April, 05 2022, 12:18pm EDT
California Oil Company Warned for Cutting Corners in Repairing Leaky Pipeline
WASHINGTON
The Center for Biological Diversity warned DCOR, LLC in a letter today that the company failed to comply with a California law requiring a Coastal Development Permit for its repair of an offshore oil pipeline that leaked in December.
DCOR's pipeline -- which was built in 1963 and runs from Platform Eva to shore through state waters -- cracked and spilled oil 1 mile off Huntington Beach in December, threatening sensitive areas. This spill came just two months after another pipeline spilled tens of thousands of gallons in the same area.
"This is an old, dangerously leaky pipeline, and it's appalling that repair work proceeded without a key permit or crucial steps to prevent future disasters," said Emily Jeffers, the letter author and a staff attorney in the Center's Oceans Program. "We're putting this bad actor on notice. It's disturbing that a company that recently spilled oil on our coast skipped a permitting process and has failed to update its pipeline to state-of-the-art oil spill prevention standards."
The company ignored the requirement to obtain a permit from the California Coastal Commission for permanent pipeline repairs even though there was no urgency because the leak had been stopped and the pipeline shut down and purged of oil. The Center's letter warns DCOR that the company must now obtain an "after-the-fact" permit from the Coastal Commission to avoid legal liability.
The letter also raises concerns about the company asking state officials for an exemption from the legal requirement to retrofit the pipeline with the "best available technology," as required by a California law passed after the 2015 Refugio oil spill. The company used a loophole in the law to claim that this pipeline is not classified as a pipeline -- an exemption that was granted by the Office of the State Fire Marshal. The letter urges DCOR to reverse course with this pipeline and four other pipelines that the company claims are exempt.
Today's letter notes the risk of more oil spills from aging offshore oil infrastructure. State agencies have reported that spill risk more than doubles as pipelines age between 20 and 40 years. Platform Eva and the pipeline to shore were installed off Huntington Beach in 1963 and have persisted for nearly 60 years.
The letter also notes that DCOR's pipeline rupture in December is only the latest in a long line of oil spills in Southern California, including an October 2021 spill off Huntington Beach that fouled sensitive beaches and wetlands, forced fisheries closures, and harmed fish, birds and marine mammals. Aside from observed impacts, the true scale of ecosystem and wildlife impacts of the two Huntington Beach spills will remain out of sight at sea.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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Database Exposes 'Illicit Network Undermining Democracy Around the World'
Yanis Varoufakis hailed the effort as "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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"Coups. Assassinations. Riots. Detentions. Disinformation. We know the tactics that have been deployed to undermine our democracies. But who is behind them?"
Progressive International (PI) asks and answers this and other questions with an extensive new database published Wednesday that connects the dots in what the leftist group calls the "Reactionary International"—a loose global network of right-wing leaders and organizations working to subvert democratic institutions.
PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
"The twin insurrections at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and BrasÃlia's Three Powers Plaza in 2023 left no doubt about the international coordination of reactionary forces," PI argued. "Yet far too little is known about the entities of this network, their sources of financing, and their institutional allies operating inside our political systems."
Ultimately, PI aims to "support democratic systems to become more resilient to their insidious tactics."
From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.
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Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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The law prohibits recipients of federal funds from discriminating against residents based on race and national origin and allows residents to petition the EPA arguing that state agencies have intentionally discriminated or disparately impacted a particular community.
Title VI has underpinned hundreds of legal cases, including recent EPA investigations into the 85-mile stretch of land in Louisiana known as Cancer Alley, where dozens of petrochemical plants have been built and health experts have observed a disproportionate number of cancer cases and other medical problems among the predominantly Black population.
The attorneys general said they object to the Biden administration's use of Title VI to "advance what it calls 'environmental justice,'" and complained that the EPA aims to create "a condition in which no racially or economically defined group experiences adverse environmental impacts."
Andre Segura, vice president of litigation at the environmental legal group Earthjustice, said Wednesday that the Republican attorneys general aim to "eviscerate civil rights protections just to make it easier for industrial polluters to continue with business as usual."
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Manuel Fernandez, president of Miami-Dade County Democrats in Florida, said the effort was "embarrassing" and called on Moody to resign.
The petition was filed three months after U.S. District Court Judge James Cain Jr., an appointee of former President Donald Trump in Louisiana, ruled that Title VI requirements amount to "government overreach."
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Congressman Greg Casar said the Republicans behind a new joint statement "sound more like corporate lobbyists than governors."
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As Volkswagen workers in Tennessee began voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers, progressive critics on Wednesday continued to call out six Southern GOP governors for jointly saying they "are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states."
Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Greg Abbott of Texas issued their statement in response to "the largest organizing drive in modern American history," which the UAW launched after major contract wins following a strike targeting the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—last year.
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What actually threatens American workers?\n\u274c Anti-union, anti-worker propaganda like this\n\ud83d\udcb0 Corps that put profits over people\n\u26d1\ufe0f Safety standards not being met\n\n@GovAbbott & @GovernorKayIvey sound more like corporate lobbyists than governors here. @UAW backs American workers!— (@)
The Economic Policy Institutesaid Wednesday that the governors' anti-union statement "clearly shows how scared they are that workers organizing with UAW to improve jobs and wages will upend the highly unequal, failed anti-worker economic development model of Southern states."
Responding to the statement on social media, the Congressional Labor Caucus declared that "we speak up when we see threats to workers' rights. Workers must be allowed to choose whether to form a union on their own—free from influence from their employers or politicians. Shame on these governors for putting out this anti-union propaganda."
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Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, also took aim at Ivey, saying, "You used Alabama taxpayers' money to have state troopers escort out-of-state scabs to break the strike of YOUR constituents."
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More Perfect Union told Ivey that "unions only threaten your values if you value denying workers a living wage and good benefits."
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