Environmental and Policy Focus
San Jose Mercury News - Nov 17 The BP oil company has agreed to pay $14 million to settle California prosecutors’ allegations of violations in operating and maintaining underground fuel tanks at 780 gas stations around the state over the past 10 years. State Attorney General Kamala Harris and prosecutors from Alameda, San Diego, and eight other California counties announced the civil settlement with BP on Thursday. Under the settlement, which still needs final approval from the Alameda County Superior Court, BP officials agree to make the settlement payments without admitting to violations.
McClatchyDC - Nov 16 The House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday approved a major irrigation drainage deal with California’s politically potent Westlands Water District, a Rhode Island-sized district in the San Joaquin Valley. The bill would forgive a roughly $375 million debt owed by Westlands and secure favorable new water contracts for the district. In return, the district would retire 100,000 of its 600,000 acres and relieve the federal government of its obligation to build a potentially multibillion-dollar irrigation drainage system. As part of the deal, Westlands would assume responsibility for providing the irrigation drainage.
Los Angeles Daily News - Nov 15 After testimony by Porter Ranch parents, children, and environmental activists, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) governing board voted on Tuesday to ask that the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, the Public Utilities Commission, and Governor Jerry Brown decommission the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, a 3,600-acre gas field beneath the hills north of Porter Ranch. LAUSD will also request that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power not burn diesel, a source of pollution, at its Sun Valley and Wilmington power plants to replace any resulting shortage of natural gas. The Aliso Canyon gas leak released more than 100,000 metric tons of methane into the air from October 2015 through February, forcing the relocation of 8,400 families and two Porter Ranch elementary schools.
Ventura County Star - Nov 16 The Environmental Defense Center and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles this week to prohibit offshore drilling practices in the Santa Barbara Channel, arguing that federal agencies did not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act in their analysis and approvals. In May, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released an environmental review of hydraulic fracturing and other well stimulation treatments at 23 oil and gas platforms off California's coast. Their analysis found no significant environmental impacts. The environmental groups, however, allege the review was inadequate in examining potential impacts to water and air quality and about two dozen threatened or endangered species, including whales, otters, birds, and fish.
The Hill - Nov 18 President Obama has rescinded a proposal to allow new oil and natural gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean as part of a five-year plan for leasing released on Friday, taking drilling rights sales off the table through 2022. The Interior Department had previously proposed limited drilling rights sales to the Beaufort and Chukchi seas north of Alaska, where there has never been oil and natural gas production from traditional mobile drilling rigs. The decision all but bans Arctic drilling for that time period, since oil companies have let almost all of their leases in the Arctic expire or have surrendered them. Subject to a long regulatory process, President-elect Donald Trump could seek to amend the five-year drilling plan to add more sales. Because the plan is being released late in President Obama’s time in office, congressional Republicans could try legislatively to overturn the plan or open the Arctic or Atlantic to drilling.
