Environmental and Policy Focus
OC Register - Dec 20 California Attorney General Kamala Harris and the California Coastal Commission filed suit Monday to block oil hydraulic fracturing off the coast of California, challenging a federal environmental assessment that clears the way for drillers to resume the controversial method of oil exploration. The State alleges that the U.S. Department of the Interior and two of its agencies, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, failed to fully analyze and disclose the potential environmental risks of new offshore drilling processes like hydraulic fracturing and acidization, which rely more on hazardous chemicals than traditional oil extraction methods. Monday’s complaint seeks to reimpose a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for new drilling leases off the coast of Southern California. The moratorium was lifted in May when federal agencies released a report that concluded hydraulic fracturing and other drilling processes would not have a significant impact on Southern California’s coastal environment. There are at least 43 active federal oil and gas leases off the coast of Southern California.
New York Times - Dec 20 Seeking to nail down an environmental legacy that cannot quickly be reversed by incoming President-elect Donald Trump, President Obama announced on Tuesday what he called a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in about 98 percent of federally-owned Arctic waters and 3.8 million acres along the Atlantic Seaboard from Norfolk, Virginia to the Canadian border. President Obama invoked an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which he said gives him the authority to act unilaterally. While some presidents have used that law to temporarily protect smaller portions of federal waters, his declaration of a permanent drilling ban on portions of the ocean floor from Virginia to Maine and along much of Alaska’s coast is breaking new ground. The ban’s fate will almost certainly be decided by the federal courts.
KPCC - Dec 16 California regulators say Poseidon Water must amend the state-issued lease for its proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach to comply with new regulations on desalination plants. These regulations require use of measures to reduce the impact of the desalination process on sea life and plankton, which can get sucked into the pipes used to draw ocean water into the plant. At a public hearing Wednesday in Huntington Beach, opponents of the project urged regulators to review the desalination plant in its entirety, not only the amendments pertaining to Poseidon’s compliance with the new regulations. They assert that the project is no longer needed because the original project objectives of increasing the water supply for Orange County already have largely been met through conservation measures and the county’s wastewater recycling system. The California State Lands Commission, which has jurisdiction over the coastal land and waters beneath the intake and outflow pipes, must now determine the scope of its environmental review of the modified project. A draft environmental report is expected to be circulated in the first half of 2017. Additional project approvals would still be required from the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board and the California Coastal Commission.
Modesto Bee - Dec 20 Volkswagen has agreed to buy back tainted 3.0-liter-engine diesel vehicles sold between 2009 and 2012 and spend an additional $1 billion to settle the air-pollution scandal that was uncovered by California state scientists. The German automaker will pay $225 million into a “national mitigation fund” to address air-pollution effects in the United States from those vehicles. The California Air Resources Board said $66 million will go to California. These payments will be in addition to the $14.7 billion Volkswagen earlier agreed to spend to settle claims over its non-compliant 2.0-liter vehicles.
