Man, this stuff pisses me off:

What started as a short YouTube video and a couple of local news interviews about a Texas landowner being able to light his water on fire has ballooned into a free speech fight that’s being closely watched by anti-fracking activists across the country.

Steve Lipsky has complained for years that fracking company Range Resources polluted his drinking water and streams that run through his property. The company sued him in 2011 for defaming its reputation for environmental stewardship.

Now Lipsky will have a chance to argue his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court, The Texas Tribune reported this week. The court will decide whether his right to free speech renders Range’s defamation case moot. If the court rules in his favor, the company’s lawsuit will be thrown out. If that doesn’t happen, he may be on the hook for $3 million.

The case won’t be heard until December, but environmentalists are already drawing parallels between it and other incidents across the U.S. in which hydraulic fracturing companies and anti-fracking activists have butted heads. Lipsky’s supporters say his case adds to a growing list of instances that show governments and courts are too quick to kowtow to industry demands. But if he wins, they say, it could embolden the anti-fracking movement across the country by letting activists know they’re free to badmouth fracking companies without fear of retribution.

“Range has a right to protect its reputation, but the speech they’re complaining about is protected speech,” Lipsky’s lawyer Joe Sibley said. “If we’re going to allow companies to sue people for defamation every time they don’t like what’s being said, then that basically allows corporations to silence public participation.”

H/T Price Benowitz LLP, Virginia Auto Accident Attorneys.

But I’m sure Gov. Corbett would never do anything that might put people at risk, right? Ha ha, just kidding!

A report released by human rights groups in Pennsylvania on Tuesday questions whether cancer rates and other serious health ailments among inmates at a maximum security state prison are connected to an adjacent coal waste dump. If so, the breach of environmental justice could necessitate shutting down the prison, they say.

The State Correctional Institution-Fayette is located in LaBelle, a rural Pennsylvania town that is also home to a 506-acre coal ash dump that contains about 40 million tons of waste, two coal slurry ponds, and millions of cubic yards of coal combustion waste, owned and operated by Matt Canestrale Contracting. The Canestrale facility receives coal ash waste — known to contain mercury, lead, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, boron, and thallium — from coal-fired plants throughout the region.

The investigation, “No Escape: Exposure to Toxic Coal Waste at State Correctional Institution Fayette” (pdf), documents health problems — respiratory, throat, and sinus conditions; skin irritation, rashes, and hives; gastrointestinal problems; and cancers — among inmates at SCI-Fayette. In interviews and correspondence with researchers, over 80 percent of prisoners reported respiratory, throat, or sinus issues, such as nose bleeds, shortness of breath, and lung infections; 68 percent reported gastrointestinal problems; and more than half described skin conditions like rashes or hives. Between January 2010 and December 2013, 17 prisoners died while at SCI-Fayette; 11 of those deaths were due to cancer.

The report states that Matt Canestrale Contracting, which has owned and operated the dump since 1997, is in “perpetual violation” of the Air Pollution Control Act: “Ash is regularly seen blowing off the site or out of haul trucks and collecting on the houses of local residents as well as the prison grounds at SCI-Fayette.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not currently classify coal ash as hazardous waste.

H/t OFAC Lawyer Kaveh Miremadi.

With the death of Terry Greenwood, farmer and anti-fracking activist, from a rare form of cancer, calls for mandated health research are rising:

Last month, Terry Greenwood, a Pennsylvania farmer whose water had been contaminated by fracking waste, died of cancer. He was 66 and the cause of death was a rare form of brain cancer.

His death drew attention from around the globe in part because Mr. Greenwood was among the first farmers from his state to speak out against the gas industry during the early years of the state’s shale gas rush.

Mr. Greenwood went up against a company called Dominion Energy, which had drilled and fracked a shallow well on his small cattle ranch property under a lease signed by a prior owner in 1921.

In January, 2008, Mr. Greenwood had reported to state officials that his water supplies had turned brown and the water tasted salty. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection subsequently found that the company, whose gas well was drilled 400 feet from the Greenwoods’ water well in 2007, had impacted the Greenwoods’ water. State officials ordered Dominion to temporarily supply the family with drinking water.

Mr. Greenwood’s death was mourned by environmentalists around the world. In London, for example, attendees at a fracking education event recorded video messages for the Greenwood family and raised over $500 for Terry’s survivors.

“Terry Greenwood was one of the most compelling people you could ever listen to,” wrote filmmaker Josh Fox. “There was just something about the way he spoke, there was a decency and a positivity that shone through every word no matter how distressing or disturbing the subject matter was.”

But the story of Mr. Greenwood’s fight against the drilling industry and lax oversight by state regulators does not stop there.
Continue reading “R.I.P. Terry Greenwood” →