk in the door."

One section of her house is held up with mechanical jacks.

Near the village of Graysville, the 62-acre (25-hectare) Duke Lake, once used for fishing and boating, now sits empty after the shifting ground opened a crack in its retaining wall, environmentalists say.

Blaine's three ordinances, passed in 2006, 2007 and 2008, also assert that communities have a right under the U.S. Constitution to control business within their boundaries and that corporations do not have constitutional rights as "persons" to sue municipalities for passing laws that would hurt corporate interests.

"This illegitimate bestowal of civil and political rights upon corporations prevents the administration of laws within Blaine Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights guaranteed to the people of Blaine Township," says the township's Corporate Rights Ordinance of 2006.

To implement the ordinances, township supervisors are now campaigning for "home rule," a legal code that transfers some powers from state to local control and is commonly used to raise taxes or increase the number of supervisors on a board.

Establishing Home Rule
Blaine supervisors want to use home rule to establish what they say is the township's constitutional right to control corporate activity. Voters on May 19 approved a plan to set up a commission to study the proposal and recommend whether to adopt it.

A third lawsuit has been brought by Range Resources, a natural gas company, asking the court to invalidate Blaine's demand that corporations disclose their activities.

Penn Ridge Coal and Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal are asking U.S. Judge Donetta Ambrose of the Western District of Pennsylvania to declare Blaine's ordinances invalid and unenforceable.

In April, Judge Ambrose denied the township's motion to dismiss the case. She is expected to rule late this year.

Linzey predicted the case will eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court because it pits energy companies who want to exploit one of America's richest coal seams against residents who are determined to resist what they see as rapacious mining.

He conceded the court is unlikely to overturn more than 100 years of established law that gives corporations rights as "persons" under the constitution, but he said the expected outcome would become a springboard for a popular campaign for a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of those rights.

Blaine's supervisors said they want to establish a principle of local self-government that will inspire other communities.

"Who dictates how we are going to live here?" asked Board spokesman Michael Vacca. "Should it not be us?"

(Editing by Daniel Trotta and Cynthia Osterman)© 2009 Reuters

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Newfield, Maine, joins neighbor Shapleigh in banning large scale water extraction

Video from Portland's WCSH-6 news is available here.

NEWFIELD (NEWS CENTER) -- The town of Newfield is now the second in Maine to ban large-scale water extraction.

Saturday's vote was 228 in favor of the new ordinance and 146 against. The vote is a reaction to interest from Poland Spring Water and its parent company, Nestle, in pumping water from an aquifer shared by Newfield and Shapleigh.

Shapleigh voted for the same ban on water extraction two weeks ago. However, there is some concern that that ordinance could be overturned in court. As a result, townspeople voted on a different ordinance at town meeting Saturday that would lay out what a water company would have to do to be able to extract water from the aquifer.

That ordinance, which environmentalists felt was too weak, passed by a single vote.

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Maine Town Takes a Stand: Closes Tap on Water Privatization

Residents say no to Nestlé's plan to pump local water, and to their Board of Selectmen's attempt to regulate water takings

By Edward D. Murphy. Published March 1 by the Maine Sunday Telegram; reposted on CommonDreams.org

Shapleigh residents have banned companies from drawing or selling its water.

During a special town meeting Saturday morning, residents voted 114 to 66 to adopt the ban drafted by Protecting Our Water and Wildlife Resources, which had opposed Poland Spring's efforts to test, draw, bottle and market the town's water.

The ban had been opposed by the town's Board of Selectmen, which had favored instead a set of regulations on drawing water in the town that will be on the warrant for the regular town meeting on March 14.

"The problem in Shapleigh is that all three selectpeople want Nestlé (Poland Spring's parent company) in here," said Shelly Gobeille, one of the leaders of POWWR. "This vote says they can't come in."

In September, residents adopted a six-month moratorium on water testing, which was seen as a precursor to Poland Spring's plans to set up a pumping operation. The town's planning board used the time to work on rules and regulations for drawing the town's water, but POWWR wanted to ban all major water extraction operations.

