By Andy May
Update: Unfortunately, the Texas Supreme Court declined to review the court of appeals decision that the California governments do not have sufficient minimum contacts with Texas. This means the court cannot intervene in the case. However, the lower appeals court did say, according to the Texas Civil Justice League:
“The court of appeals described in great detail Pawa’s involvement in recruiting plaintiffs for the lawsuit, providing an anatomy of an orchestrated and premediated lawfare campaign. … TCJL’s brief called out this outrageous behavior for what it is: a concerted effort to use the courts to effect policy changes that they cannot achieve by the appropriate constitutional methods: the ballot box and the legislative process.”
Original post:
I’ve written before about the ongoing war being waged against ExxonMobil by far-left greedy tobacco lawyers like Mathew Pawa and environmental zealots like Naomi Oreskes and the leaders of the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). You can find these posts here, here, here, and here.
The tobacco lawsuits worked because tobacco does cause cancer, and cancer has a measurable effect on people and governments due to the additional medical costs and premature deaths it causes. To make matters worse, the tobacco companies withheld information they had on the dangers of smoking from the public. These two facts led to Matthew Pawa and the other tobacco lawyers winning their cases.
The idea that Pawa, cities in California, and UCS have used to sue ExxonMobil is based on their claim that ExxonMobil knew about the dangers of climate change and withheld this information from the public and should pay as a result. But as I explain in my last book (pages 158-170), ExxonMobil published all their climate studies and had employees on every side of the issue who engaged in lively debates about climate change, its possible dangers, and its possible human origins. Further, unlike tobacco, no significant negative effects of recent climate changes (man-made or otherwise) have been observed or measured. The whole debate is over who is projecting the future more accurately, the alarmists or the skeptics, and so far, no one is winning that argument, everyone has been wrong so far.
So, are these spurious lawsuits accusing ExxonMobil of damage that does not exist, causing measurable harm to ExxonMobil and the great state of Texas? ExxonMobil is countersuing the cities and the tobacco lawyers, so we will find out! The lawsuit is before the Supreme Court of Texas and the petition is here. It claims that the lawsuits harmed and violated the rights of Texas and Texans, as well as ExxonMobil.
The lawsuit specifically says the tort lawsuits, by Pawa and several California cities, including San Francisco, targeted the free speech rights of ExxonMobil and its executives, as well as ExxonMobil publications like their famous Outlook for Energy annual report.
It is interesting that while cities claimed that the dangers of climate change are certain in their lawsuits, they claimed in their municipal bond offerings that the dangers of climate change were uncertain. ExxonMobil requested discovery and commenced a Rule 202 proceeding to investigate claims and preserve evidence. ExxonMobil is supported in these suits by Governor Abbott of Texas, the Texas Oil and Gas Association, and Texans for Lawsuit Reform.
Can ExxonMobil sue a California city in Texas? Governor Abbott says the following in his letter to the court:
“[T]he energy industry is vital to economic growth in Texas, employing hundreds of thousands of Texans and contributing billions of dollars a year in taxes and royalties. … Petitioner is an oil-and-gas company headquartered in Texas. Respondents are California officials and local governments, plus a Massachusetts lawyer, who are allegedly using tort lawsuits in California courts as a pretext to suppress the speech of eighteen Texas-based energy companies on the subject of climate and energy policies. By engaging in such ‘lawfare,’ respondents have flouted ‘principles of state sovereignty and comity [dictating] that a State may not impose economic sanctions on violators of its laws with the intent of changing the tortfeasors’ lawful conduct in other States.’* More importantly, for present purposes, they have subjected themselves to the jurisdiction of Texas courts. When out-of-state officials try to project their power across our border, as respondents have done by broadly targeting the speech of an industry crucial to Texas, they cannot use personal jurisdiction to scamper out of our courts and retreat across state lines.”
Link
This is going to be fun to watch.
I’m an ex-employee of Exxon, an ExxonMobil stockholder, and terribly biased in this fight. So, sue me!
*BMW of N. Am., Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 572 (1996).
$$$!
Discovery!!!
World health expert Dr Rosling conclusively proved the case for fossil fuels in 2010 and here’s his BBC video to prove it.
This takes just 4 minutes of your time and proves that Human health and wealth has improved every decade since 1810 to the present day.
1810 life expectancy was under 40 years, but today is about 73 years. 1 billion people in 1810 and yet 7.8 billion today.
When will these fools WAKE UP?
