The past 14 months have seen 41 patent infringement allegations levelled at Google’s Android software.
By Maggie Shiels – Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
A judgement by a Texas jury against Google could have major implications for the search giant and the open source world said experts.
The internet titan was found guilty of infringing a patent related to the Linux kernel and fined $5m (£3.2m).
The software is used by Google for its server platforms and could also extend to its Android mobile platform.
The kernel is at the core of the open-source operating system meaning this verdict could be far-reaching.
The case resulted in a victory for a firm called Bedrock Computer Technologies which has also sued Yahoo, MySpace, Amazon, PayPal, Match.com and AOL.
“The amount of the fine is not what makes this an important issue,” intellectual property activist Florian Mueller told BBC News.
“This is a modest amount considering Google is probably the largest scale Linux user in the world.
“The implication here is really that there is a huge number of Linux users who will be required to pay royalties if this patent holder knocks on their doors in the US. This is definitely a major impediment to the growth of Linux and makes companies, including Google, that rely on open source code particularly vulnerable to patent threats.”
That is also the view of other industry watchers who expect a flood of lawsuits against companies who rely on open source code.
“Those looking to cash in on buried patents need only spend time poring over code and looking for infringements,” said Christopher Dawson of technology blog ZDNet.
Apple is going for the jugular by going after several Android device makers” –Florian Mueller, intellectual property activist-
“It costs a lot less than $5m to hire a team of programmers in India to do code review. This, I’m afraid, is just the beginning and stands to do a fair amount of harm to industry momentum and to the private companies that provide vast incentive for the advancement of open source software.”
But Google has said it will continue to defend against such attacks like this one on the open source community.
“The recent explosion in patent litigation is turning the world’s information highway into a toll road, forcing companies to spend millions and millions of dollars defending old, questionable patent claims and wasting resources that would be much better spent investing in new technologies for users and creating jobs,” said Google.
“Going for the jugular”
The Bedrock case underscores the increasingly bitter battle going on in the mobile space which is expected to grow globally by 58% in the next year.
The research firm Gartner also forecast that Android will account for about 39% of that growth.
Mr Mueller said competitors worried about Android are using any means necessary to thwart their rival.
He has estimated that in the last 14 months there have been 41 patent infringement suits levied at Google’s Android platform and its rapidly growing developer ecosystem.
Just this week Apple said it was suing Samsung Electronics for allegedly copying the design of its iPad and iPhone.
Samsung’s Galaxy products use Google’s Android operating system. Samsung has in turn countersued Apple for violating its patent rights.
Last month Microsoft lodged a suit focusing on the Nook e-reader and Nook Colour tablet which run the Android OS.
Meanwhile a high profile patent trial between tech giants Oracle and Google is expected be held before November said a judge.
Oracle claimed Google’s Android technology infringes on its Java patents.
Oracle bought the Java programming language through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems last year.
“Android is clearly being targeted by some of the largest tech companies as its market share grows and it becomes more of a threat to others,” said Mr Mueller.
“Apple is going for the jugular by going after several Android device makers. In a way it has to do this to survive. No matter how good its financials are now, in a year or two they could see their iPhone business erode because of the Android threat.
“A Microsoft suit is just about seeking royalty bearing licence deals. And with Oracle that is about making Google pay and about who calls the shots when it comes to the Java programming language,” added Mr. Mueller.
Fair Use preserves 1st Amendment from abuse by copyright claimants:
Simpson games the system originally set up to protect the public’s health from toxins and other filth released by its operations. It accomplishes this manipulation through campaign donations, chartering shell corporations, and cynically aiming just shy of the regulatory thresholds enacted to protect the public. Simpson’s methodology is simple enough: It pollutes the environment via multiple smaller sources instead of one large facility, arguing that each, considered separately, does not trigger the need for an EIS (environmental impact statement). ORCAA, obligingly enough, accepts this argument by rubber stamping Simpson’s application to pollute the air permit. In fact, when asked, ORCAA officials couldn’t recall EVER denying such a permit application. Apparently, City of Shelton staffers and elected officials don’t see a problem with continuing this victimization of city residents since it’s business as usual and most residents are too poor to count for much in these kinds of political equations.
City of Shelton and Mason County officials should impose a 1-year moratorium on air pollution permits because, as the following article reveals, the best available science is rapidly catching up with lax laws passed before the harm to public health from polluters such as Simspon Timber (and its many minions/aliases) became evident.