When the Board of Selectmen refused to put POWWR's proposed ban on extraction on the town meeting warrant - arguing that two legal opinions said it was unconstitutional - proponents circulated a petition that led to the special town meeting.

Gobeille said POWWR is now concerned that the selectmen could seek to derail the ban, but Bill Hayes, one of the three selectmen, said he's inclined to let the ban go into force without the selectmen getting involved. However, he said, others could challenge its legality.

"The townspeople voted to enact it," Hayes said. "If they want to incur the legal expenses of defending it if it's challenged, that's up to them."

Hayes said that if Poland Spring wants to draw the town's water, it would be better to regulate the company's operations and make sure the town benefits financially. He said talks with the water bottler never got to the point where a dollar figure was discussed, but the amount the town would earn "would have been significant. This would have been an opportunity to defer" some property taxes.

Mark Dubois, natural resource manager for Poland Spring, said he was disappointed by the vote at the special town meeting.

"It's kind of disconcerting as a company with 400 jobs right now in York County," he said. "It's our home, too, and we're very discouraged we can't have a basic discussion about what we do and do well."

Dubois said the company draws water from nine sites in the state now and has sufficient supplies of water for its current needs. He said the company would have been looking to draw water from Shapleigh in 2011 or 2012, but noted that it takes a long time to gain the state and local permits that are needed.

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Ted Nace: The demise of California's Measure T is bad news for the environment

Humboldt County's groundbreaking restrictions on out-of-county corporate campaign contributions to local elections, has been declared "null and void" through an agreement with the County Board of Supervisors and Pacific Legal Foundation, a pro-business legal group. We've posted a press release on the defeat, by Measure T sponsors Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, on our e-news blog here. Ted Nace wrote the following, which was posted to Grist on November 13.

"Market failure" is one cause of environmental problems, but "democracy failure" is even worse.

Russia and China aren't the only examples. It also happens closer to home, as illustrated by last week's decision by California's Humboldt County to abandon Measure T, a local law banning non-local corporate money from local elections.

For years Humboldt County, like many rural counties in lumber or mining areas, was dominated by a single corporation -- Pacific Lumber, a subsidiary of Texas-based Maxxam, Inc.

For local voters, the last straw came when Maxxam spent several hundred thousand dollars on a recall initiative against District Attorney Paul Gallegos after Gallegos prosecuted Maxxam for fraudulent timber harvest filings. In 2006, after Gallegos survived the recall, the grassroots campaign that had organized to support him pushed through Measure T on a 55-to-45 percent vote.

The drafters of Measure T were aware of the U.S. Supreme Court's Bellotti decision (1979), which established the precedent that corporations could enjoy First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. In Bellotti, the Court invalidated a Massachusetts statute similar to Measure T that prohibited corporate spending on referendums. But the author of the Bellotti decision, Justice Lewis Powell, suggested that in situations where the "relative voice of corporations has been overwhelming" or where corporate influence has threatened "the confidence of the people in the democratic process and the integrity of government," limits on corporate political money would be acceptable.

Both exceptions seemed to fit the situation in Humboldt. For example, in 2004, research conducted by Humboldt State University indicated that four out of five local voters felt that heavy corporate contributions made political corruption more likely.

Not only was Measure T popular with local voters, it was seen as a template for anti-corporate activists across the country. That makes all the more stunning last week's capitulation by the Humboldt County board of supervisors in response to pressure by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a right-wing think tank. In a settlement signed on November 7 [PDF], the supervisors not only declared the ordinance null and void, but also promised to pay the Pacific Legal Foundation $44,000 within 60 days.