Precisely and when you challenge most climate changers with their CO2 meme ignorance and the benefits of fossil fuels they inevitably fall back on exhaust pollution slaughtering us all. No idea about real pollution. Well if that’s true how come we’re living longer than ever?
Australians living longer than ever – ABC News
They really are a bunch of paranoid ignoramuses parroting their teachers. Easy game so much so you have to shrug off most and reserve it for the worst loudmouths amongst them.
Hans Rosling is my idea of a genius and hero in how he showed off all that data in so many ways. And yet the socialists can think of nothing better than to cripple all that progress, to freeze the status quo and redistribute what exists, instead of letting markets continue increasing wealth and health. I cannot understand such shortsighted selfishness except as a manifestation of power-mad greed.
It is time the fossil industry struck back against the fiction writers.
If you read Saturday’s WSJ, you’d think that fossil fuel power generation was the cause of rolling blackouts in the USA and that more RE was the solution. The fiction writers are sitting on the editorial boards of the MSM.
what’s mysterious is- why is the WSJ part of the MSM? Makes no sense.
I agree, but the news section of WSJ is filled with mainstream writers who slant their news toward the far-left. The Editorial section of the WSJ is very conservative, like most of the U.S. WSJ is like Fox News and there is a wall between the two sections, they don’t communicate with each other. CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and that ilk have no such wall. News and editorial stuff is all the same.
I agree.
Where did this come from? I did not post this in response to May.
I disagree. I thought the article clearly pointed out that the rush to shut down fossil fuel generation without regard to the reliability of the grid system was the cause of rolling blackouts.
As well as the foolish rush to shut down nuclear plants prematurely.
and the utilities
Recently Willis Eschenbach also tried to find their so called climate emergency and found ZIP to worry about.
Extreme weather events killed many thousands of people a hundred years ago but today that number has fallen by 95+%. And in 1920 the population was about 1.7 billion, but today that population is 7.8 billion people. THINK ABOUT IT?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
Yep, Neville, the population graph resembles a hockey stick.
Gums sends…
BTW, the major way the tobacco lawsuits were won was what amounted to ex post facto laws, and bills of attainder against the tobacco companies. That is not excusing the behavior of the tobacco companies, but organized theft by the several states is less excusable.
Lawfare should be dangerous, and the major reason such operations are done is to impose costs on the defendant to deal with a clearly bogus claim. As the activists envision no consequences for making unsupportable claims, they will continue to do so.
Judges, as lawyers, are extremely loathe to sanction other lawyers.
“bills of attainder”
More like letters of marque and reprisal!
US Constitution,
Section 9: Powers Denied Congress
“No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
And by the 14th Amendment it is generally considered that the US Constitution applies to the individual States.
The primary purpose of the legal system is to employ and to enrich lawyers. Any actual justice resulting from the process is purely incidental.
Surely, the compulsory prefix for Lawyers is, “bloodsucking”? Re John Hammond et al in Jurassic Park of course!!! My experience of lawyers is that they care little or nothing for the law, right or wrong, or justice, they merely focus on their bank-balance & pension-pots!!! Then again I’m biased & love it!!! AtB.
Fight fire with fire!
An eye for an eye.
Everybody gets a bill of attainder.
Crush the opponent and crush the judicial branch!
Wealth and health has improved all over the world since 1810 and even more so since 1970.
African ( 53 countries) population in 1970 was 363 million people and life expectancy was about 46 years.
Today Africa’s population is 1.4 billion and life expectancy is about 64 years. Unbelievable but true and Africa also suffered higher death rates from HIV/AIDS over the last 50 years than any other continent.
Why don’t these clueless fools look up the DATA for themselves? Certainly our recent climate couldn’t be better for Humans and ALL of the DATA proves the case.
Incredibly this only takes a few minutes of your time and so we must ask why have these fools ignored the UN DATA for decades?
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFR/africa/population
“Incredibly this only takes a few minutes of your time and so we must ask why have these fools ignored the UN DATA for decades?”
Simply because the data at the time didn’t reflect the political objectives of the UN, that is why the UN IPCC was created, to simply manufacture the necessary “evidence” to enable them to take power & control of the World, which as anyone with an ounce of common sense knows, would be a total global disaster!!! The first act of the IPCC was to essentially ignore all natural factors as a significant influence upon climate, the rest is then as they say, easy-peasy!!! The political Left are very patient, & always have been!!!
