lawsuits

Above: The New York Power Authority's Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped-Storage Power Project in the town of Blenheim in Schoharie County. Photo via the New York Power Authority's website.

At the year's first meeting of the Schoharie County Board of Supervisors last week, the county took the first step towards suing the New York Power Authority for playing a role in the flooding that devastated the Schoharie Valley during Hurricane Irene last August.

According to the Schoharie County Times-Journal, which covered the meeting, the Board of Supervisors hired the Albany law firm of Couch White, LLP to file a notice of claim against the NYPA, which will give the county a year to decide whether to take the next step of filing a lawsuit.

The Schoharie Board of Supervisors has been talking about suing the NYPA since December, when the county's director of emergency services brought up the topic at another meeting.  Read more

Just days after the U.S. government asked a federal judge to dismiss an anti-hydraulic-fracturing lawsuit filed by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a coalition of environmental groups has filed its own similar lawsuit, thereby giving the AG's case a significant assist.

Back in May, Schneiderman sued the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) in federal court in an attempt to stop the multi-state commission from issuing regulations for hydraulic fracturing within the Delaware River basin. The gist of Schneiderman's argument was that the the various federal agencies that sit on the DRBC broke the law when they drafted regulations for fracking within the basin last year without first doing an complete environmental impact study.

The feds responded to Schneiderman's case this week with a letter asking U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn to dismiss the case on procedural grounds. Gannett's Albany bureau has a copy of the letter, which argues that Schneiderman is trying to do an "end run" around the statutes governing the DRBC and that his state agency has no right to sue because a) the DRBC enjoys "sovereign immunity" and b) because the state of New York cannot prove that it has been injured by the DRBC's actions.

Enter a coalition of environmental groups led by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. The groups filed a lawsuit yesterday that makes almost exactly the same arguments as Schneiderman's case, with one important distinction: the environmental groups have a better shot of proving that they have been injured by the DRBC's actions. From the Riverkeeper Network's complaint:  Read more

Remember when New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman threatened back in April to sue the federal government over hydraulic fracturing? He meant it.

The New York Daily News Daily Politics blog has posted the complaint that Schneiderman filed today against a slew of federal agencies.  (You can read the document below.)

Schneiderman is asking the courts to stop the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) from issuing regulations for hydraulic fracturing within the Delaware River basin. The gist of Schneiderman's argument is that the the various federal agencies that sit on the DRBC broke the law when they drafted regulations for fracking within the basin last year without first doing an environmental impact study.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to conduct "a full review of actions that may cause significant environmental impacts" before they allow them, Schneiderman argued in a press release today:

Schneiderman called on the federal government to comply with its NEPA obligations by suspending its consideration of the proposed regulations and undertaking a full review of all public health and safety risks posed by natural gas development in the Basin ... 

While the federal agencies determined that natural gas drilling in the Basin would potentially result in significant environmental impacts and that the study of those impacts should be performed, the DRBC’s lead agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, responded last week and made clear that it and the other member agencies would make no such commitment. The determination undermines the NEPA requirement.

As a result, Schneiderman announced today that he is filing a lawsuit in federal District Court in Brooklyn, where General DeLuca’s office is located, to compel an environmental review before regulations authorizing gas drilling are finalized.

Gannett's Star-Gazette has a good run-down of the forces behind the lawsuit. The story, written last week, quotes Peter DeLuca, the  U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official who is the federal point man on the DRBC, explaining that an impact study would be redundant and possibly beyond the DRBC's powers:  Read more

Two of three women who sued the city of Kingston for sexual harassment have won their cases, according to the Daily Freeman, which has been following the federal trial all week:

The jury today ruled the city and former Public Works Superintendent Steve Gorsline are culpable for the sexual harassment of Jeanne Edwards and Sandra Soria ... The jury awarded Edwards $55,000 and Soria $25,000, and Judge Lawrence Kahn ruled Edwards must be reinstated as a code enforcement officer in the Department of Public Works. Edwards was let go after the suit was filed, but Mayor James Sottile has said the move was not retaliatory.

In addition to the punitive awards for Edwards and Soria, the Freeman is reporting that the city must cover over $100,000 of their legal fees.  Read more