Union Sanitary District Joins California Solar Energy Movement

Fremont, California’s Union Sanitary District – an independent district comprised of the California cities of Fremont, Newark, and Union City that offers wastewater treatment and disposal services for residents in those towns – is incorporating solar power into one of its pump stations.  The initiative to utilize solar panels in wastewater collection and processing is an effort to both save on energy costs and demonstrate the Union Sanitary District’s commitment to the environment.

Fremont (which is located near the San Francisco Bay, approximately 480 miles north of San Diego) is home to Irvington Pump Station, which is the USD’s first solar-powered station.  The site spans 21 acres and will feature over 1,600 solar panels when the project is fully completed.  The panels should generate around 1.2 million kilowatts of energy and will help make a dent in USD’s 2.1 million-dollar annual bill from Pacific Gas & Electric.  Additionally, the project helps USD qualify for government incentives from the State of California under the California Solar Initiative.  The agency should see a payout of around $600,000 over the next five years from an incentive program designed to help citizens and companies leverage the cost of installing solar panels and make the services of solar companies in San Diego more accessible.

The Union Sanitary District serves over 320,000 California residents as well as 2,400 commercial customers.  Their wastewater treatment plant collects and treats thirty million gallons of water a day, and having a solar field capable of generating enough electricity to power 80 homes per year will likely be an enormous help.  The project has also made the Irvington Pump Station more self-sufficient, as it no longer needs to rely so much on external energy services from PG&E.  As rolling blackouts during summer months are a frequent concern in California, helping large consumers of energy stay off the power grid is a great way to help reduce the likelihood that homes and businesses will end up without power.

For more information on San Diego solar, visit Solaire online.

Landowners sue Nebraska governor over eminent domain use for Keystone XL

A group of landowners in Nebraska is suing their state governor in order to stop the Keystone XL pipeline project, which is being built to transport tar sands petroleum from Alberta to oil refineries in Texas.

Inside Climate News reported this group of landowners, who recently helped stop TransCanada’s plan to build through Nebraska’s environmentally-sensitive Sandhills area, have said the laws upholding pipeline construction are unconstitutional, but state officials are disregarding the suit, saying it should be thrown out because eminent domain lawyer teams representing the landowners have no right to make the challenge.

The group, led by Randy Thompson, Susan Luebbe and Susan Dunavan has challenged Nebraska's controversial "pipeline siting" law by filing a suit against Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, the state treasurer and the director of the Department of Environmental Quality.

According to the landowners, the pipeline siting law, which went into effect last April, allows the oil company and other energy corporations to avoid rigorous environmental assessments by working through the DEQ, and not through the state's Public Service Commission.

While TransCanada's new route avoids the fragile Sandhills ecosystem, but it still crosses the Ogallal aquifer, one of the most important water sources in the state. 

Legal experts say the State Department will have the final say on whether to approve the Keystone XL's northern leg because it crosses a national border, but Nebraska regulators are largely responsible for determining whether the pipeline's route through the state is safe to people and the environment.

The pipeline sitting law also gives Gov. Heineman, who is in complete support of the project, the ultimate authority to approve or reject the Nebraska route. The law even lets TransCanada confiscate private land for Keystone XL construction through eminent domain before the project is federally approved. 

In response, the landowners want the law declared unconstitutional for giving the governor "unlawful" authority over pipelines and their private property. But it's still unclear if the case will be allowed to proceed.

Eminent domain attorney teams working on the case from the Nebraska Attorney General's office argued that the suit should be thrown out during a hearing last September. They said landowners have no right to challenge the $2 million pipeline review process because it isn't being funded by taxpayers. 

To this day, the route of the Keystone XL and it’s ultimate fate remain unclear, but judging from the state of the legal battles in Nebraska, it seems clear that governments support the project.

Energy company spars with landowners over pipeline in Michigan

Condemnation lawyer offices are hard at work in southern Michigan as Enbridge Energy plans to replace one of its pipelines that runs through the area. 

