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REUTERS - Sep 10 Governor Jerry Brown on Monday signed into law Senate Bill 100, which requires the state to source electricity from exclusively carbon-free sources by 2045, making California the largest global economy to commit to 100 percent clean energy. Hawaii is the only other U.S. state to set a similar goal. The bill received strong support from environmental activists, renewable energy companies, and public health groups, but faced opposition from the state’s biggest utilities. SB 100 requires utilities to source 60 percent of their power from renewable energy by the end of 2030, up from a prior goal of 50 percent. By 2045, all of the state’s electricity must come from renewable or other zero-carbon sources. In 2017, 32 percent of California’s retail electricity sales were served by renewable energy facilities, according to the California Energy Commission.
THE WASHINGTON POST - Sep 11 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday formally released its proposed substitute for a 2016 Obama administration rule that aimed to increase detection and elimination of methane leaks at well sites and other oil and gas facilities. The EPA conceded that relaxing the rule for methane would put an additional 380,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere from 2019 to 2025. The increase is roughly equivalent to more than 30 million tons of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. Relaxing federal oversight will save $75 million in regulatory costs annually, the agency said. Tuesday’s action opens a 60-day period for public comment ahead of any final decision by the EPA.
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Sep 8 Governor Jerry Brown on Saturday signed Assembly Bill 1775 and Senate Bill 834 into law, blocking new offshore oil drilling in California by prohibiting the State Lands Commission, which has jurisdiction over tidelands and waters extending roughly three miles offshore, from granting leases for new pipelines and infrastructure for transportation of oil and gas from federal waters to state land. The bills are a response to the Trump administration’s proposal to open vast areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to oil and gas exploration and drilling through a leasing program beginning as early as 2019. SB 834 also bans the commission from renewing an existing lease if that action would result in increased oil or natural gas production from federal waters. The state has not issued a new offshore oil and gas lease since a devastating 1969 spill in Santa Barbara.
SACRAMENTO BEE - Sep 7 After months of trial, a Superior Court jury on Friday returned guilty verdicts on multiple criminal counts against Plains All American Pipeline in connection with the May 2015 crude oil spill near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County. The jury found the company guilty of, among other counts, pipeline maintenance failures, delays in notification to emergency response agencies, and the loss of marine mammals and protected sea birds. The jury was unable to reach verdicts on three other charges, and a mistrial was declared on those counts. Plains All American Pipeline is scheduled to return to court December 13 for sentencing, which presumably will involve substantial fines. The company operates two pipelines in Santa Barbara County, both of which were shut down after the May 2015 breach leaked an estimated 123,228 gallons of crude oil into the ocean.
SFGATE - Sep 12 On Wednesday the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court determination that Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electric utility, violated the federal Clean Water Act by discharging arsenic from a coal ash storage site through groundwater into surrounding waters. The reversal came in a citizen suit, filed by the Sierra Club, in which it was alleged that arsenic was illegally flowing from a landfill and ponds where Dominion was storing coal ash — the heavy metal-laden byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity — to the nearby Elizabeth River and Deep Creek. The three-judge Fourth Circuit panel agreed that arsenic had leached from the landfill and ponds into the waterways, but ruled that the pollution of the waterways did not come from a “point source,” and hence did not constitute a violation of the Clean Water Act.
RECORD SEARCHLIGHT - Sep 12 The U.S. Attorney's Office announced that Goose Pond Ag. Inc. of Florida and its operations manager, Farmland Management Services Inc., an affiliate of John Hancock Life Insurance Co., agreed to pay $5.3 million in civil penalties and costs to perform work to repair damage caused by using deep rippers to break up soil on its land near the Sacramento River in Tehama County. The illegal ripping destroyed or damaged streams and wetlands on property, which is adjacent to land whose owner, John Duarte of Modesto, last year agreed to pay $1.1 million in civil penalties and costs to repair damage from deep ripping. Goose Pond Ag. purchased the 1,500 acres from Duarte shortly before it began the deep ripping procedure.