From the article: “It is interesting that while cities claimed that the dangers of climate change are certain in their lawsuits, they claimed in their municipal bond offerings that the dangers of climate change were uncertain.”
Which just shows the alarmists have no evidence demonstrating that CO2 is a danger to anything.
I’m looking forward to the lawsuit. I like the “free speech” angle.
Exxon should also introduce the “no evidence” angle, since there is no evidence CO2 is harmful, as the alarmists claim.
I suspect that will come out during discovery, when it is revealed that the alarmists knew from the beginning that the data did not support their claims.
Yes and the climategate emails could find new life and all kinds of other embarrassments exposed.
I suspect that sadly, all the authors of those fraudulent/corrupt emails will be happily retired on big fat taxpayer funded pension, answerable to no one, & will never be brought to book!!! As said before, they will simply invoke the plausibility clause, “we were just basing our opinions on the best available science at the time!”. Easy, simple!!!
Depends largely on who the lawyers and judges are , they don’t like to go against the msm and social media opinions of the UN,EU,IPCC or govt mandates .
Texas court.
Fight back, All oil companies stop selling all fuel to cities that try this on .Let them survive on their own all it takes is a united fossil fuel industry .
See how long they last and to resume fuel supplies a contract to pay more to make up for the loss of business.
A united fossil fuel industry is a drawback because of antitrust, if Chevron just quits servicing its 20% of the gas market, it would create havoc in a week.
If Chevron acted on their own, they would permanently lose that 20% of market share to those companies that kept on selling.
If Chevron coordinated with other oil companies, they would be arrested.
ah, but what if they manipulated the lawsuit so that the courts had to order them to shut down operations.
I mean it would only last for about five seconds before someone would have a “Wait! What?” moment.
But I fail to see how they oil companies can be held to fault if the removal of their product is unthinkable, and lethal.
The lawyers coming after them don’t want them to stop producing, they just want them to hand them wads of cash.
Bad idea ! ….Would result in government takeover of the oil industry within weeks, so not something Oil Industry executives can really consider.
Finally, someone is fighting back.
A couple years back in a different deposition, Exxon at least minimally asked to see the correspondences that attorney Matt Pawa and Naomi Oreskes were involved in. You can bet those two would never say, “Why, sure, knock yourselves out, we have nothing to hide.”
You’re badly out of date. We lost.
SCOTX Declines Review in Exxon Mobil Corp. v. City of San Francisco, et al. | Texas Civil Justice League (tcjl.com)
Thanks Russ, but since this occurred on Feb. 18, I would not say “badly out of date.” It is only one day. But I will update the post.
RICO time…
It’s way past time to go full-Chevron on these @$$holes!
https://www.chevron.com/ecuador
Huh? I knew ciggies were no good in the sixties when I was in Primary (Grade) School, and declined offers of a puff apart from once (when I blew instead of sucked – who knew?). As a self-righteous early teen, I nagged my parents to quit smoking, and that was the early 70s. Who didn’t know, and when didn’t they know it? Pretending that “nobody knew nuthin’ ” until heroic activists exposed the link to various illnesses is a nonsense from at least the 60s.
Right- I knew many people who died of lung cancer and throat cancer way back. All were heavy smokers. It was common knowledge that smoking caused cancer. Even the smokers knew the threat but they wouldn’t quit. I once went to the VA hospital in Albany, NY with my dad in the mid ’60s to visit a friend of his who had been smoking stogie cigars since WWI. He was in a big ward- all had cancer from smoking. In the lobby of the hospital was a glass case with cross sections of the lungs of 2 people. One was of a heavy smoker who died of lung cancer. His lungs looked black like charcoal. The other person died of something other than cancer. His lungs looks pink. As of seeing that I decided I’d never smoke cigarettes. The fact that the tobacco companies denied this connection doesn’t mean that almost everybody knew the truth. But that sad story has nothing to do with fossil fuel companies since the science ain’t settled and in fact there is good evidence that CO2 is a wonderful thing- not a pollutant.
Henry Ford campaigned against smoking in the 30’s. Most people who smoked ignored the warnings. The mesothelioma/asbestos epidemic was largely a result of smokers being exposed to friable asbestos. If you were a heavy smoker, your chances of getting mesothelioma were 6 times that of a non-smoker. That was ignored in the rush to cash in.
I smoked from age 12 up to age 35 in 1983. In 1964 I and all other Americans were put on notice that tobacco would be detrimental to our health with the addition of U.S. Surgeon General warning labels on every pack of cigarettes. At age 73, my health is good because a growing family responsibility made me quit that particular obsessive/compulsive behavior.
