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For Immediate Release
September, 10 2014, 04:30pm EDT
Contact:
Kaye Fissinger (303) 678-7267 (President of Our Health, Our Future, Our Longmont)
Sam Schabacker (720) 295-1036 (Food & Water Watch Western Region Director)
Eric Huber (303) 449-5595 ext. 101(Sierra Club, Senior Managing Attorney)
Bruce Baizel (970) 259-3353 (Earthworks Energy Program Director)
Kevin Lynch (832) 524-4814 (Environmental Law Clinic Professor)
Groups Appeal to Protect Longmont Fracking Ban
A coalition filed an appeal on Wednesday to uphold the democratically enacted ban on fracking passed by Longmont voters in 2012. Represented by the University of Denver Law Clinic, the groups Our Longmont, Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club and Earthworks filed the appeal to overturn a district court decision that places the interests of the oil and gas industry over the health and safety of local citizens.
DENVER, Colo.
A coalition filed an appeal on Wednesday to uphold the democratically enacted ban on fracking passed by Longmont voters in 2012. Represented by the University of Denver Law Clinic, the groups Our Longmont, Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club and Earthworks filed the appeal to overturn a district court decision that places the interests of the oil and gas industry over the health and safety of local citizens.
"We are committed to continuing to protect the health, safety and property of Longmont residents," says Kaye Fissinger, President of Our Health Our Future Our Longmont, one of the Citizen intervenors in the challenge to Longmont's charter amendment, which prohibits fracking and its waste products within Longmont. "The judge failed to apply the law correctly and the decision deserves review by the higher courts to protect the people of Colorado from this dangerous, toxic extraction practice that instigates a domino effect that is a threat to the health, safety and wellbeing of the people of Longmont. We look forward to an outcome that recognizes and endorses the people's constitutionally guaranteed rights to health and safety."
The Court wrongly determined that Longmont's ban conflicts with the state's interests in oil and gas development; the decision ignores the fact that state law requires oil and gas development to be done in a way that protects public health and the environment.
"Fracking is an inherently harmful practice that has no place near our towns, homes and recreational areas," says Sam Schabacker, Western Region Director with Food & Water Watch. "It is the State's duty to ban fracking in order to uphold its responsibility to safeguard our communities and our natural resources."
"The people voted to keep fracking away from their homes, schools and parks, and their will should be honored," says Eric Huber, Sierra Club Senior Managing Attorney. "We believe the judge made a mistake in elevating the oil and gas industry over local interests, and trust the court of appeals will see things differently."
"When a community chooses not to host fracking, they shouldn't be sued," says Earthworks' Energy Program Director Bruce Baizel. "That's what this appeal is about, it's what the ballot initiatives were about, and it's what the Governor's blue ribbon commission must remember. It's common sense."
The Longmont fracking ban will remain in place while the appeal moves forward, thereby continuing to protect the people of Longmont from the harms from irresponsible gas extraction.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
Amazon Cites Oil Price Spike Caused by Trump's Iran War to Justify New 3.5% Surcharge
The retail giant said the surcharge was needed due to "elevated costs in fulfillment and logistics" that "have increased the cost of operating across the industry."
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Americans having been paying more for gasoline since the start of President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, and now it seems the war's costs are spreading to other areas of the economy.
Amazon announced on Thursday that, beginning April 17, it would add a "3.5% fuel and logistics-related surcharge" to vendors that use its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service in the US and Canada.
The company said that it needed to add the surcharge due to "elevated costs in fulfillment and logistics" that "have increased the cost of operating across the industry."
"We have absorbed these increased costs so far," Amazon said. "However, similar to other major carriers, when costs remain elevated, we implement temporary surcharges on our fulfillment fees to recover a portion of the actual cost increases we are experiencing."
Amazon spokesperson Ashley Vanicek told CNBC that the company's surcharge will be "meaningfully lower" than rival carriers, and insisted that "we remain committed to our selling partners' success and to maintaining broad selection and low prices for customers."
Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, said that Amazon's surcharge is "yet another example of more increased costs to come," as "the ongoing supply shock" caused by the Iran war "has lasted longer than expected."
Amazon isn't alone in adding surcharges due to the war's impact on fuel costs.
According to a Tuesday report in The New York Times, fresh food distributors across the US have been adding surcharges to deliveries to make up for the increased fuel costs caused by the Iran war, with the result being that "grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, and even schools are most likely seeing costs for their food shipping climb."
John Ross, the chief executive of the Independent Grocers Alliance, told the Times that the increased shipping costs from the surge in diesel fuel costs have come at a particularly inopportune time since many Americans were already stretched thin financially before Trump attacked Iran.
"For people who spend every nickel they have on daily expenses, if grocery prices go up $5, that $5 has to come from something else," Ross said. "But it’s hard for the grocers to eat it also. For every $1 that consumers spend at the register, the grocery store is keeping about two pennies. There’s very little room there."