WASHINGTON—U.S. government scientists questioned federal standards for particle pollution in the air, setting the stage for the Environmental Protection Agency to propose tougher rules affecting emissions from power plants, manufacturers, or automobiles later this year.
The EPA said Friday it hasn’t decided whether to strengthen the rules in question. But in a report made public this week, EPA staff said “currently available information clearly calls into question the adequacy of the current standards.” The staff were examining EPA regulations for “fine particles” found in smoke or haze emitted after fuel is burned.
“It is the official declaration by EPA experts that current air-quality standards for particle soot are far too weak and need to be updated,” Frank O’Donnell, president of the environmental group Clean Air Watch, said of the report. “If the political appointees of the Obama administration follow through honestly, they will have to set significantly tougher standards to protect people’s health.”
The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set standards for air quality, including the presence of tiny particles that can cause lung and heart problems when they are inhaled. States then develop plans to implement the standards.
In 2006, the Bush administration updated the standards but didn’t change a critical standard for fine particles. Watchdog groups sued and won, with a federal court ordering the EPA to revisit the fine-particle standard because the agency hadn’t proven that the rule adequately protected public health.
The scientists’ report was published Tuesday as part of an assessment of the EPA’s options for changing the rule. The EPA said it will issue a formal proposal later this year.
The agency is also reviewing standards for other types of particle pollution, including what are known as coarse particles. Coarse particles are larger than fine particles and are associated with dust from farming and mining operations in the Western U.S.
On standards for coarse particles, the EPA scientists were less clear in Tuesday’s report. They wrote that it would be “appropriate” for the EPA to keep current standards or to revise them.
Farmers and their allies in Congress have been worried that the EPA will decide to set strict standards for airborne dust in rural areas. Richard Krause, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, said that lowering the acceptable level of coarse particles in the air “is going to have a lot worse economic impacts and a lot worse effects on business.”
“We would prefer to keep it as it is,” he said of the rule.
In their assessment, the EPA scientists acknowledged “uncertainties and limitations” regarding the evidence for negative health impacts from particle pollution.
But they concluded there was enough evidence for the EPA to consider tougher rules on emissions for fine particles, which can come from coal-fired power plants, factories, and transportation fuels that contain sulfur.
“Consideration should be given to revising the suite of standards to provide increased public health protection,” the scientists wrote.
The well blew near the surface, spilling thousands and thousands of gallons of frack fluid over containment walls, through fields, personal property and farms, even where cattle continue to graze.
Francis Roupp, deputy director of the county emergency management agency, told AP that there were no injuries, and that although fluids have reached a small stream, “no adverse effects” have been reported.
Roupp suggests a cracked well casing could be the culprit behind the fracking spill, but that certain details won’t be known until the situation is under control.
Pennlive.com reports that seven families have been evacuated as a result of the spill.
The chemicals used in fracking fluids have been a contentious subject, as many energy companies have long guarded them as a “trade secret.” A recent report released by three House Democrats says that millions of gallons of potentially hazardous chemicals and known carcinogens, such as methanol, have been injected into wells across the country by energy companies using the controversial fracking method.
Developing reports of the fracking spill in Pennsylvania come at a time when the fossil fuel industry is facing intense public scrutiny, as today marks the one-year anniversary of the Gulf oil spill.
Dick Taylor, owner (along with his wife, Marlene Taylor) of Shelton’s Taylor Insurance Co., is running for the Port of Shelton Commissioner spot against incumbent Jack Miles. Jack has become well known to the community as one of the few officials willing to listen to residents and stand with them in their hour of need opposing the Port’s welcome of the notorious Adage proposal.
It’s important for voters to know who they are voting for. While Jack has become well known, Dick Taylor is perhaps less familiar to voters. A glaring example is the misinformation posted on another community blog (hosted by the notorious Shawnie ‘Darthe’ Vedder) naming Mr. Dick Taylor as associated with ‘Taylor town’ and ‘Taylor Shellfish’. Dick Taylor has no ownership/involvement with either…although that’s hardly an endorsement.
