Newsletter #51- Spectacular 2016 year in the works

I hope you all enjoyed a well deserved, peaceful, restful, joyous holiday and are anxious and excited for all the wonders and adventures that await our embrace this New Year.

This promises to be the year that was.  We are in for the ride of our lives and it is going to take everything we got and everyone we know to make it spectacular!!!!!

The word is out this is the place to be this year. It is happening Big Time in SLO.

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Activist super stars are coming from far and wide to join in making our impossible dreams a dream come true, to fight the unbeatable foe, to right the unrightable wrong, and reach that unreachable star.  Oh yea that is our quest and it is going to be a dazzling display with a few fireworks to be sure!!!!!

Things are going to be changing on a dime and we have to be able to react in unity and solidarity, like a school of barracudas with their PhD’s.  Every single issue coming up is a top priority and crucial for our future well being.
Starting us off

Could you host, put up fellow activist coming in from around California to help us stop the oil trains?

 

 

Hi friends,

I wanted to send out the form to sign up to host an oil train activist coming from out of town for the public hearings Feb 4 & 5. Please sign up if you think you can host & we will match you with

potential guests.
-Valerie

Center for Biological Diversity

Oil Train Campaign coordinator

 

#2 ​Stopping the Oil Trains dead in their tracks.  Everything you need to know

 

⬇︎⬇︎⬇︎⬇
https://www.facebook.com/events/1013739535350812/

The hearing will take place Thursday, February 4th and Friday, Feb 5th. Doors open at 8 A.M. Board of Supervisors Chambers 1055 Monterey St, both days and it is crucial that individuals who want to speak arrive as early as possible. There will also be a rally held on Thursday Feb 4th at 12 P.M. (Noon).

Sign up to speak even if you don’t plan on speaking. They may put a time limit on speakers who need more than a minute to get their point across. You can give them your minute because you are there and have a minute to give.

This is a modern day San Luis Obispo version of the running of bulls http://www.bullrunpamplona.com/ If ever you wanted to run with Bulls this is your golden opportunity. We are going to corral that iron horse and it is going to be spectacular!!!   Spectacular seems the optimal word.

 

OIL TRAIN HEARING
FEBRUARY 4 & 5 (thurs. & fri.)
1055 Monterey St
Board of Supervisors chamber

8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

 

#3​ and just in

 

Developers are trying to horn in on the California Coastal Commission and make it theirs by getting Dr. Lester fired.     Need everyone to do all of the following and pass this around to at least ten people. Or if you belong to a group or organization with a list pass it off to them and that counts as your ten.  Our precious coastline, marine

sanctuary, allowing offshore drilling is on the line. Dr. Lester needs to stay and developers need to go away. Here’s the story http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0124-lopez-coastal-commission-20160124-column.html  Do all of the following.

The Commission has set up a specific email account to receive comment.

Send an email letter today to the California Coastal Commission, Attention Chair Steve Kinsey, at this address: StatusOfExecutiveDirector@coastal.ca.gov  You can enclose an 8 x 10 glossy photo (or digital facsimile) of our spectacular Coastline.  They will get the picture – worth a 1,000 words.

— Share your love of the coast, and why it’s important to protect public access, sensitive habitats and marine resources, and scenic view sheds

— Commend Dr. Lester for his courage to demand a public hearing allowing the public to weigh in on this shameful attempt to fire him

— Commend the entire staff at the Coastal Commission for their tireless dedication and public service under difficult conditions

— Tell the Commission to stop this baseless power grab for developers and get busy protecting our coast instead

Attend the hearing and lend your support!
10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 10
Inn at Morro Bay
60 State Park Road
Morro Bay, CA

Petitions being circulated: Sign them.
http://petitions.moveon.org/…/dont-terminate-ca-coastal…

https://secured.surfrider.org/action/engagement…

 

Sign the petition: Don’t Terminate CA Coastal Commission Executive…

petitions.moveon.org

 

And finally latest on
The Arroyo Grande Oil Fields. Freeport McMoRan.

 

It is no secret oil prices are at their lowest point in 13 years $27 a barrel and the market is in turmoil. Freeport purchased the Arroyo Grande Oil in its hay day when oil was at $110 a barrel.  They were going to make a killing, shares were @ $60.

That ship has sailed and is sinking like a rock with shares now at @ $4.  Freeport is looking to abandon ship. Sending out an SOS. Sell the Oil Fields Stat or go down with the ship.  Freeport filing for bankruptcy

 

They need to unload the Oil fields. Asking price. 4-5 billion dollars. Just one little minor detail. This property is worthless without a permit to drill for oil. Even then it is going to be a hard sell because oil is never going to see $100 or $80 or $70 a barrel again in its lifetime.