This obsession with 400 ppm of CO2 and 1800 parts per billion (1.8ppm) of methane is puzzling. As I understand it, several billion years ago, prior to the rise of photosynthetic micro-organisms about 2 billion years ago which oxygenated our air and oxidized our planet, the atmosphere comprised, inter alia, SEVERAL % each of methane (20x more powerful a GHG as CO2) and CO2. That is, 20,000 ppm of each, give or take. Yet the seas didn’t boil, Venus 2 didn’t arise, and conditions were seemingly perfect for anaerobes and evolving photosynthetic aerobes. Conversely, the rise of plants, which took vast quantities of atmospheric CO2 and turned it into coal and oil (thanks!), dropping CO2 levels by a factor of a hundred, didn’t turn the earth into a snowball. Yet here we are talking low hundreds of ppm CO2 and parts per BILLION of methane leading us to certain doom. What gives? Has anybody understood the science at all?
“This obsession with 400 ppm of CO2 and 1800 parts per billion (1.8ppb) of methane “, there watch the units, I know it was just a typo!!! 😉
climate science is 1% science and 99% politics
link
It’s reasonable to ask why the plaintiffs, being obviously aware of the ‘evils’ of fossil fuels, continue to use them.
Obviously, the plaintiffs, fine upstanding people that they are, agree with Judge Alsup that the benefits of fossil fuels far exceed any hypothetical harms that may accrue in a century from now. Surely, otherwise, they would strive to do without them.
…cancer has a measurable effect on people and governments due to the additional medical costs and premature deaths it causes.
___________________________________________
No it doesn’t. The sooner you die the less cost to society as a whole.
If tobacco use cuts off ten years of a person’s life, it also cut off ten years of medical expenses.
If you dispute that, you have to show that death by lung cancer or heart failure is more expensive than lingering in a hospice waiting to die from old age while attached to all the life support equipment that money can buy
i’d upvote that 1000 times, but it won’t let me.
Lingering in a hospice or residential care home, slowly going gaga through dementia, losing all ones dignity & personal pride, losing their grip on reality, having practically no quality of life, becoming mere echoes of their former selves, yes, what a wonderful way to go & end ones days!!! NOT!!!
Also, forgot to add, to my knowledge all hospitals public & private, have powerful back-up generators powered by diesel fuel should the main power fail. What will the eco-bunnies suggest as a back-up energy source in the future for reliable back-up. Personally, I don’t believe that Hydrogen is appropriate, being the most volatile & explosive substance in the Universe – so far!!!
My father used to say…
All those health nuts jogging around town will be wondering why ?
as they lay in their hospital bed at 80, dying from NOTHING !
Yeah, its the old: “I gave up smoking, drinking and running around with loose women and here I am at age 90 dying of nothing.”
It’s the 10 years of taxes that they really miss 🙂
Retirees don’t pay much in taxes.
For income taxes, property taxes, etc. I pay about the same as I did while earning a living, but I make almost as much retired as I did working.
Sales taxes, etc., less, but that is a smaller % than the other two.
So you are correct, but only marginally, in my case.
Depends on the taxes one is talking about and on the retirees.
The retiree whose only source of income is social security might end up paying next to nothing in income taxes, however income is not the only taxes people pay. if they own a home, they’re still paying property taxes. If they still drive, they’re paying taxes on their fuel and to use certain bridges and roads (IE tolls). Every time they buy non-grocery consumer goods in the store, they’re paying sales taxes, if they consume certain sin products (alcohol, tobacco, pot, etc) they pay sin taxes, there’s taxes built into most utility bills, etc.
And for retirees who saved a good portion of their working years income into IRAs and 401ks, have pensions, and/or are still working (even if only part time) to make ends meet, they can be paying as much or even more in income taxes than they were in their working years (when they were getting tax breaks for putting money into their IRAs and 401ks)
retirees pay taxes, and often more in taxes then one might think, even when they’re pay less overall than when they were working.
If it weren’t for cigarettes, the SS trust fund would have gone bust years ago.
Thank our for smoking.
Correct
Both my parents passed in last 18 months after a very long period in care due to dementia, basically old age.
Dad for one wished for cancer when he could still think.
The money both paid for long term care support was at most 1/10 of the real cost.
When it’s my turn I want one of those astronaut pills.