Why did Humboldt County cave on a matter that had passed by such a large majority and that had been crafted to meet the requirements of Supreme Court precedent? The probable answer is that the county simply couldn't afford the fight. In September, Federal District Court Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, had granted PLF's request for an injunction [PDF] against Measure T, agreeing that the measure was "underinclusive" (because it targeted only non-local corporations) and that it should have made an exception for ballot initiatives (ignoring Powell's statements in Bellotti). Faced with the likelihood of spending large legal fees on a case where the judge appeared to have made up her mind, the County decided to bow out of the fight.

What's sad about the demise of Measure T is that the principle that corporations don't belong in politics was actually a mainstream feature of American law for the first 200 years of the country's history. As late as 1970, for example, the state of Wisconsin had a statute that stated, "No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office" (Wis. Laws, Lection 4479a (Sec. I, ch 492, 1905).

It is only since the late 1970s that Supreme Court decisions have established new corporate First Amendment rights, extending the Fourteenth Amendment rights won by corporate attorneys in the 1880s. This sort of corporate hegemony is bad for public morale, bad for democracy, and ultimately bad for the environment.

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The Earth Charter: A Declaration of Interdependence

As you read this article by Robert Dodge, and the BBC article below on the economic value of ecosystems, please also check out the Alliance's Tapestry of the Commons Project. This interactive workshop can be adapted to all ages and degrees of familiarity with environmental and social justice issues. It's a great way to start the "commons conversation" where you live. Download our 2-minute audio thoughts on the commons, too.)

This article was posted at Commondreams.org on Friday, October 10

Communities around the world will come together this Saturday to celebrate this year's Earth Charter International Summit. Global climate change is the theme of this year's Earth Charter International Summit, in keeping with the United Nations designation of 2008 as the International Year of Planet Earth.

The Earth Charter - a declaration of interdependence - articulates the shared responsibility we have to one another and to the planet itself. It is an expression of hope and a call to help create a global partnership at a critical juncture in history.

Created by the largest global collaborative process ever associated with an international declaration, the Earth Charter was drafted over a 10-year period by thousands from 77 countries.

It was launched at The Hague Peace Palace in 2000. It was subsequently endorsed by thousands of organizations representing millions of individuals worldwide. Ventura County, California is the first U.S. county to have endorsed the charter.

• The principle areas of the Earth Charter include:
• Respect and care for the community of life
• Ecological integrity
• Social and economic justice
• Democracy, nonviolence and peace
  

Summits from Tampa, Florida to Ventura, California to Ghana, Africa and Barcelona, Spain will join others in presenting and honoring individuals whose efforts best exemplify these principles and their connection.

This years partial list of speakers and honorees include:

Alexander Likhotal, President & CEO of Green Cross International and Advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, and Earth Charter Commissioner at the Tampa, FL Summit,

Dr. Gary Yohe, 2007 co-recipient of Nobel Peace Prize (with Al gore) for his work with the International Panel on Climate Change, at the East Haddem, CT Summit,

James Hansen, NASA scientist and professor at Columbia University who revealed in 2007 that the White House edited climate-related press releases to make global warming seem less threatening, at the New York, NY Summit,

Majora Carter, MacArthur-winning activist for "greening the ghetto" and urban renewal, advocate for national "green jobs" agenda, and co-host of the Green on Sundance Channel at the Washington D.C. Summit,

Puri Canals, Vice-president of IUCN as well as the chairperson for the World Conservation Congress and will be speaking on Role of Women & The Environment from the ICUN conference in Barcelona.

Jackson Browne, musician and activist, for his work throughout his career on behalf of the planet, lending his support, voice and talents raising awareness to the perils of nuclear power, peace and the environment at the Ventura, CA Summit where eight other local heros will be recognized for their courage and work.

These remarkable individuals and the incredible work they do have made the connection and are making a difference. The world is indeed better for their efforts.

Each of us might ask ourselves: What will be our commitment in realizing this opportunity?

Participants at this year's summit will be encouraged to make a commitment to an ongoing action in the year ahead to reduce their environmental impact and help sustain the planet.

The Earth Charter concludes with a challenge called "The Way Forward": "Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life."

We invite you to join us in this effort.

