“Drill now for energy in America” Our abundant oil and gas
would keep money, jobs, and opportunities here in the United
States. By Roy Innis, Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality,
June 12, 2008 (Posted by permission)
“New York State’s Power Plant Siting Law
Expired in 2003, Passage of New Law Urged”
- News Brief, PRFA, Spring 2008
“New York State Petitions to Reverse Federal
Electric Transmission Corridor Designations”
- News Brief, PRFA, Spring 2008
“Orthodox Monks Fight Wind Project” - News Brief, PRFA, January 2008
“The Federal Government is Establishing Power
Line Corridors in New York”
-News Brief, PRFA, October 2007
See Also
Essential Books
& Publications
For further description
of PRFA publications, see
Publication
Order Form
The Property Owner’s Experience-New York’s
Arbitrary and Excessive Environmental Regulation of Private Land
and Resources - By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, 1998)
Background and Recommendations
for reforms in 20 areas of state policy, including: eliminate
bias; establish binding time cutoffs for agency review; eliminate
discretionary powers; restrict agency powers to statute; eliminate
cost-ineffective, functionless rules; use science, not emotionalism,
for policy decisions; and other reforms needed to environmental
regulation.
Additional Resources
Pennsylvania Independent Petroleum
Producers (PIPP)
address
Independent Oil and Gas Association
of New York State (IOGA)
address
& web site
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In-Depth Information
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 “Energy
Issue Requires a Rational Approach” - By Carol W.
LaGrasse (Letter to the Editor, Published in The Post-Star,
Glens Falls, N.Y., November 13, 2008)
Today, the energy issue urgently demands a rational approach
to forest management. The time has come for the legislature
to revisit the State Constitution’s “forever
wild” clause, which forbids timber harvesting
on 3 million acres of state-owned land in the Adirondack Forest
Preserve, plus forest preserve lands in the Catskills.
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 “Wind Power Meets
Zoning” - By Alan J. Knauf, Esq., Knauf Shaw LLP,
Rochester, N.Y.; Twelfth Annual National Conference on Private
Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 18, 2008)
Across New York and the country in zoning boards, planning
boards, and in courts, landowners and developers are fighting
town officials, NIMBY ’s and somewhat hypocritical
environmentalists to utilize wind power, an abundant natural
resource in upstate New York. This talk outlines the current
status of what’s going on with wind power and
zoning regulation, particularly in upstate New York. One solution
may be legislation to supersede local authority.
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- “Property Rights
Around New York” - By Carol W. LaGrasse, President,
Property Rights Foundation of America, Inc. (Speech to the
Building & Realty Institute of Westchester and the Mid-Hudson
Region, White Plains, N.Y., September 11, 2008)
On the anniversary of 9/11, the insidious attempt to repeal
new building code protections of high-rise office occupants
that were the culmination of the work of the best minds in
fire protection and engineering points to the true need for
government that would protect the economy and property rights
of New Yorkers by dealing with dictatorial historic preservation,
NIMBY obstruction of local development, utility obstruction,
warrantless rental inspections, overzealous wetland protection,
free-wheeling eminent domain, and limitless preservation-oriented
land acquisition.
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- BATH PETROLEUM STORAGE, INC.
- “Amicus
Curiae Memorandum of the New York State Propane Gas Association
in Support of Motion for Leave to Appeal” - Bath Petroleum Storage, Inc., et al., v. New York
State DEC, et al., New York State Court of Appeals
(Civil Appeal No. 01—02144, Nov. 2002)
The decline of propane storage capacity and the existence
of only one propane pipeline in New York State, the effect
on meeting consumer demands, the limitation of judicial
deference to administrative agency determination (court
precedent has not extended judicial deference to unlawful
actions of administrative agencies), the need to overturn
the appellate division’s ruling because it
would allow the agency to stonewall an applicant for a
renewal permit with overly burdensome and irrelevant informational
requests. DEC seeks to impose regulations that were proposed
but not enacted.
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- “Post-Submission
Memorandum to Correct the Record before the Court of Appeals”
Bath Petroleum Storage, Inc., et al. v. New York State
DEC, et al., New York State Court of Appeals (Civil
Appeal No. 01-02144, Nov. 19, 2002)
This unusual paper corrects several blatant misrepresentations
in the DEC’s opposition brief that, if relied
upon by the court, might improperly prejudice its determination
in the request for appeal. In making the corrections of
factual matter, Bath Petroleum quotes the factual determination
in Livingston County Supreme Court’s Decision,
the administrative procedure, and the litigation record.