It may turn out to be a fire sale even with a permit.  A permit will facilitate a sale and leave us trying to resuscitate a dead horse that breathed its last breath a million years ago and maintain a billion plus gallons of toxic waste sitting on an active fault line.

Unless, we demand that the hemorrhaging of our natural resources and lethal injection of toxic waste into our backyard stops right now.  The contamination has to stop now before we become the next Flint, Michigan.

Oil drilling is never going to be safe or economically viable to this community ever again. It is nothing but a source of constant anxiety, fear and threat to our safety, health and well being.

Currently, Freeport is operating without an agreement or permit or license yet they are still extracting our water, using our back yard as a toxic waste dump and releasing toxins into the air.  Why?  Operating without a permit is illegal. So why are they still drilling and dumping?

It appears, strangely enough, the only reasonable explanation why they are still drilling and dumping is because no body has told them to stop. No records indicating they have been served a cease and desist order or warned they are in violation of an expired permit.

​We can and will remedy that oversight.

Now that we know the problem we can concentrate all our energies on the solution and that is exactly what we are doing.

 

The solution is in the works and exciting updates forthcoming.  We have waited 3 long years to get to this critical point of departure and we are closer than we have ever been. Legal solutions are always the best and most binding. The cosmos are conspiring to shower us with everything we need. Stay tuned.

 

Recap

Host an activtist form to sign up to host an oil train activist

 

OIL TRAIN HEARING
8 a.m. – 5 p.m. FEBRUARY 4 & 5 (thurs. & fri.)
1055 Monterey St
Board of Supervisors chamber

 

California Coastal Commission hearing
10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, FEBRUARY 10
Inn at Morro Bay
60 State Park Road
Morro Bay, CA

 

Thank you all.

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It is happening and it is spectacular!​

Correction: Public comment format

Would like to thank Eric Greening for clarifying the public comment formats coming up on both the oil train and coastal commission hearings. It is as always very accurate and helpful. Didn’t know about getting a number so you can figure out when you are going to get called. I am going to cut and paste the information.  Thank you Eric.

1. The oil train hearings will not allow people to donate time to each other, but each speaker WILL be given 3 minutes if the person needs it; that is the word from the chair as of yesterday’s PC meeting.  The 3 minutes will be strictly enforced, so if you are partway through an amazing sentence when the red light shines, you may not get to finish that sentence.  Speaker signups will begin at 8:00 am the 4th, and speakers will get a number showing where in the lineup one is.  This can help those who need to get back to work until it is getting to where their name will be called.  No matter when one signs up to speak, there is likely to be a significant interval between signup and being called forward.  The first speakers may get called as early as 11:00 or 11:30, or perhaps not until the afternoon session at 1:30.  At 9:00, when the meeting starts, there will be a staff presentation (which is worth listening to; staff did their homework on this!!), followed by Commission questions of staff.  Then the applicant will make a presentation, and may get more questions from the Commission.

The first “public” speakers are to be representatives of jurisdictions and agencies: mayors, other public officials from locations near and far, first responders from jurisdictions near and far, the Council of Governments, the Air Pollution Control District, possibly a railroad or two.  These folks have been told to be available between 10:45 and noon, and they may take up the entire period, or it may open to general public before lunch; that depends on how many of them there are, and on whether the Commission has questions for them. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they had questions for emergency responders.) Then, before or after lunch, the public speakers with numbers will be called in order, each allowed three minutes, but encouraged to use less if their comments are a repeat of what someone else said. (Better to say: “I share the concerns of so-and-so about such-and-such.”)

The Coastal Commission hearing on the 10th is another matter.  There, it is quite possible that each speaker will be allowed only one minute, but at the Coastal Commission, unlike the Planning Commission, it is possible for someone to donate time to someone else, as long as both people are present when the transaction is made.  Murgatroyd Aigletinger, perhaps, would step forward, and say: Archibald and Reginald Skeezix have each donated me a minute.” At that point, the chair will ask Archie and Reggie to identify themselves, and only if they are present, have filed speaker slips, and confirm their status as donators will Murgatroyd get three minutes.

 

 

Could the Porter Ranch Blow-out happen in San Luis Obispo? Is the Pope Catholic?

How Methane Gas Turned California’s Porter Ranch into a Ghost town.

