Duke files its challenge to a state fine assessing the company for its coal ash-related groundwater pollution at one plant, plus other news, this week in CIB.

Administrative Watch: Duke Challenges State Coal Ash Fine

Duke Energy was ready enough to strike a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay $100 million and avert further possible criminal process, but its reaction to the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) $25 million fine was quite different. Denial, challenge, and appeal were last week’s orders of the day for Duke.

Duke’s formal filing of an appeal to the state Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) challenging DENR’s levy of a $25 million fine for Duke’s groundwater contamination at its Wilmington power plant site followed Duke’s announcement last month that it would pursue the challenge. (The Wilmington plant was previously owned and run by Progress Energy, which Duke subsequently acquired in a huge corporate merger.)

Duke claims that the state fine represents “regulatory overreach” which violates state rules and would “chill” North Carolina business.

More to the point, we suspect, is Duke’s calculation that it will find a sympathetic ear to its ‘plight’ within the OAH, likely reducing the fine, with no prospect of criminal proceedings if it is disappointed in its challenge. And if it fails in the OAH, there’s always an appeal to the North Carolina courts, where Duke and other utilities have poured a great deal of money in recent years to influence judicial elections. As usual, elections have consequences – a reminder to conservationists that we must keep working to see more conservation-minded candidates elected in our state.

Coast Watch: Dare Commissioners Oppose Offshore Drilling

The Dare County Board of Commissioners last week made it official: they’re opposed to the latest proposal to open the waters off North Carolina’s coast to drilling for oil and gas.

The county board representing our state’s longest and most vulnerable stretch of Outer Banks recognized once again that the potential for real jobs and revenues from offshore drilling is small, while the risks to their irreplaceable natural resources and tourist-based economy are huge.

On the one hand, the commissioners’ action is symbolic, since it has no legal authority to block the drill leasing plan. On the other hand, it’s a powerful symbol. No one more clearly speaks for the people most directly threatened by offshore drilling than their local elected officials. And this voice of the local people is very plainly saying “no drilling here!”

Climate Change Update: Obama Announces Health-Related Initiatives

The Obama Administration last week released a long list of mostly research and data-development actions intended to prepare for or deal with health impacts of climate change.

Examples include convening a series of stakeholder conferences, identifying ‘adaptation’ actions available to respond to climate change impacts, increasing public access to governmental databases on climate and health, and releasing a new draft report on climate and health impacts.

More discussion of the announcement and its implications can be found here.

The Other Side: ALEC Denies it’s a Denier

In politics, money does talk – and an increasing number of corporate sponsors are telling the anti-regulatory group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) that its irresponsible positions on climate change are causing them to take their money and walk out. Former ALEC donors like Facebook, British Petroleum, Northrop Grumman, and others have left. Google went so far as to publicly connect its departure to ALEC’s climate change policies.

The threat from climate change denial to ALEC’s coffers has become serious enough, in fact, to change the group’s rhetoric…but not its real policies. Specifically, ALEC sent legal demands to Common Cause and NCLCV’s own national partner, League of Conservation Voters, demanding that they “cease making false statements” and remove “false and misleading material” suggesting that ALEC doesn’t believe in climate change.

The principal problem for ALEC in making those demands stick is its own history of backing legislation which does just that: suggest that climate change may not be happening, or not be associated with human activities. ALEC has pushed model state legislative resolutions which challenge the reality of human-induced climate change, claiming that “a great deal of scientific uncertainty” remains on the question.

Neither citizen group which received the ALEC legal demands indicated that it would comply. LCV senior vice president for communications, David Willett, told the Washington Post, “We don’t appreciate the attempt to silence LCV just because we disagree with ALEC’s positions. Usually if someone wants to get serious about tackling climate change, they ask about working with us, they don’t threaten to sue us.”

Post columnist Dana Milbank observed that the ALEC switch was rhetorical rather than substantive: “To be sure, this is a tactical retreat, and you shouldn’t expect conservative groups to start lining up in favor of a carbon tax.” Instead, said Milbank, the groups are “resorting to more defensible arguments that don’t make them sound like flat-earthers” and instead arguing about the cost of regulations.

As the evidence of climate change and its human causations continues to mount, the less-than-lunatic fringe is switching tactics. Instead of claiming it’s not happening, they’re focusing on the basic message of short-sighted irresponsibility: “Sure we’re killing our descendants, but don’t expect us to do anything about it. We’re too busy cranking up our profits today.”

Before ALEC threatens to sue us, CIB is not claiming that’s a quote from ALEC. It’s just what their policies actually mean.

That’s our report for this week.