ThinkProgress

Trump decimates two national monuments in ‘historic action’

It’s the largest-ever reduction in U.S. history.

Natasha Geiling       December 4, 2017

(CREDIT: AP PHOTO/RICK BOWMER, FILE)

Speaking outside of the Utah State Capitol on Monday, President Donald Trump announced the largest-ever reduction of a national monument in the nation’s history, shrinking Bears Ears National Monument by some 1.1 million acres, or nearly 85 percent.

“I know all of you feel blessed to be living among some of the most glorious natural wonders anywhere in the world,” Trump said. “Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. Guess what? They are wrong. The families and communities of Utah know and love this land the best, and you know the best how to take care of your land. You know how to protect it, and you know how best to conserve this land for many generations to come.”

Trump also announced that he would be reducing Grand Staircase-Escalante, another national monument in Utah, to nearly half its original size. He called the move “a very historic action” and criticized previous administrations for abusing the Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to designate areas of federal land as national monuments in order to protect natural, cultural, or scientific features. In total, Trump’s actions on Tuesday will result in the loss of some 2 million acres of national monuments designation.

“Our precious natural treasures must be protected, and they, from now on, will be protected,” Trump said. “Under my administration we will advance that protection through a truly representative process, one that listens to the local communities that know the land the best and cherishes [sic] the land the most.”

American public to President Trump: Leave our national monuments alone

The public comment period for Trump’s monument review has ended, and the response was overwhelming.

The two reductions come after a Department of Interior review, initiated in April, which looked at all national monuments created since 1996. Trump, at the time, said that the review would put an end to “egregious abuse of federal power” that has resulted in a “massive federal land grab.” During the signing ceremony, Trump singled out Bears Ears National Monument as an example of the federal government using its authority to undermine local control over public lands, saying that the monument was designated “over the profound objections of the citizens of Utah.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said that the purpose of the review was to ensure that all stakeholders had a chance to participate in the creation of a national monument. But the review was dogged by accusations of industry-favoritism and a lack of transparency, leading one Nevada representative to describe the process as a “sham” in an interview with ThinkProgress.

In August, Zinke released his recommendations following the review, which suggested that the administration should reduce or change the boundaries of six national monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Grand Staircase-Escalante was designated by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Bears Ears was designated by President Barack Obama in December of 2016, as one of his final major designations as president. Environmentalists and indigenous groups have fought for years to protect Bears Ears, arguing that the area holds numerous sites of historical, cultural, and ecological significance.

Trump’s order on national monuments decried as corporate ‘give-away’

Interior Department given narrow time frame to complete review of monuments.

But Bears Ears is also rich in uranium, and home to the nation’s last operating uranium mill. In his final designation, President Obama chose to leave much of the area’s uranium deposits outside of the monument’s boundaries, but banned new mining operations within the monument. Still, Utah lawmakers wrote to Secretary Zinke in June, arguing that the national monument could hinder the mill’s business and “permanently” eliminate the state’s uranium mining industry.

On Monday, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) thanked Trump for “giving a voice to the people of Utah who for too long have been overlooked in the debate about public lands.” Polling shows that Utah residents are almost evenly split on the issue, though Bears Ears tends to be more controversial than Grand Staircase-Escalate. An October poll commissioned by commissioned by The Salt Lake Tribune and the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics found that 51 percent of Utahans polled in October favored shrinking Bears Ears, but 53 percent opposed breaking up Grand Staircase-Escalante.

During the public comment period for the Interior’s monuments review elicited more than 2.5 million responses, of which 98 percent were supportive of maintaining or expanding current protections for national monuments, according to a Center for Western Priorities analysis. Before Trump’s announcement on Monday, thousands of protesters gathered in Salt Lake City to oppose reducing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

Trump’s decision was immediately met with harsh criticism from environmental and conservation groups, which painted the move as an assault on necessary protections for America’s most sensitive lands.

“The gutting of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante is a violent act, an assault on America’s public lands,” Terry Tempest Williams, a Center for Biological Diversity board member and Utah native, said in a press statement. “With Senator Orrin Hatch by his side, Trump’s is an act of conscious aggression waged against the health and protection of our communities, both human and wild. In a word: criminal.”

The decision will now head to the courts, which will have to decide whether the Antiquities Act gives the president authority to reduce — as well as designate — national monuments. The Navajo Nation has already said that it will challenge Trump’s directive, as have a handful of Democratic attorneys general. Presidents have, in the past, reduced the size of national monuments, though those changes have never been challenged in court.

“President Trump’s attempt to dismember two of America’s most remarkable National Monuments is a blatant attack on the integrity of one of our nation’s oldest and most important conservation laws,” David J. Hayes, executive director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at NYU School of Law and former Interior deputy secretary during both the Obama and Clinton administrations, said in a press statement. “Progressive state attorneys general are on record: the President does not have the authority under the Antiquities Act to override previous Presidents’ decisions to protect special public lands for the benefit of future generations through national monument designations. Only the Congress can do that.”

EcoWatch – By DeSmog      

U.S. Bank Quietly Joins $4 Billion Deal With Dakota Access Owner Declaring End to Oil and Gas Pipeline Loans

U.S. Bank building in downtown Bismark, North Dakota. Randy Hoffman / Flicker

By Sharon Kelly            December 21, 2027

At a shareholder meeting this past spring, U.S. Bank announced it would be the first large American bank to completely stop issuing loans for oil and gas pipeline construction projects.