The fact is, Dick Taylor is the ONLY alternative to Jack, and will be unless someone else decides to enter the race. Mr. Taylor is eagerly supported by Commissioner Jay Hupp (and associates) though reveals a distinct lack of perspicacity about current Port of Shelton controversies when questioned. Although Dick Taylor, a local business owner, has had prior experience as an elected official and chamber of commerce director, he seems decidedly uninformed about what many in the community have taken time to learn regarding how their Port is being run and its inevitable impact on residents. Mr. Taylor is beyond the age most folks look to for retirement. During a recent interview, he seemed tired and unfocused. His knee-jerk support of Adage was likely the primary basis for the encouragement he’s received from Jay Hupp & associates.
If you like Jay Hupp, you’ll prefer the candidate Jay supports, i.e. Dick Taylor. If you like a candidate who listens to constituents and has proven to have the courage to stand with the community regarding controversial issues, Jack Miles deserves your support and your vote for Port of Shelton Commissioner.
Although the musical accompaniment is non-traditional, Copper Clock is a good example of how dynamic this art form can be as it continues to evolve over the centuries.
Thousands of innocents languish in prison (or even Death Row) after having been victimized by a justice system deluded in its own hubris and scornful of applying the full measure of meaningful Due Process in pro se litigant cases.
In Washington State (according to the State’s Administrator to the Courts) of all felony cases filed in all its counties those that actually go to trial result in acquittals only 1/2 of 1% of the time. One might conclude either law enforcement officials are geniuses in ferreting out the guilty…or, we have a hanging jury pool prone to convict and intimidated into abandoning constitutionally justifiable jury nullification principles.
Mason County is rife with abuse cut from the same warp and weave. A series of articles will be presented here criticizing those responsible including (but not limited to) District Court Judge Victoria Meadows, and Detective Rhoades of the Mason County Sheriff’s office.
In the analysis, judges prone to cannibalizing the proceedings rather than allowing the litigants to try the case will be examined. Deputies and detectives falsifying police reports, lying to support personnel, and refusing to gather/document exculpatory evidence will be reported. Judicial arrogance/misconduct will be cited.
This effort takes a measure of courage much as the kind exemplified in the WHO’S GOING TO BELL THE CAT fable. After all, what attorney is going to publicly criticize a sitting judge given the certainty of retaliation? (See https://amicuscuria.com/wordpress/?p=1383) What judge is going to condemn abusive law enforcement officials knowing he/she must stand for reelection to remain on the bench? How many voters know anything about how our elected judges perform their duties when the local newspaper fails to report most of what occurs in the Superior and especially the District courtroom? What citizen is going to challenge the Sheriff’s suitability to hold office when that official maintains a TANK…reportedly (according to one deputy) to serve warrants!?…and where (according to recent deputy prosecutor Monty Cobb) the use of tasers by police isn’t even considered the use of force by our judges? The public, like hogs crowded into the chute at the slaughterhouse, has been assembled…and any pig objecting will be summarily brought to the head of the line.
Salient questions surrounding meaningful due process denied to pro se litigants, dominating hearings rather than allowing the litigants to try the case, allowing the mentally ill to testify without permitting that testimony to be challenged based on the incompetence of the witness, altering/tampering with official court records, attempts to influence outcomes after having been removed by affidavit, abuse of powers of contempt, etc. will be asked.
Local residents willing to come forward with similar/documented accounts of malfeasance/misfeasance are encouraged to contribute to this effort to hold those most powerful officials in charge accountable in order to promote the democratic process by informing the electorate.
At $20/ticket, the professional flamenco performance held at the TESC recital hall Saturday evening (4-16-11) @ 8:00pm was an exceptional bargain, the artistry was simply stunning. It included Savannah Fuentes and Veronica Barrera as dancers, Enrique Chavez ‘El Peru’ as percussionist, Vincinte Griego ‘El Cartucho’ as vocalist, and Gerardo Alcala’ on classical guitar. The performers were warmly generous and the evening rewarding in an intimate informal venue. The dancers had the graceful beauty and physique of accomplished athletes: sinewy, lithe, exquisitely coordinated, dramatic, and captivating. The recital hall was nearly sold out, the audience spellbound.
Professional Dancer raised in Seattle brings Flamenco to the NorthWest
Attracted to flamenco at 17 while growing up in Seattle, Savannah Fuentes honed her dance skills with dancer, Ana Montes. She continued her studies in Madrid with teachers such as La Tati, Belen Maya, and Cristobal Reyes.