Gently off to sleep
Exxon Mobile and Chevron should just announce they are going to suspend selling Carbon based fuels in jurisdictions that they are being sued, or directly to entities that are suing them. Maybe a first step is any direct sales to the state county or city governments that are suing them.
The courts can hardly sanction them for ceasing the conduct they are being sued for.
Exxon etc should do that.
Stop supplying those states with substantial “renewables”, and anti fossil policies.
Those without power in the UK after the last storms would be delighted with such measures.
Hearing the whinging and moaning makes you realise just how people are divorced from a reality.
If something becomes unavailable even temporarily and they no longer have anything else but an open fire to sit around in blankets and warm clothes..wow the hue and cry!
ie, lots of electricity generation depends on oil, gas, coal while lots of home central heating even using gas and oil depends on electricity to make it all work…
If Exxon and Chevron did as you recommend, the only thing that would happen would be the other oil companies would gladly take over Exxon and Chevron’s market share. The only thing the consumers would notice would be the need to drive to different gas stations.
Even that would not be for long, as new franchisers would buy the stations of the now bankrupt Exxon and Chevon franchisers, re-brand them and open them back up for business.
They should ask for a supply agreement with the Govt. agencies that contracts out any liability.
“due to the additional medical costs and premature deaths”
you can’t win when you cede that much ground at the start.
The Skeptics have only claimed the Alarmist are wrong …full stop … and reality has proven them right … So it’s not correct to claim “both sides are wrong” … Are you in the middle here … seems like you don’t think you are a Skeptic ?
The statement only referred to projections into the future. I don’t know of a prediction made by either the skeptics or the alarmists that turned out to be accurate. Some have said that climate in the future will not be significantly different than “today.” Where “today” was the 1990s or the 2000s, and they were correct. But I didn’t count that sort of prediction.
The full quote is:
That isn’t what the “debate” is over. Not even close. First of all, there is no debate now because the Climate Liars shut it down long ago, realizing they could never win. What we have now is essentially a war between those who want to impose their anti-fossil fuel, anti-human, anti-science, and anti-democratic ideology, based on a Big Lie, on everyone. Skeptics/Climate Realists would love for it to be a debate over science, because we know that the effect of manmade CO2 on climate is small, and of little or no consequence. Then, the debate would be over how much longer the warmup from the LIA will continue, or indeed if it has already come to an end. Actual science vs fake science and lies.
A prediction is only a prediction, when you predict that something is going to change?
That’s absurd.
Andy,
I still have to respectfully disagree with this statement. When one posits an hypothesis, the burden is on them to provide sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis.There is no burden (or shouldn’t be ideally) on a skeptic to negate or prove the hypothesis is wrong. In other words, no matter how many bad or wrong alternatives skeptics may come up with, alarmists can’t argue that skeptics being wrong is proof that the alarmists are right.
I think it’s fairly evident that all or at least most of the dire predictions made by alarmists up to this point have been wrong so far. and skeptics have these facts to support their skepticism.However, I think that it is completely irrelevant whether predictions about the future by skeptics are right or not because the burden is on the alarmists to prove their hypothesis is right, not on skeptics to prove it wrong.
most of the dire predictions made by alarmists up to this point have been wrong so far
Oh, come on man. The Arctic will be ice free all summer long, and children won’t even know what snow is; you are calling these predictions wrong? Just wait until the year 3535, they will all be proven correct.
Phil, OK, I agree. Most skeptics, including me, refrain from making predictions and prefer to point out that the alarmist predictions are wrong. That is the debate, as you and Bruce point out.
“The whole debate is over who is projecting the future more accurately“
And that’s were you get it 100% wrong. It’s not the skeptics job or position to make projections into the future. What the skeptics do (and frankly all they need do) is point out that the alarmist have completely failed in their projections and thus are wrong. No “alternate” projections from the skeptics is required to do that.
If you claim x will happen, I don’t have to claim y will happen instead. all I have to do is say, “prove it”. The burden is on the one making the claim to show that their claim is true, the burden isn’t others to come up with “more accurate” alternative claims.
.. it’s all about the money, only the money!!
Of course Greta and her ilk are utterly wrong. The “elite” who pander to the cause also very likely know this.
However, the current power structure gives the “ilk” access to dollars (however long that lasts).
I am in no way opposed to sustainable energy and although, personally, I’m an ecstatic and dinosaur petrol-head I am happy to say that if cheap and available electricity was able to rapidly charge up an electric car then I would be equally ecstatic.