The price of fuel isn't the only factor seen driving food prices higher, as CNBC on Thursday reported that experts expect to see a spike in food prices later this year thanks to the Iran war's impact on fertilizer prices.
University of Minnesota economist Kjetil Storesletten told CNBC that "the price of food is going to move quite a lot" in the coming months, predicting that "all of the increased price in fertilizer is going to be passed through to food."
Storesletten said that food prices won't jump immediately, but warned that coming grocery sticker shock will grow more severe if Iran keeps its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future.
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Just as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress were warned would happen, close to 100,000 US veterans are currently behind on their mortgage payments or are in the process of foreclosure as a result of the White House's decision to shut down a Department of Veterans Affairs program that helped people with VA-backed home loans when they were behind on their monthly payments.
As NPR reported Thursday, more than 10,000 have already lost their homes, nearly a year after the Trump administration abruptly did away with the VA Servicing Purchase (VASP) program.
The program was rolled out during the Biden administration, after the VA ended a pandemic-era assistance program that had allowed VA home loan borrowers to gradually pay back mortgage payments that they had needed to skip.
Under VASP, the VA purchases home loans that were in default from mortgage services and then modified the loans.
In March 2025, a representative from the Mortgage Bankers Association told the House Veterans Affairs Committee that widespread foreclosures would result if the VASP program—which Republicans in Congress said had been created by former President Joe Biden for "political purposes... to undercut the VA Home Loan program—was not protected.
Despite the warning, the VASP program was halted two months later.
Nearly a year after the program's end, the VA is still developing a replacement to help veterans—many of whom are struggling to afford essentials just like the majority of other Americans as the cost of living crisis intensifies with rising fuel prices due to Trump's war on Iran.
Sources in the mortgage industry told NPR that many of the vets who have lost their homes so far had enough disability benefits or other income to avoid foreclosure, had the VASP program remained in operation.
NPR interviewed Leann Ledford, whose husband, a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, has a brain injury, experiences seizures, and suffers post-traumatic stress disorder. The family is one of tens of thousands who learned in October 2022 that the Biden administration had ended the earlier pandemic-era program and that they would have to pay a year's worth of back payments in one lump sum.
The Ledfords were also one of many veteran families who were unable to enroll in VASP before Trump abruptly shut it down.
Ledford told NPR that with her husband's $3,971 monthly disability check, they could have afforded mortgage payments under the VASP program.
Army veteran Jon Henry was also unable to enroll in VASP before it was shut down, and was forced to take a modified loan with payments that are $380 more per month than his original mortgage.
"It's a struggle," Henry told NPR. "Especially with everything else being inflated in the country, you know, with groceries, gas … I'm like, what the hell?"
NPR's reporting led Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Iraq War veteran, to denounced Trump as "the most anti-veteran president in history."
When Trump's new VA home loan assistance program is up and running—which isn't expected to happen for several more months, veterans will be able to move their missed payments to the back of their loan term. But in the current draft of the plan, reported NPR, "the VA is telling mortgage companies that if a new, modified loan at a higher interest rate only raises a veteran's monthly payment by up to 15%, they must place vets into that more costly loan."
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Senate Democrats are pushing for an investigation into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following a report that he attempted to make a “big investment” in weapons stock just weeks before President Donald Trump launched an aggressive war against Iran.
Three Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee—Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) were joined by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley to send Hegseth a letter on Wednesday.
They told the secretary that his reported attempt to broker the deal "would be a profound conflict of interest and a potential violation of your federal ethics agreement—and betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war and the troops you are sending into harm’s way."
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Hegseth's "broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF... shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.”
However, the purchase was reportedly never made because the massive bundle of stocks was not available to Morgan Stanley clients at the time.
A Pentagon spokesperson has also denied the story, calling it "entirely false and fabricated" and claiming that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives ever approached BlackRock.
But, as the lawmakers noted, FT reported that the inquiry was significant enough for BlackRock to flag it internally.
Hegseth and other Pentagon officials confirmed by the Senate are prohibited by law from owning or purchasing publicly traded stock in the 10 companies that have received the largest Defense Department contracts over the past five years.
But the fund held stocks in several of these companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Boeing, RTX Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies.
Reports of the proposed deal by Hegseth's broker come as the Trump administration has faced other accusations of trading on insider information about the president’s next moves to win big on prediction market services. Platforms like Polymarket have seen bettors take home monster winnings by placing wagers predicting major military actions in Venezuela and Iran just hours before Trump launched them.
The lawmakers noted that while the war is costing American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day and has saddled Americans with soaring gas prices, it has proven highly lucrative for major defense contractors, whose stocks jumped significantly in the days after the war was launched, even as the rest of the market took a tumble.
The Trump administration is currently demanding another $200 billion to prosecute the war on top of a $1.5 trillion budget request to fund the Defense Department, which the lawmakers said would likely result in these companies’ profits and stock prices continuing to climb.
The US-Israeli war against Iran, launched on February 28, has been condemned as illegal by many international law experts and human rights groups, who have accused the US of violating the UN Charter and committing war crimes.
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