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- “Notice
for Leave to Appeal with Memorandum in Support”
Bath Petroleum Storage, et al., v. New York State DEC,
et al., New York State Court of Appeals (Civil Appeal
No. 01-02144, Nov. 4, 2002)
Bath Petroleum Storage, Inc. and E.I.L. Petroleum, Inc.
(BPSI) applied for a renewal of its State Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System Permit that had been in effect for 24
years. DEC issued a number of notices of incomplete application
that sought additional information. In many cases, however,
the information sought was not new; rather DEC demanded
that BPSI change its answers to particular questions contained
in the application. Despite numerous supplemental submissions,
DEC denied the application on the basis that it was incomplete.
On appeal, the administrative law judge determined that
BPSI was not entitled to a hearing, which was confirmed
by the DEC deputy commissioner. However, Livingston County
Supreme Court Judge Raymond E. Cornelius ruled that DEC’s
reliance on its completeness determination to deny the permit
application and thereby block BPSI from ever challenging
DEC’s actions by obtaining a hearing was arbitrary
and capricious. The Appellate Division Fourth Department
reversed Judge Cornelius in a two-paragraph summary opinion
stating that its inquiry was limited to determining whether
DEC had articulated a rational basis for its decision.
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- BATH PETROLEUM STORAGE, INC.
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- BATH PETROLEUM STORAGE, INC.
- “Comments
relative to NYCRR Proposed Subpart 750-1 and Subpart 750-2,
SPDES Permits” - By Bath Petroleum Storage, Inc.
(Letter to Angus Eaton, PE, NYS DEC, Division of Water,
May 20, 2002)
These eleven pages of comments about DEC’s
proposed revisions to the SPDES rules for discharge to
water bodies should be a mandate for major rewriting:
to eliminate subjective, discretionary requirements for
approval; arbitrary and capricious demands for additional
information during approval process; broad, non-objective
catchalls to allow DEC to delay an applicant; prejudicial
certification requirements; administrative basis for decisions
rather than science; unpublished guidance for permit revocation;
lack of protections for confidentiality of trade secrets;
draconian requirements for facility expansion; arbitrary
requirements for facility decreases; and even the requirement
to give 45 days notice of accidents or shutdowns.
(SPDES = State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System)
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- “Bath Petroleum
Storage, Inc., et al. v. New York State DEC, et al.”
- Decision,
Judge Raymond Cornelius, State of New York Supreme Court,
Livingston County, August 27, 2001 (decision posted in full)
Judge Raymond Cornelius granted Bath Petroleum’s
request to be afforded an adjudicatory hearing in order
to obtain a review of DEC’s denial of their
SPDES application for a waste water discharge permit from
their liquefied petroleum gas storage facility. DEC had
denied the hearing because of “incomplete information,”
but, in a 24-page decision, the court held that many of
the thirty items in DEC’s Notice of Incomplete
Application “did not involve what commonly might
be regarded as incomplete information, but rather, conclusions,
on the part of the DEC, that the application contained incorrect
information. In several instances, the notice suggested
the presumably, correct answers.” The judge
ruled that “the failure to afford Petitioners
an adjudicatory hearing was in error, and constituted arbitrary
and capricious conduct.”
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- “Bath Petroleum
Storage, Inc., et al. v. New York State DEC, et al.”
- Order,
Judge Raymond Cornelius, September 21, 2001
In what amounts to a reprimand to DEC, Judge Cornelius
vacated as “arbitrary and capricious”
Deputy DEC Commissioner Carl Johnson’s November
6, 2000 administrative decision to deny Bath Petroleum’s
SPDES waste water discharge permit from its liquefied petroleum
gas storage facility. He also “vacated and annulled
in its entirety” DEC’s December
8, 1999 denial of Bath Petroleum’s application
for a SPDES Permit renewal. In addition, he ruled that the
company’s application for SPDES Permit renewal
was a complete application. Furthermore, he ruled that the
company was entitled to the safe harbor provisions of the
State’s Administrative Procedures Act so that
their earlier permit was still in effect and the company
could continue to operate its facility during its permit
application.
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- “DEC’s
Over-regulation of Small Oil Producers” - By Carol W. LaGrasse
(Reprinted from The Property Owner’s Experience,
April 1998)
Over the past fifteen years, thousands of oil wells in
the Bradford Field in southwestern New York have gone out
of production. Although the wells have the capacity to produce
oil for many years, the operators are squeezed by low prices
and increased costs of environmental regulation.
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