Over the past several years, thousands of Oregonians have had their land targeted for pipeline development by multiple LNG and pipeline companies. One of these projects, NW Natural’s Palomar pipeline, would connect to the Bradwood LNG terminal. As the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) conducted its review of this 223-mile pipeline, it became clear that this lead permitting agency was not notifying affected parties of key meetings.
At one meeting, I witnessed multiple landowners attend only because their neighbors or CRK organizers had informed them that FERC was holding a hearing, only to find that the pipeline went directly through their farms! One landowner approached me and told me how incredibly frustrating this was because he was completely unprepared to testify about the impacts to his land. After this happened on multiple occasions, at multiple hearings, we decided that it was time to take action.
Columbia Riverkeeper and Willamette Riverkeeper requested the address lists for the Palomar pipeline under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because the company refused to publish the list (unlike Oregon LNG, which did publish its list), and many people complained to us that they did not receive notice from FERC about Palomar or other pipelines. Our LNG coalition wanted the mailing lists to ensure that FERC was doing its job to notify people, and if they weren’t, we wanted to warn people.
Initially, FERC responded to our request by saying that there was no list of landowners. This was an obvious and clumsy lie. How then, we asked, did FERC do mailings to notify people of meetings? After further consideration (and being ordered by federal court to be questioned by our attorneys), FERC then admitted to having a list, but refused to provide the list saying that they wanted to protect landowners’ privacy! FERC blacked out all the names of individuals.
In 2009, in federal court, we successfully argued that, if FERC cared about privacy so much, then why does FERC share the list with Palomar? After all, Palomar pipeline (a project of NW Natural gas and Transcanada) sends letters about eminent domain to landowners that they often find threatening.
Incidentally, after our request, NW Natural’s Palomar project wrote FERC a letter telling FERC not to release the lists to Riverkeeper. (attached) Clearly, the company was seeking to keep people in the dark. They could have released the list at any time.
During the course of our case, we discovered that FERC had mishandled hundreds of FOIA requests over recent years. Yet, FERC continued to refuse to release the list that should obviously have been public information. This summer, a federal court ordered FERC to release the list to Columbia and Willamette Riverkeeper.
The Court stated that “FOIA’s purpose is to pierce the veil of administrative secrecy and … open agency action to the light of public scrutiny.”
FERC decided to appeal this decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Over the ensuing months, they changed their minds and agreed to produce the list, which we recently received. They agreed to withdraw their appeal and settle the case with CRK and WRK.
It is outrageous that our groups had to sue FERC to obtain this list.
It’s even more outrageous that so many meetings and hearings have already occurred where the public’s voice has been muffled by a secretive and botched process. At any time, either FERC or Palomar could have released the list and saved us all the time and effort. Their refusal to do so indicates that they do not want an open, transparent process.
For Palomar, the more people learn about the impacts of the project – not just on family farms, forests, vineyards, and fishing grounds, but also on our public lands and rivers – the more resistance grows. Beyond being a severe disruption to private landowners, the project will clearcut hundreds of acres across the Mt. Hood National Forest and harm hundreds streams and rivers, including the Columbia River at the Bradwood LNG terminal.
The list shows over 1500 names of families who will be impacted by the project, but the real story of the list is that there are millions of Oregonians who are also at risk of losing their public resources to this imported fossil fuel energy scheme. It’s time for FERC to stop rubberstamping LNG projects, and for NW Natural gas to stop pushing LNG on Oregonians who neither need it nor want it.
-Dan Serres, Conservation Director Columbia Riverkeeper
[...] This action follows a recent victory for Columbia Riverkeeper and landowners along the Palomar Pipel…. Against NW Natural’s wishes, and ordered by federal court, a list of over 1500 impacted landowners threatened by the development of the Palomar Pipeline has now become public. [...]