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Welcome to our site. Our office is located in Seattle’s Pioneer Square in the Grand Central Building. We focus on real property — including land use issues and landlord/tenant and contractor disputes — and estate planning.

Two oil-focused bills to watch

The 2011 Clean Water Jobs Act — one of the Environmental Priorities Coalition‘s four bills — would address toxic runoff from roads and urban areas that ends up in Puget Sound, as well as lakes and rivers, when it rains. Under the proposed legislation, oil companies would pay a per-barrel fee on petroleum products, one of the biggest sources of water pollution. In addition, the bill would fund local projects to clean up petroleum pollution. For more on this proposed bill, contact Brendon Cechovic at Washington Conservation Voters: brendon@wcvoters.org.

Another bill addresses requirements under the state’s oil spill program. This legislation would improve funding for the Department of Ecology’s Oil-Spill Program (which currently has a multi-million dollar deficit); strengthen requirements for stockpiling spill-response equipment for use in rough seas, fast currents, darkness and fog, and other challenging environments; expand the oil spill response drill program to better train responders; and train and equip commercial fishermen in spill response to increase response capacity. Download a fact sheet at http://pugetsound.org/pps-home-page/programs/policy/action-alerts/011011oil.

No cause for a party

Although the issue of climate change hasn’t come up very much during this election season, it may come as no surprise that Tea Party candidates and supporters are even more skeptical of the existence and effects of global warming that the general public.* Just 14% of tea partyers believe global warming is a problem, versus 49% of the public at large. And more than half of the tea partyers believe that climate change will have no serious effects in the future (versus 15% of the general public).

Which leads us to wonder how Sarah Palin explains the rapid melting of polar ice affecting her state. And whether midwestern tea-party supporters missed last week’s storm, which set a record for the lowest pressure (not associated with a hurricane) measured over land in the continental United States, a barometric pressure most typically recorded during a Category 3 hurricane.

This does not bode well for climate change legislation. As was quoted in the New York Times, “Whatever the party composition of the next Congress, cap-and-trade legislation is likely dead for the foreseeable future.”

*According to an October poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS News

A not so warm welcome

Despite a slowdown in global warming in the Arctic in 2009, the first half of 2010 made up for it with temperatures over 7.2 degrees above normal in Northern Canada. According to the annual Arctic Report Card issued by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the extent of sea ice dropped to one of the lowest levels on record and winter snow accumulation on land was the lowest its been since recordkeeping began in 1966.

The lead sentence on NOAA’s Arctic Report Card website is: “Return to previous Arctic conditions is unlikely.” The report card is prepared by 69 researchers from eight countries.

For more information, go to http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard.

Big Oil’s plan you may know little about

Imperial Oil, a Canadian company that is 69.6 percent owned by ExxonMobil, plans to transport 200 Korean-made modules from Lewiston, Idaho to the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada. More than half of the modules are 24 feet wide, 30 feet tall, and 162 feet long – each. They weigh up to 344,000 pounds – each. Visually, they are equivalent to a three-story building, 2/3 the length of a football field. Some Idaho residents say that sections of the road upon which they are slated to travel are 23 feet wide.

This is scheduled to happen sometime this fall.

The purpose of transporting these modules is to facilitate production of bitumen, a highly dense and viscous form of petroleum. From the Port of Lewiston, the oversized loads will travel along Highway 12, through Idaho and Montana. The Idaho portion of the highway follows the Wild and Scenic Lochsa River and crosses into Montana at Lolo Pass. The shipments are expected to exceed the legal weight limits for the Idaho stretch of the journey. Idaho transportation officials have said that the shipping company will need to customize the trailer axles to better distribute weight loads. Idaho also says it will require the company to ensure that traffic is not backed up for more than 15 minutes at a time (the Montana requirement is no more than 10 minutes). For this reason, the modules will travel at night when traffic is lighter. The shipping company will also have to add gravel to turnouts to accommodate the wide loads as they let traffic pass, as well as remove overhead power lines whose heights are below 30 feet, many of which will be buried underground.

In Montana, Imperial Oil has commissioned an environmental assessment (“EA”), with a public comment period lasting just over a month. There was no public scoping process as to alternatives. Several alternate routes were considered, but rejected. These include Highway 16 from Prince Rupert, B.C., which was rejected because of a height restriction of a truss bridge, with no way around it. Three possible routes from Vancouver, B.C., were rejected because of height restrictions of a road overpass, an avalanche tunnel, and a train overpass. According to the EA, there are “no possible detours available.” The one U.S. route considered — I-90 – was rejected because of “25 existing overpasses.”

At least half of the “only identified feasible route” (according to the EA) consists of mountainous, winding, highways that pass through scenic, recreational areas – which these enormous modules will cross at night.

A group of citizens in Missoula, Montana, asked for, but did not receive, a 60-day extension on the comment period. The group is also pushing for city ordinances and resolutions that would prohibit the driving of the massive trucks inside city limits. The comment period has now passed, and the state awaits a decision by the Montana Department of Transportation.

In Idaho, an EA is not required for “oversized shipping projects” and the public will have no say as to whether the state approves the shipments.

