Victory: FERC must produce Palomar landowner list
The United States District Court for the District of Oregon ruled in favor of Columbia Riverkeeper and Willamette Riverkeeper in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit regarding the Palomar pipeline.
The Court ruled that FERC must give us the address list of all landowners on the proposed Palomar Pipeline route. The Palomar pipeline is a joint venture between NW Natural and TransCanada and is designed to carry gas from the Bradwood Landing LNG terminal east of Astoria.
We requested the address lists under FOIA because many people complained to us that they did not receive notice from FERC about Palomar or other pipelines. Our "No-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. FERC refused to provide the lists saying that they wanted to protect landowners' privacy! We successfully argued, among other things, that if FERC cared about privacy so much then why does FERC share the list with Palomar, who sends letters to landowners threatening to use eminent domain to take private property. Palomar wrote FERC a letter telling FERC not to release the lists to 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. " That's what we've done here.
Next steps: When we receive the lists from FERC, we will work with effected landowners. Together we can make sure all the people are notified of Palomar's plans. The Court relied on declarations from Paul Dryden and Paul Sansone that explained the landowners were not properly notified. Thanks to both for stepping up to help! If FERC appeals, we will defend our victory.
This case also discovered some disturbing trends. FERC staff: improperly withheld documents; conducted an inadequate search, searching only the public website; gave "conflicting testimony" under oath; and claimed they did not have the landowner list even after providing a copy of it to their attorney.
We are hopeful that the new FERC Chair, John Wellinghoff, who voted against the Bradwood Landing LNG terminal, will investigate FERC's actions to ensure that FERC works with - not against - the public.
Read the Court's opinion here . Read Riverkeeper's successful legal arguments in this case here: Motion for Summary Judgment and Reply to FERC's Motion for Summary Judgment