For more information on the Earth Charter Community Summits in your community, or the Earth Charter itself, contact: www.earthcharterus.org or www.earthcharter.org.

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Ecuador voters approve rights of nature

On September 28, Ecuadorian voters approved a new constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable ecosystem rights, or Rights of Nature.

The Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly developed the new constitutional provisions with the assistance of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which is pioneering similar work in the US by helping more than a dozen local municipalities in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Virginia with drafting and adopting similar laws.

"Ecuador is now the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights," stated Thomas Linzey, CELDF's Executive Director.

Article 1 of the new "Rights for Nature" chapter of the Ecuador constitution reads: "Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies."

The Ecuadoran declaration is a departure from settled U.S. law, in that all of the major environmental laws in the U.S. - including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and similar state laws - treat nature as property, with no rights in and of itself. These laws legalize environmental harms by regulating how much pollution or destruction of nature can occur. Rather than preventing pollution and environmental destruction, these laws instead codify it.

The Rights of Natures laws developed by the Legal Defense Fund for local municipalities in the U.S. represent changes to the status of property law, eliminating the authority of a property owner to interfere with the functioning of ecosystems that exist and depend upon that property for their existence and flourishing. These local laws allow certain types of development that do not interfere with the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish.

These local laws - and now Ecuador's constitution - recognize that ecosystems possess the inalienable and fundamental right to exist and flourish, and that people possess the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf of ecosystems. In addition, these laws require the governments to remedy violations of those ecosystem rights.

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Ecuadorian Assembly approves constitutional rights for nature

Published on July 10 at climateandcapitalism.com

On July 7, the 130-member Ecuador Constitutional Assembly, elected countrywide to rewrite the country’s Constitution, voted to approve articles that recognize rights for nature and ecosystems.

“If adopted in the final constitution by the people, Ecuador would become the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights,” says Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

The following clauses will be included in the constitution that will be submitted to a countrywide vote, to be held 45 days after Assembly finishes its work later this month.

Chapter: Rights for Nature

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.

In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.

Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.

The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.

“Public organisms” in Article 1 means the courts and government agencies, i.e., the people of Ecuador would be able to take action to enforce nature rights if the government did not do so.

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Rights of Nature Model Ordinance