Many are asking: what’s in it for us? The oil company suggests that the shipments could have positive economic effects in Idaho and Montana. Yet, the equipment is being built in South Korea, will be freighted from Korea across the Pacific and up the Columbia and Snake Rivers by South Korean carriers. The overland shipping company is Mammoet of Holland. The mining takes place in Canada. The State of Montana expects to receive about $1,600 a load from the shipping company. Idaho estimates that it will get about $1,000 per load. These payments, however, will only cover the costs of improvements (i.e., wider turnouts, buried power lines). The only “benefit” seems to be this: Alberta’s oil sands are the United States’ number one source of foreign oil.

But what are the costs? The end result of all of this is to extract more bitumen from the Alberta oil sand fields. The production of oil from tar sands bitumen is resource-intensive: it uses significant amounts of water, which ends up in tailings lagoons containing hydrocarbon sludge that have never been reclaimed. Oil from tar sands contains sulfur and heavy metals, the extraction of which uses large amounts of energy – about 0.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.  And the process produces between three and five times the greenhouse gas pollution of conventional oil production, which translates to about 5% of Canada’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Yes, this affects Canada, but consider this: production of oil from oil sands makes up about 0.1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the oil sands have diminished vast areas of one of the best carbon reduction tools on the planet: Canada’s Boreal Forest. A 2007 Canadian study reports that the Canadian oil sands will not prevent peak oil, the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.

Why is this not a federal issue requiring an environmental impact statement? Apparently, the State of Montana decided that it isn’t and doesn’t. And the State of Idaho decided no regulation was needed whatsoever. How can one state regulate the transport of heavy and oversized equipment and the other not?

Section 102 of the National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to incorporate environmental considerations in their planning and decision-making through a systematic interdisciplinary approach.  Specifically, all federal agencies are to prepare detailed statements assessing the environmental impact of and alternatives to major federal actions significantly affecting the environment.

The NEPA regulations define a “major federal action,” as including “actions with effects that may be major and which are potentially subject to Federal control and responsibility.”

Given the size of the modules, it is hard to imagine that their transport would not be an action “with effects that may be major.”

And there several reasons why this project is potentially subject to Federal control and responsibility:

Ø    The Lochsa River and middle fork of the Clearwater in Idaho are designated Wild and Scenic River, a federal program.

Ø    The Lochsa, middle fork and main Clearwater, and their tributaries provide critical rearing habitat for listed salmon, steelhead, and trout under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Ø    Highway 12 in Idaho is designated a Northwest Passage Scenic Byway by the Federal Highway Administration.

Ø    Most of Highway 12 is in the Clearwater National Forest.

The Idaho Department of Transportation states that not a single accident of an oversized load has occurred on Highway 12 during the past 15 years. But what if there is an accident? What if one of the modules falls off the road into the river? Potential major problems include blocking streamflows and impairing salmon habitat, fisheries, and the livelihoods of recreational operators; injuring or killing river rafters, fishermen/women, and others using the river areas for recreation and/or livelihood; and highways injuries or deaths if one of these modules comes loose or falls over in the roadway.

The people of Idaho and Montana have had very little opportunity to comment about this massive equipment moving through their states. And when they have commented, their concerns have been largely ignored. This project – which crosses two international boundaries, and travels through four U.S. states – is being solely regulated by the Montana Department of Transportation.

Lawsuits in Idaho may temporarily stall the permitting for this and other such oversized shipping projects. But what is really needed is a full Environmental Impact Statement that seriously examines the impacts and alternatives.

Read the recent “Seattle Times” article and comments about this topic here. To take action, contact Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

Clean Water Act regulation expanded to forestry

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently held that a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit is required for stormwater runoff from logging roads. NEDC v. Brown, No. 07-35266. This opinion appears to leave the Silvicultural Rule (a regulation specifically exempting from NPDES permitting requirements “point source” silviculture (forestry) activities) with little potency and, if broadly read, would require NPDES permits for every road in the country that is served by ditches or culverts that eventually discharge to natural surface waters and that is not already regulated by the Clean Water Act.

A Guide to Shoreline Master Programs

The Washington State Department of Ecology just released a new publication, “Shoreline Master Programs: Making Sense of Tough Issues,” which is available as a pdf document at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/biblio/1006012.html.  This publication gives an overview of the Shoreline Management Act (SMA) and the required updates of local shoreline master programs which are required to be completed (by 2014) by the 260 local governments that fall within SMA jurisdiction.

Gates’ group puts energy (but not funds?) toward clean-energy development

In today’s Seattle Times:

Gates wants U.S. to spend more on energy research and development

Bill Gates and a half-dozen corporate chief executives will urge President Obama to sharply increase federal spending on clean-energy research and to create centers for energy technology innovation at a White House meeting on Thursday. [Read the article]

Here we go again

The G20 will meet in Toronto this month where they will attempt to move forward with an international approach to slowing the effects of climate change. The G20 consists of countries that have contributed the most greenhouse gas emissions, including the U.S., Brazil, China, India, and the members of the European Union.

The agenda follows up on last December’s U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen and calls for G20 leaders to report on his or her country’s progress on developing renewable energy and clean energy technology, conducting collaborative research, and providing financial support to developing countries for assistance with climate change impacts.

Meanwhile, as the oil slick spreads towards the beaches of Florida, the world looks to the U.S. Congress to pass its own climate change and clean energy legislation.

Sad State of Affairs

From the New York Times:

U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Read the rest of the article…