The pipeline that is being replaced is the same one that caused a major oil spill in Marshall about two years ago. Enbridge Energy representatives say the new pipeline will double the oil transportation capacities to refineries in Detroit, Toledo and Sarnia, Ontario.

In order to build the pipeline, the company says it needs additional easement next to the current 60 foot easement that runs through many people’s backyards. Enbridge says many people who own land along the pipeline route have signed contracts with the company.  But Enbridge is taking people who refuse to sign contracts to court Michigan Radio reports.

A county judge heard arguments against more than a dozen landowners.  Many locals gathered to fight against the energy giant and are saying the company is unfairly using eminent domain and condemnation laws, which were originally designed to help state governments build public projects. 

"Enbridge has taken us to condemnation. Eminent domain is another word for it.  And because we wouldn’t sign their contract as it was, they brought us to court to take the land."

More than four months have passed since Enbridge repaired sections of the current pipeline running through a resident’s backyard. But locals say Enbridge workers brought in lights and worked in their yard with heavy equipment day and night, causing inconvenient disturbances and loud noises for the in the family occupied neighborhood.

Some families say the work caused cracks in their foundation and caused other damage they say they have not been compensated for. Condemnation attorney experts have said many remain unsatisfied with the offers Enbridge made for their land for the new pipeline. 

San Diego and other Southwestern regions may be ideal locations for solar panel placement

Recently, as a part of his “We Can’t Wait” initiative, President Obama announced that seven nationally and regionally significant solar and wind energy projects would be fast-tracked. Together, these projects would produce nearly 5,000 megawatts of energy – enough to power about 1.5 million homes, and support the President’s all-of-the-above strategy to expand American made energy reduce dependence on foreign oil. 

However, the United States has an enormous untapped source of energy that could be taken advantage of, but there’s a catch: it’s in the desert. The Southwest is an ideal location for solar panels San Diego, but these areas have few energy demands and sending solar power from these regions to population centers is complicated. The problem lies in the lack of transmission lines. This lack prevents states with ideal locations but with little populations from converting their ‘unused’ sunlight into real watts.

Transmission lines are key to developing these region's solar resources. The problem here is that is existing lines are reaching their maximum carrying potential, and building new lines can take years or even decades. According to a new Department of Energy study on transmission congestion, much of the nation's existing transmission system is aging and will need replacement before 2030.

Railroad company files condemnation suit

The second-largest railroad company in the United States, Norfolk Southern Railway Co., has filed another lawsuit to gain control of valuable land on the Wilmington Riverfront that the railroad alleges was illegally seized by the state’s inverse condemnation attorney.

The company requesting the that the state’s Superior Court set aside a 2006 condemnation judgment granted to the Delaware Department of Transportation that resulted in the state getting title to nearly two acres of ground. Alleging it was unaware about the eminent domain action involving its South Madison Street property, Norfolk Southern wants the case reopened in order to get access to an area that contains railroad tracks and billboards facing I-95 - which could bring in advertising revenue for the transportation giant.

Company representatives said a title search should have located the deed that gave the mailing address as Norfolk Southern Railway Co. in Roanoke, Va. The railroad alleges it didn’t receive a copy of the condemnation proceeding until May 4, the first documentation it says it received. 

The condemnation judgment is void because DelDOT lawyers for the eminent domain action in 2006 made “the grossly negligent misrepresentation” that a diligent search for the property owner had been done and “no known owners” found, according to company representatives. 

Norfolk Southern has insisted the judgment by Superior Court is preempted by federal law and therefore the state court lacked jurisdiction to condemn the land. The company is looking for every loophole and opportunity in state property laws that will help it get it’s hands on the terrain.

So far, the department has not commented on the matter other than to say it would be filing DelDOT’s response to the motion before a scheduled Sept. 4 hearing, according to an inverse condemnation lawyer for DelDOT. 

This is the second legal action Norfolk Southern has filed this summer.

The railroad brought suit in federal court in July after receiving a letter from DelDOT that the department would fence in a portion of the land to begin construction “no later than August 1” on parking spaces for the 14-screen cinema now under construction on an adjacent lot.