“…if cheap and available electricity was able to rapidly charge up an electric car then I would be equally ecstatic.”
Would you? Even after Felicity Ace and Euroferry Olympia?
Minor news stories, I assure you. The BIG story will be when EVs parked in a high rise building underground parking lot burst into flames so hot it melts the steel support beams, and the building collapses the way the World Trade Center did.
Tobacco use is a RISK FACTOR for cancer. It cannot be a definitive cause for the simple reason that there’s a non-zero number of tobacco users who’ve lived out their lives having never had cancer. And for that matter, there’s a non-zero number of non-users who’ve had cancer multiple times.
As I’ve said before, for everyone who dies in the cold due to fuel poverty, the funeral bill should be sent to Naomi Oreskes.
Why does Exxon not go after some of the people suing them to prove they, themselves, are personally responsible for any alleged damage? Exxon produces the oil, they use it (prove they drove ICE vehicles and used items made from oil) so it is they that should be prosecuted if they knowingly still used oil, or oil produced items, after the time they started proceedings. More aggression needed so these people can’t hide behind a corporate legal action, especially if Exxon goes after individuals (and which of them haven’t used some form of oil? None I am guessing) (A bit like a gunmaker; he produces but someone else pulls the trigger).
“….based on their claim that ExxonMobil knew about the dangers of climate change…”
So, several decades ago, ExxonMobil settled the science. Sure, yuh… Then I guess we can let the IPCC all go home. Job done.
Even if ExxonMobil’s countersuit goes nowhere, it is good to see that the company is pushing back. The industry needs to learn the hard lesson that appeasement will never work against the unsound and (so far) relentless claims of climate harm.
It’s about time. The Teenage Super Sleuths made a Video that is a Lawsuit Ready review of the Science. All Exxon Lawyers need to do is use this video as a guidepost for their lawsuits.
Complete Global Warming Science Fair Project
https://youtu.be/ZUVqZKBMF7o
Nice video (just needs the CO2 lags temperature fix done — see top comment below video).
Thank you for sharing.
Strong evidence that the video is accurate is the “OVER THE TARGET” badge of honor bestowed by youtube (the blue “Context” blah, blah, blah banner beneath video control window).🙂
The same attorneys suing and judges allowing this never ending charade are currently using and benefiting from all sorts of petroleum based products. It’s just a slight bit beyond hypocritical into madness territory.
It would be the most beautiful and poetic justice to impoverish these ambulance chasing kleptomaniacs who are trying to destroy the very same energy industry they use every day to support their fat lazy lives.
Am I right to believe democracy takes over power from activism? But much more importantly common sense strikes back.
Can’t we have the articles appear in larger font when printed for these tired old eyes?
If you are on a Windows platform, Ctrl+’+’ will increase the font size automatically.
(Press the Ctrl key and the ‘+’ key at the same time.)
Environmental lawyers do not look into the future effects of their claims before making their claims, which exposes their greed but is also expensively stupid.
In the 1980’s, The City of Santa Cruz CA sued the City of Monterey CA over a sewage treatment plant’s construction. Santa Cruz claimed that secondary treatment of sewage was insufficient and tertiary treatment was needed to prevent sewage pollution from crossing the 40 mile bay and polluting Santa Cruz shores. Monterey maintained that the plant was federally funded and that only secondary treatment was required by the feds and was adequate.
Santa Cruz refused to settle and took the issue to court still maintaining the treatment was inadequate. In court, Monterey proved that the prevailing ocean currents flowed from north to south and that the Monterey sewage release could never reach Santa Cruz anyway. Since Santa Cruz could not prove harm, it lost it’s case and Monterey built the secondary treatment plant with federal funding after some delay.
Fast forward a dozen years and in the 1990’s Santa Cruz was required to replace its sewage treatment plant because high levels of pollution were detected in its antique and overloaded ocean outfall system. Santa Cruz applied for and was granted federal funding to build a new treatment plant.
But low and behold, Monterey now sues Santa Cruz that secondary treatment of sewage was insufficient and tertiary treatment was needed to prevent sewage pollution from crossing the bay and polluting Monterey shores. Santa Cruz decided not to contest (I wonder why) and settled with Monterey, costing their citizens an additional 100 million of dollars to construct a tertiary treatment facility that the Feds still maintained was not needed and would not fund.
national divorce
let them be heated, clothed, and fed by their own smugness
“everyone has been wrong so far” wrong wrong wrong! us realists have been right from day one.