Environmental and Policy Focus
Washington Post - Nov 9 Donald J. Trump comes into office with a plan to toss out most of what President Obama achieved on energy and the environment. While vowing to “cancel” the international Paris climate accord President Obama championed, Trump would also rearrange domestic energy and environmental priorities. He wants to open up federal lands to oil and gas drilling and coal mining. He wants to eliminate regulations he calls needless. He would scrap proposed regulations for tighter methane controls on domestic drillers, and he wants to shrink the role of the Environmental Protection Agency to a mostly advisory one and pull back the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s proposed plan to push utilities toward lower carbon emissions. In putting together a transition team the President-elect has chosen veteran Washington insiders, many of them lobbyists for fossil fuel companies and skeptics about climate science.
San Diego Union-Tribune - Nov 7 The developer of Banning Ranch filed a lawsuit last Friday in Orange County Superior Court challenging the California Coastal Commission’s denial of a development project in coastal Newport Beach that included hundreds of homes and a hotel. The lawsuit, in which the developer also is requesting monetary damages of at least $490 million, comes nearly two months after the 12-member commission denied the developer's plan to build 895 homes, a 75-room hotel, a 20-bed hostel and 45,100 square feet of retail space on an oilfield overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the monetary damages, the developer is asking the court to overturn the commission's decision. Banning Ranch is the last big piece of private open land on the Southern California coast.
Los Angeles Times - Nov 7 South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) regulators are investigating metal-processing facilities in the city of Paramount in Los Angeles County after detecting high levels of hexavalent chromium, a cancer-causing metal, at 350 times normal levels. AQMD officials are inspecting businesses in the area in a search for the source. The officials emphasized that the high levels detected, though concerning, are not an immediate threat because breathing the compound increases cancer risk over years or decades of exposure. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said that its staff was analyzing air monitoring results to determine what actions might be necessary to protect workers and residents in the area.
The Hill - Nov 9 This week voters in Monterey County passed Measure Z, a ballot measure to ban hydraulic fracturing and put other limits on oil and natural gas drilling within its borders. The victory came despite millions of dollars spent in opposition to the ballot measure by major oil companies like Chevron Corporation and Aera Energy and is the latest in a string of local bans on hydraulic fracturing, including six such bans by California counties. Monterey County’s ban is particularly noteworthy, however, because, unlike several counties that have banned hydraulic fracturing, Monterey County contains significant oil drilling areas.