That case, which was brought against the development group behind the cinema project, including the Riverfront Development Corp. and Buccini/Pollin Group Inc., is now working through the court. DelDOT is not a party to that lawsuit.

Keystone pipeline re-routed, activists continue blockade at Texas site

The battle over the controversial Keystone oil pipeline continues after TransCanada Corp said they will avoid constructing on the Nebraska Sandhills, a fragile region of prairie and sand dunes that is home to various plants and wildlife, with thousands of ponds and lakes.

Earlier in the year President Barack Obama delayed a decision on the pipeline, citing environmental concerns over the pipeline’s planned route near a major aquifer and the Sandhills in Nebraska.

“Based on feedback from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality and the public, we have refined our proposed routing,” Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer, said in a press release.

Regardless, environmental activists have vowed to continue battling the pipeline and chained themselves to bulldozers in Texas last Wednesday, temporarily stopping route-clearance work TransCanada, meanwhile, has pressed forward. The company came out Wednesday with the proposed new routing.

Environmental concerns are only part of the controversy that has been brewing over the Keystone pipeline, which is being constructed to transport tar sands oil to texas refineries. To build such a massive project through the heartland of North America, TransCanada has slowly been acquiring property rights to build each section of the pipeline, sometimes employing state power to overtake private property through eminent domain, and paying property owners through condemnation compensation.

The new route will avoid some of the areas about which residents and the state Department of Environmental Quality had expressed their greatest concern. Among them are a wellhead protection area in the town of Clarks and other areas not technically within the Sandhills but which have the same sandy, erodible soils with thin topsoil that are characteristic of the Sandhills.

A public affairs official with the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality said he expected the state to publish maps of the new route on its website later on Wednesday. Construction on the 700,000 barrels per day southern part of the line, renamed the Gulf Coast project, has already begun after Obama gave his support for that section.

The Gulf Coast project will drain a glut of crude in the U.S. midsection fed mostly by the oil boom in North Dakota.

In addition to submitting the supplemental review to Nebraskan officials, the company says it will also provide an environmental report to the State Department on Friday. The northern section of the line needs approval from the State Department because it crosses the national border.

California Lt. Gov. urges fed to probe eminent domain threats

California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom is asking the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate what he calls "threats" against cities in the state that are considering the use of eminent domain laws to revive their struggling housing markets.

Several Golden State communities have been considering the government takeover of underwater mortgages as a solution to the lingering housing crises, a move many eminent domain attorney experts say could work, but a recent report by Reuters said Wall Street investment firms and federal agencies have been bullying California communities that were considering the plan.

The whole idea was proposed by Mortgage Resolution Partners, a San Francisco-based organization run by Steve Gluckstern. Under the plan, local governments would evoke eminent domain laws to seize performing underwater mortgages, restructure the loans and resell them to investors tied to Mortgage Resolution Partners, which would receive a fee for the transaction. 

Apparently, this alternative method of dealing with the housing crisis has upset some big players in the financial world. Newsom sent a letter on Monday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder asking federal prosecutors to investigate any attempts by Wall Street investors and government agencies to "boycott" California communities that are considering such moves.

"I am most disturbed by threats leveled by the mortgage industry and some in the federal government who have coercively urged local governments to reject consideration" of eminent domain," he wrote in a letter.

The epicenter of the debate, San Bernardino County, is located east of Los Angeles, has set up a joint authority that is looking into the idea of using eminent domain to forcibly purchase distressed mortgages. Rather than evict homeowners through foreclosure, the public-private entity would offer residents new mortgages with reduced debts.

Newsom said in the letter on Monday that while he is not endorsing the use of eminent domain at this time, he wants communities in California to be able to "explore every option" for solving their mortgage burdens "without fear of illegal reprisal by the mortgage industry or federal government agencies."

According to eminent domain lawyer professionals, Governments typically use eminent domain to seize properties to build highways and other public projects. The proposal to use it to help distressed homeowners has already rankled some on Wall Street who invest in mortgage-backed securities and the real estate market.