Here is  a sneak preview into the future of San Luis Obispo County if our Board of Supervisors gives into Freeport McMoRan.  It is all here in this article by Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/porter-ranch-california-methane-gas-leak-crisis-412807  

How Methane Gas Turned California’s Porter Ranch into a Ghost town.

 

The Arroyo Grande Oil Field is using the same agencies, the same regulations, the same arguments, the same insane reasoning to get our Board of Supervisors to give them permission to dump/store their own personally manufactured toxic, lethal waste byproducts into an unsecured, highly vulnerable underground holding area in the unincorporated areas of San Luis Obispo County.

If the Board of Supervisors is so inclined to accommodate this activity, and they look like they are despite all the evidence of the unintended consequences unfolding before our eyes, then they need a wake up call.

It must be so comforting and reassuring for some to know that what would otherwise be regarded as criminal activity on par with the manufacture of an underground meth lab with all the hazards, risks, threats of explosions, fire and spills can nonetheless be granted a pre-pardon from any wrongdoing by our Board of Supervisors who seem shamefully more afraid of offending Jubba the Hutt of the energy empire then keeping their promise to those that elected them to serve and protect.

 

Then there are the rest of us that need something more concrete from the Board that shows when push comes to shove they will make the right decision for the right reasons.

 

This is an election year. Three Board seats are up for grabs.

 

Incumbents of which there are two, Arnold and Hill, apparently can’t campaign or tell us where they stand on any issues currently pending before this board and there are enough issues to make your head spin, oil fields, oil trains, toxic sludge on prime A agricultural land, making it all but impossible to judge character and intent. They are all over the map. But never mind, campaign promises tend to be a little flaky at best – easily made – easily broken.

 

So, I think it would behoove us to get something in writing from this Board. Something that would hold up in court if need be. Something that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt who these Board members intend to protect and serve now and in the future.

 

We believe the essential ingredients necessary to secure our safety, health and prosperity in this community is an uninterrupted, consistent and constant supply of clean air, fresh water and fertile soil and we regard inordinate and fugitive amounts of toxic, lethal, chemicals and hazardous waste, manufactured in house or in transit to be a clear and present threat and danger to our health, safety and wellbeing.

 

So, we invite this sitting Board of Supervisors to join us in solidarity and as a declaration of our shared values and worth by calling for:
1) an immediate emergency moratorium/ban on all fresh water extraction in the unincorporated areas of SLO county subject to State and County emergency drought mandates currently in effect, and;

 

2) call for an emergency moratorium on water extraction used exclusively to manufacture toxic waste that contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and a variety of chronic ailments, including bloody noses, headaches, vomiting, rashes, asthma, respiratory and neurological disorders, and;

 

3) the issuance of an emergency prohibition on injection and storage of manufactured hazardous waste and hazardous waste byproducts into subterranean areas that are not in strict accordance with standards set forth in The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

 

This is a very simple, clear, concise and straightforward document that just needs a simple yay or nay from each individual Board member. In which case upon delivery of the emergency moratorium to the Board we will require their response and implementation at the next regularly scheduled BoS meeting. Emergency means act now not later.

 

An emergency moratorium/ban is well within the purview and discretionary powers of this Board. By the same token all that it takes to remove the moratorium/ban is enforcement of the existing laws that guarantee our safety, health and wellbeing.

 

This moratorium/ban is an invitation for the Board to join us and share in building a safe, peaceful, prosperous community we can proudly pass onto the next generation.

 

A community free from the fear of accidents, explosions, fires, chemical spills that threatens primary life forms in our rivers, streams, groundwater and growing fields, free from the fear of suffocating, sickening air our babies must breathe and to avoid at all cost everything that the Porter Ranch community is experiencing right now.

 

We invite the Board to think and share in our mindset of preventing a disaster rather than in how to sustain, mitigate and survive it.

 

By simply removing the cause is all that is needed to prevent immitigable effects from occurring. This moratorium/ban is that preventive measure that proves beyond a reasonable doubt who we can trust to do the right thing for all the right reasons.

 

Porter Ranch residents are now desperately begging and pleading with all the powers that be to help them restore their lives and livelihood to pre-accident conditions, to conditions free of the threat of accidents. Trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

 

We sincerely hope our Board realizes we have no intention of being the next Porter Ranch disaster and we will secure our future investments by insuring, at all costs, our greatest assets, the air, sea, land and water are protected and guaranteed free of predictable and preventable threats to our safety, health and wellbeing.