http://www.celdf.org/Ordinances/RightsofNatureOrdinance/tabid/133/Default.aspx
				Rights of Nature
			An Ordinance by the Second Class Township of ________, _________ County, Pennsylvania, Acknowledging the Rights of Natural Communities and Ecosystems and Establishing a System of Enforcing and Protecting Those Rights Against Corporations and Other Business Entities Section 1. Name. The name of this Ordinance shall be “The Rights of Nature Ordinance.” Section 2. Authority. This Ordinance is adopted and enacted pursuant to the authority granted to _______ Township by all relevant state and federal Constitutions and laws, including, but not limited to, the following: The founding documents of the United States, which recognize that governments are created to secure and protect inalienable and fundamental rights; The Constitution of the United States, Article IV, §4, which requires the United States to guarantee a Republican Form of Government; The Constitution of Pennsylvania, Art. 1, § 2, which provides that all power is inherent in the people, and that all free governments are founded on the peoples’ authority and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; The Constitution of Pennsylvania, Art. 1, §27, which recognizes that Pennsylvanians are trustees of the natural world; The general authority granted by the Constitution of Pennsylvania and the Second Class Township Code to make and adopt all such ordinances, bylaws, rules, and regulations as may be deemed expedient or necessary for the proper management, care, and control of _________ Township and its finances and the maintenance of the health, safety, peace, good government, and welfare of ________Township; Pennsylvania Statutes, Tit. 53, Municipal and Quasi-Municipal Corporations, §66506, which authorizes _____________ Township to enact ordinances necessary for the proper management, care, and control of the Township and its finances and the maintenance of peace, good government, health, and welfare of the Township. Section 3. Findings and General Purpose. The ________ Township Board of Supervisors recognizes that: (1) Governments are created to secure and protect inalienable and fundamental rights; (2) People and their communities are trustees of nature, and communities of nature and ecosystems form part of the natural trust; (3) It is well-settled law that trustees are required to protect and preserve the trust, (4) As trustees, people and communities are obligated to protect and preserve natural communities and ecosystems; (5) Natural communities and ecosystems are currently being destroyed, degraded, and weakened by corporations and other business entities; (6) Governments empower those corporations and other business entities through the bestowal of constitutional “rights” and powers upon them; (7) The environmental regulatory system merely regulates how quickly natural communities and ecosystems will be destroyed and degraded; (8) The environmental regulatory system has failed to protect and preserve natural communities and ecosystems because regulations focus solely on minimizing the adverse environmental impacts resulting from certain activities, (9) The environmental regulatory system fails to protect and preserve natural communities and ecosystems because it treats those communities and systems as property; (10) Creation and validation of the environmental regulatory system thus fails to satisfy the duties of humans and communities to be trustees of natural communities and ecosystems; (11) Recognition by humans and communities that natural communities and ecosystems have fundamental and inalienable rights is necessary to satisfy the obligation and duty of people and communities as trustees; (12) Creating a process for the legal enforcement of those fundamental and inalienable rights by people and communities is necessary to fulfill peoples’ role as trustees for natural communities and ecosystems. Section 4. Specific Purpose. The specific purpose of this Ordinance is to acknowledge the inalienable, fundamental rights of nature, and establish an enforcement system whereby people and communities can protect and vindicate the rights of nature against actions taken by corporations and other business entities. Section 5. Statement of Law. Natural communities and ecosystems possess inalienable and fundamental rights to exist and prosper, and no corporation or business entity – or persons acting in corporate or business capacities – shall deny those rights, or interfere with the vitality or functioning of those communities or ecosystems. Section 6. Statement of Law. Every living creature within the Township of ____________possesses an inalienable and fundamental right to be an integral part of a community of nature and ecosystem, and no corporation or business entity shall deprive or deny living creatures that right. Section 7. Statement of Law. The Township Board of Supervisors shall not make or enforce any law which shall abridge the rights of natural communities and ecosystems. Section 8. Statement of Law. The enumeration in this Ordinance, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by natural communities, living creatures, and ecosystems within the Township of ___________________. Section 9. Enforcement. When this Ordinance or the underlying rights recognized by this Ordinance are violated, it shall be the duty of the Board of Supervisors of the Township of _____________to file an enforcement action against any corporation, business entity, or persons acting in corporate or business capacities. Such action shall seek to protect, preserve, and vindicate the rights of nature as recognized by this Ordinance. Any natural person shall also have the authority to file an action in the appropriate judicial forum against any corporation, business entity, or persons acting in corporate or business capacities, which has violated, is violating, or threatens to violate, the rights of animals or ecosystems within ___________ Township as outlined by this Ordinance. Protecting, preserving, and vindicating the rights acknowledged in this Ordinance shall include seeking both punitive and compensatory damages against a corporation, business entity, and/or managers of those entities, under the authority of state and federal civil rights statutes. Section 10. Enforcement. For purposes of the enforcement of the rights acknowledged in this Ordinance, natural communities and ecosystems shall be considered “persons” within 42 U.S.C. §1983 and other federal and state laws adopted to vindicate and enforce rights. Section 11. Severability. The provisions of this Ordinance are severable. If any section, clause, sentence, part, or provision of the Ordinance shall be held illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional by any court of competent jurisdiction, such decision of the court shall not affect, impair, or invalidate any of the remaining sections, clauses, sentences, parts, or provisions of this Ordinance. It is hereby declared to be the intent of the Board of Supervisors of __________ Township that this Ordinance would have been adopted if such illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional section, clause, sentence, part, or provision had not been included herein. Section 12. Effective Date. This Ordinance shall take effect five days after enactment by the Board of Supervisors of _________ Township.

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