Environmental groups, indigenous activists and divestment advocates hailed U.S. Bank’s announcement as a triumph.

Yet that triumph—and the bank’s commitment—seems less sure with the news that U.S. Bank has entered into a new $4 billion loan deal with the company behind the contentious Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL).

Divestment Success?

For months, the bank had been under fire for financing the Dakota Access pipeline by providing over a quarter billion dollars worth of funding to its builder, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). Environmentalists famously dropped a banner calling on U.S. Bank to divest from DAPL at the New Years 2017 Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears football game.

The language of the bank’s new policy seemed blunt.

“The company does not provide project financing for the construction of oil or natural gas pipelines,” U.S. Bancorp, parent company of U.S. Bank, wrote in its April 2017 Environmental Responsibility Policy.

Divestment advocates cheered. “We applaud this progressive decision from U.S. Bank,” an Honor the Earth representative said in a statement, as the bank’s new policy made headlines.

Some advocates remained skeptical, however, pointing out that the line of credit extended to Energy Transfer Partners wouldn’t be covered by that language, because it could be considered a loan for the company as a whole, not the more specific “project financing.” And U.S. Bank’s CEO told shareholders that his bank wouldn’t end its existing Energy Transfer Partners deal, saying that instead it would “fulfill that contract and commitment.”

“We know there are always loopholes through which banks will try to pass off responsibility,” Rachel Heaton of Mazaska Talks and a Muckleshoot Tribe member told Yes Magazine, “but we will continue to resist until these banks completely divest from all pipeline and fossil fuel corporations and incorporate the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of Indigenous peoples into their corporate lending structures.”

Even if that specific contract wasn’t going to be torn up, environmental groups hoped that in the future, the bank would limit its funding of fossil fuel projects.

CEO Andy Cecere “strongly implied that the bank would pull back from pipelines and ETP in particular—aside from its obligations under its ‘contract with ETP’ (i.e. its existing credit facility),” Brant Olson, Program Director at ClimateTruth.org, told DeSmog.

U.S. Bank’s new environmental policy added that any new deals the bank did with companies in the oil and gas pipeline industry would have to undergo additional scrutiny, including a look at their environmental record.

“We want to confirm that a firm’s policies and processes are sound and effective as they relate to the environment and the community in which it operates,” the policy adds. “In accordance with our environmental responsibility commitment, we prohibit relationships with customers who participate in any illegal activities.”

Transferring More Money to Energy Transfer Partners

That’s why it was so striking when Energy Transfer Partners quietly announced in a Dec. 1 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that U.S. Bank was part of ETP’s new $4 billion credit deal.

ETP’s projects include numerous controversial fossil fuel pipelines nationwide, including not only Dakota Access, but also Mariner East 2, Rover, Bayou Bridge, and the Energy Transfer Crude Oil pipeline.

Asked whether Energy Transfer Partners had passed muster during the additional due diligence in U.S. Bank’s much-lauded environmental review policy, U.S. Bank’s spokesperson Cheryl Leamon declined to comment. “As a matter of policy, we do not discuss customer relationships,” she told DeSmog in an email.

Environmentalists hoped that this was a chance for U.S. Bank to end its dealings with ETP. StopETP.org, a coalition of national and local environmental and indigenous rights groups, wrote a letter to the bank in November, urging it to use the chance to cut ties with ETP, which was seeking to renew its $4 billion credit line in a deal involving numerous major banks.

But U.S. Bank has apparently refused, said Food and Water Watch senior researcher Dr. Hugh MacMillan, “after having scored praise back in May for its new pipeline finance policy.”

U.S. Bank did not respond when asked about the types of law-breaking that might cross the line and cause a borrower to fail the bank’s new due diligence requirements.

Illegal Activities

The bank’s professed wariness of fossil fuel companies had drawn an angry response from the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance, which had fired off a letter to U.S. Bank protesting the new policy. “This creates the presumption that firms and people involved in these areas, including those providing construction, equipment, materials, services or other support to these operations, are more likely than all others to be ‘bad actors’,” the trade group wrote, “thus requiring a higher level of scrutiny.”

That additional environmental record review was widely expected to be particularly bad news for Energy Transfer Partners, which has an environmental record that includes more than 300 pipeline incidents in the past decade, causing over $67 million dollars in property damage, according to data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

“From January 2010 through June 2017, ETP spilled hazardous liquids near water crossings more than twice as frequently as any other pipeline company in the United States this decade [and w]as responsible for almost 20 percent of all hazardous liquid spills near water crossings,” a recently published report by the Waterkeeper Alliance noted.

In November, one of Energy Transfer Partners’ pipeline projects was was sued by Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency over 13 violations of the state’s environmental laws, including spewing millions of gallons of drilling fluid into the state’s wetlands.

“Among other things, ETP has caused seven industrial spills during the construction of the $4.2 billion natural gas pipeline through Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan,” Reps. Frank Pallone, Jr. and Maria Cantwell, ranking members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Energy and Natural Resources, respectively, wrote in a July 27, 2017 letter to federal regulators decrying ETP’s track record on complying with environmental laws.

The company’s spill record has even drawn concern from investors, with The Street reporting, “‘Energy Transfer seems to have an approach where they stick to the minimum requirements instead of exceeding them,’ Genscape natural gas analyst Colette Breshears said.”

Sunoco Logistics, which merged into ETP last year, had the worst oil spill record of any company in the industry, a 2016 Reuters investigative report found.

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