Congressman Raul Grijalva: The Keystone Saga Can Still End Happily - Here's How

[ProSense]

The Keystone Saga Can Still End Happily - Here's How

by Raul Grijalva

As Kossacks and a lot of other Americans know, being against the big, ugly Keystone pipeline deal has nothing to do with wanting to live in caves or get rid of civilization as we know it. In fact, we’re opposed to Keystone because we don’t want to live in caves or get rid of civilization as we know it. It’s important to remember what’s at stake here. Opening up a big patch of dirty tar sands to years of development is the last thing our environment needs. The rest is industry window dressing.

A lot of people already know this, and the environmental risks of a long pipeline carrying heavy sludge across the Great Plains should be enough to shut the whole thing down. But the story doesn’t stop there. There’s corporate influence-peddling, years of bad science passed off as the last word, contractors failing to disclose their conflicts of interest, and industry inflating its job creation numbers. It’s actually a pretty interesting story. Follow me past the fold to hear how I’m trying to help write a happy ending.

Last week I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times highlighting an important part of the case against Keystone. In a nutshell, approving it would send a terrible signal about how the federal government weighs science against corporate interest in making environmental decisions. The State Department has been contracting out the job of assessing Keystone’s environmental impacts since 2008, and (to cut a long story short) they haven’t been picky about who they’ve hired.

Friends of the Earth has a great timeline of all the problems that process has created. If you’re not familiar with the history, take a look. It speaks volumes. The State Department doesn’t have much in-house experience doing environmental science, and its reliance on outside expertise has led it to hire not one but two companies – Cardno ENTRIX and then Environmental Resources Management (ERM) – that have done lots of work for TransCanada, Keystone’s parent company. That wouldn’t be a huge problem if they hadn’t both refused to disclose that work until after the contracts were signed.

These conflicts of interest go back a ways. In October 2011, the New York Times made it clear exactly how flagrant the choice of Cardno ENTRIX really was:

The (State) department allowed TransCanada, the company seeking permission to build the 1,700-mile pipeline from the oil sands of northern Alberta to the Gulf Coast in Texas, to solicit and screen bids for the environmental study. At TransCanada’s recommendation, the department hired Cardno Entrix, an environmental contractor based in Houston, even though it had previously worked on projects with TransCanada and describes the pipeline company as a “major client” in its marketing materials.

While it is common for federal agencies to farm out environmental impact studies, legal experts said they were surprised the State Department was not more circumspect about the potential for real and perceived conflicts of interest on such a large and controversial project.

So what happened? The State Department inspector general was asked to look at whether the choice of Cardno ENTRIX was improper. The IG slapped them on the wrist and said no big deal – even though, as the New York Times explained, its own report found the following:

The State Department failed “to perform any independent inquiry to verify Cardno Entrix’s organizational conflict of interest statements.”

TransCanada was not asked by the State Department to view and certify Cardno Entrix’s conflict of interest statements.

Overall, the review found that the State Department’s “limited technical resources expertise and experience” limited (the) environmental review process. The officers in charge of the review, according to the report, had “little or no” experience with environmental law “and had to seek training and learn quickly on the job.”

This suggested to me and some of my colleagues that the State Department wasn’t the right agency to be in charge of this process. (In fact, the only reason the State Department is in charge of this process is that Congress hasn’t stepped in to supersede an outdated executive order.) We thought maybe, at best, the State Department would learn an important lesson and hire a better contractor to write a final environmental impact statement.

Well, the State Department – at TransCanada’s urging – hired ERM. You can guess what happened next. Take it away, Buzzfeed:

TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone Pipeline, never disclosed its previous work with a contractor the company later recommended for a key environment study, according to documents obtained by an environmental activist group. <. . .>

Ties between ERM and TransCanada have been reported before, as has ERM’s contention that it had no conflict with TransCanada. What the new documents show, environmental groups who reviewed them say, is that TransCanada recommended ERM as one of the firms that had no significant conflict when it came to evaluating the environmental impact of Keystone. The critics say they also show the State Department has gotten itself into the same trouble with contractor selection it did the last time it hired a consultant for Keystone, a process that led to criticism from the Inspector General’s office. State denies that there was anything wrong with the process.

Just last week, the State Department inspector general . . . slapped them on the wrist. Again. The Wall Street Journal – hardly a launching pad for anti-corporate broadsides – noted how soft the IG report really was, considering its findings:

The inspector general report released Wednesday said the State Department had “created misperceptions” about ERM’s disclosures by failing to fully explain the company’s relationship to TransCanada earlier.

The report said the State Department's handling of ties between the two companies suggested “ERM had not provided all required information to the Department and that ERM and the Department were attempting to conceal conflicts of interest.”

Supposedly, all this is a matter of “misperception.”

Well, I don’t think so. I think the public perception that this is a Bush-era throwback is spot on. That’s why I recently asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the State Department process for choosing contractors is broken and needs to be fixed. I’m proud to have the support of Sen. Barbara Boxer, the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and one of the best friends the environment has ever had in Congress. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.

You can help. If you think the State Department, and our whole federal government, should do a lot better than we’ve seen so far, make your voice heard. This is the last week the State Department is accepting public comments on whether Keystone is in the national interest. Submit your public comment now and make sure we start putting science ahead of corporate demands once and for all. I’m proud to be a leader in this fight, but I’m just one voice. So are you. So are each of us. And we’re always stronger when we work together.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/05/1282313/-The-Keystone-Saga-Can-Still-End-Happily-Here-s-How

Timeline: http://www.foe.org/news/archives/2013-09-a-polluted-process-keystone-xl-the-state-department







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[KamaAina]

1. Raul rocks!

Who would have thought that one of our very finest progressive reps would be a 'Zonie? Maybe he'll be governor one day. One can only hope!

[panader0]

2. Grijalva is one of the very few good guys in Az politics

One of the most progressive in Congress.

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t