Army Corps of Engineers Turns Political in Dakota Access Fight
What’s wrong with this AP story from yesterday: “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it’s trying to defuse tensions between Dakota Access pipeline protesters and law enforcement in southern North Dakota, but the pipeline’s developer isn’t cooperating. The agency released a statement late Wednesday imploring Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily stop work in the area where protests against the $3.8 billion pipeline have resulted in more than 400 arrests. The Corps made a similar plea last week, but was also rebuffed.” What’s wrong? It shows that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is no longer a group of engineers. It has been corrupted by the Obama Administration into a political agency. IT’S NOT THE JOB OF ENGINEERS TO WORRY ABOUT OR PLACATE PAID CRIMINALS “PROTESTING” THE DAKOTA PIPELINE! It is the job of law enforcement to deal with the out-of-control, paid criminals who have gathered in North Dakota. We call on Congress to immediately convene hearings into what in the world is going on inside the USACE–and to force them to shut up when it comes to criminal protesters and stick to engineering. We are VERY concerned that the USACE has compromised their role to the point that they should be removed from any kind of regulatory oversight of the Dakota Access project. To their credit, Energy Transfer Partners (building the pipeline) is not backing down and continues to build the pipeline, even in the face of the Obama politicized USACE…
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As soon as Donald Trump secured victory in Tuesday’s presidential election, the hew and cry went up from radical environmentalists that his election spells the end of Mom Earth. Trump is rightly skeptical of claims that mankind is causing a catastrophic warming of the earth–namely because there’s no evidence to support it. No objective “average” temperature data that shows the earth warming up by burning fossil fuels, as is the claim. But global warmers, who have changed their name to climate changers, won’t listen to reason. Their belief in man-made global warming surpasses the fervency of belief by most people in a Supreme Being (i.e. God). Global warming is their religion, and no amount of discourse and debate will convince them otherwise. So when Trump, a “climate denier” as they call him, won–it was for them a disaster. Barack Hussein Obama has been the warmers’ best friend. But there’s a problem with the way Obama achieved his environmental agenda–he did it by fiat. By executive orders. By using executive branch agencies like the EPA and BLM and others to implement his wishes apart from having those wishes enacted in legislation. And what one president can do with executive orders, another can undo with executive orders. Obama’s entire environmental agenda is built on sand–a house of cards. And it’s about to gloriously come crashing down with President Trump. And that fact has warmers sweating…
As MDN reported in June, anti-drilling zealots in Youngstown, OH filed a petition to place a frack ban resolution on the November ballot–for the 6th time (see 
We’ve written plenty in the past about the PA-based radical anti-drilling group called CELDF–Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (
In January 2014, MDN brought you the story that due to incessant nagging from the NJ Sierra Club and the NJ League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters the Pinelands Commission, which oversees a stand of scrub pines in South Jersey, nixed a plan for a new natural gas pipeline to bring cheap, clean, abundant Marcellus Shale natural gas to South Jersey for use by residents and to feed an electric plant a local utility wants to convert from burning coal to natgas (see 
Don’t say we didn’t warn you. On Oct. 20 MDN reported on the link between so-called protesters (i.e. criminals) who have gathered in North Dakota to protest a federally-approved oil pipeline called the Dakota Access Pipeline (see 
In May MDN told you about a group of brave landowners in Wayne County, PA who have had their property rights stolen by the Delaware River Basin Commission (see 
Though often we’re irritated, sometimes we simply marvel at the arrogance of organizations like THE Delaware Riverkeeper. They honestly think they know better than you what kind of energy you should have the right to buy. The people who run the organization (Maya van Rossum, who is THE self-appointed keeper of the Delaware River Basin), irrationally hate all fossil fuels. Even though Maya & company use those fossil fuels every day of their lives. In fact, even though their lives DEPEND on fossil fuels. van Rossum and those who follow her philosophies have settled on a new strategy to try and defeat the use of fossil fuels: stop all new pipeline development. Period. The only way they can do that is to bully and intimidate federal and state agencies–like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Currently it’s FERC in Maya’s cross-hairs. Maya and THE Delaware Riverkeeper are convening a meeting in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club (nice place, we’ve eaten there) called “People’s Hearing Investigating FERC.” You read that right. In an attempt to bully and humiliate the hard-working people at FERC, Maya plans to initiate a media circus to pressure FERC into denying, among other projects, the PennEast Pipeline. She’s billing the event as a hearing for those who “have experienced abuse at the hands of FERC and the pipeline industry.” We’re mulling over the possibility of a hearing into those abused by Maya and THE Delaware Riverkeeper. We thing we’d have a pretty strong case…
Get this. More than 100 so-called protesters (i.e. criminals) had illegally set up camp on PRIVATE PROPERTY–against the landowner’s wishes–in an effort to stop work on the Dakota Access Pipeline project. A large group of police officers, SWAT teams, etc. had to move in to remove the lawbreakers. So what does the group of protesters who claim to worship Mother Earth and are there to protect Mom Earth from being raped by a pipeline do? They set fire to a pile of used tires–emitting the worst kind of fumes and emissions into the air, polluting everything around. They also torched equipment used to lay the pipeline. One of the “protesters” produced a .38-caliber pistol and fired three times at police officers. Yeah, that’s the peace-loving, earth-protecting THUGS in North Dakota–most of whom arrived from out-of-state and are paid to be there. Hired thugs engaging in thuggery. Why mention this story on MDN? Because as we previously wrote, one of the leaders of these thugs has promised to bring the fight to the Marcellus/Utica next…
Inspired by the criminal actions of eco-terrorists in North Dakota (see 
A new group called Protect Our Pennsylvania launched on Tuesday at a rally in Harrisburg–at the State Capitol. The purpose of the group is to oppose and reign in the currently legal right of pipeline companies to use eminent domain to force landowners to accept a pipeline across their land. This is a tough issue for us. We have often stated this philosophy: I won’t tell you that you must allow drilling, or a pipeline, and you don’t tell me I can’t allow it. We think that’s a consistent and fair philosophy. But what do you do with a pipeline when only one or two people are blocking its route? We’ve always said, make it worth their while to allow (pay them). We’ve also said there may be times when eminent domain must (very reluctantly) be used. It is an ongoing “wisdom of Solomon” kind of issue for us, with no clear answer. So is this new group, Protect Our Pennsylvania, a group of landowners honestly concerned about their property rights? Alas, we don’t think so. Their leader, Eric Friedman, has ties to the radical Sierra Club, which means this is just one more organization pretending to be something it is not. It is, we are convinced, populated with anti-fossil fuelers and not just mom and pop landowners…
The uber-arrogant Gina McCarthy, Administrator/Dictator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, has a message for those of us who don’t believe in man-made global warming: drop dead. If you happen to disagree with Gina, don’t bother phoning her up or stopping her someplace on K Street to have a discussion about it, because she’s “not talking to climate deniers” any more. She thinks we’re part of the Flat Earth Society for not adhering to her climate orthodoxy. Gee Gina, I’m so hurt…
The New Jersey Division of the Rate Counsel (NJDRC) is a state government agency responsible for representing the interests of residents, businesses and other rate payers in dealing with regulated public utilities and insurance firms. Apparently the NJDRC filed a so-called analysis with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in September slamming the need and cost recovery plan for the PennEast Pipeline, a $1 billion, 118-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that will get built from Dallas (Luzerne County), PA to Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington (Mercer County), NJ. PennEast has responded to that analysis with an independent report written by Concentric Energy Advisors (full copy below). The Concentric report refutes (i.e. obliterates) the “incorrect assumptions” made in the NJDRC comments to FERC…