A Florid dance performance captures a spellbound TESC audience
Ms. Barerra has a thousand watt smile that lit up the stage. Veronica, originally from Argentina, has been studying the Flamenco art form for the past 20 years, with interruptions to birth two daughters and gain four academic degrees. She began her studies with Dame Libby Komaiko of the Ensemble Español in Chicago and has since studied with notable flamencos like, Ciro, La Tania, Belen Maya, and Timo Lozano. She has performed in Olympia and Seattle for the past ten years with Amorfo Flamenco and Carmona Flamenco. In 2004 she had the privilege of performing in the Seattle Opera’s production of Carmen.
Vocalist and dedicated flamenco artist studied at TESC
Demanding and serious while remaining invitingly warm toward his audience, Vicente Griego “El Cartucho” from Dixon/Embudo, New Mexico has devoted his life to the study of cante flamenco, the art of flamenco singing. In 1992, Vicente began touring the US, Canada and Latin America, with the Jose Greco II Flamenco Dance Company, where he was mentored by Caño Roto singer, Alfonso “Veneno” of Madrid, Spain. Vicente remains a pupil of acclaimed guitarist, Chuscales and continues to accompany internationally renowned companies such as; Yjastros, Juan Siddi Flamenco Company, Carola Zertuche’s Teatro Flamenco, Martinez’ Pueblo Viejo, Fanny Ara, Jesus Montoya y Pureza Flamenca and Encuentro.
Percussionist Extraordinaire Herrera provides the musical foundation
Born in Lima- Perú and raised in Puerto Rico, Enrique Chávez Herrera ‘El Peru’ began his professional career as a percussionist and a drummer in Puerto Rico. In 2008 Enrique graduated from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where he majored in classical Percussion. Enrique has performed and recorded with various artists encompassing a wide range of different musical styles: Jazz Caribeño, Jazz, Latin Jazz, Reggae, Hip Hop, Brazilian music, Plena, flamenco, Rock, Salsa, Funk, Pop, Arabic music and Afro Puerto Rican music. In 2006 Enrique performed at Carnegie Hall and at the Museo del Barrio in New York with the Concert Band of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. Currently Enrique is playing with different groups in New Mexico including the Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra, Bobby Shew, Juan SIddi Flamenco company, Flamenco Guitarist José Valle “Chuscales”, Circus Luminus, cantaor Vicente Griego, Salsa group Calle 66, Humoso Jazz Quartet and the Flamenco company Yjastros.
Fluid Classical Motion with a Stacatto beat
Liquid stylist Gerardo Alcala’ of New Orleans and Flamenco guitarist, Gerardo Alcala’ is one of the few foreigners to be respected as a full-fledged Flamenco artist by the gypsy Flamencos of Andalucia, among whom he lived the authentic Flamenco lifestyle for many years. He learned his art from the masters: Rafael el Aguila, Parrilla de Jerez, Niño Jero, Rafael Alarcón, Eduardo de la Malena, and Pedro Bacan. In the intimate closed-door sessions, or Juergas, where the pure sould of Flamenco, el Duende, can surge forth in all its savage beauty, he has spent countless hours accompanying great gypsy singers such as Agujetas, Gitano de Bronce, El Garbanzo, El Monea, Salmonete, Chato de la Isla, Dolores, Antonio, Luis, Diego, El Gordo, and Paco Agujetas, and many others. He has performed professionally in major theatres on three continents, including Carnegie Hall, as well as for television, radio and film. In the U.S. he toured extensively with the Spanish dance companies of Jose Molina and Teo Morca and did many recitals with the legendary Anzonini del Puerto. In Spain he performed with the all-gypsy company of Fernanda Romero and has had particularly long and close relationship with the Agujetas family, including Manuel Agujetas, who has preserved the deepest and purest singing in Spain. With them, he was featured as sole accompanist in the prestigious Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid and the Dutch film “Duende”. In 1990 he was honoured to become the first North American ever to be contracted to perform as a soloist in the Bienal de Sevilla, Spain’s most important Flamenco Festival. In 1998 he accompanied Luis Agujetas on his CD “Entre tu Tierra Y La Mia”. In 2000, he appeared accompanying Luis, Diego, and Paco Aguetas in the film “El Turista Soy Yo”. In 2002 he was first guitarist at Mexico’s most important tablao “gitanerias” and did a tour of Spain and France accompanying the singer, Dolores Agujetas. Gerardo performs both as a solo guitarist and with his group, Flamenco Alcala’, (a singer and one or two dancers). He is based in Vancouver, BC.
The parallels between the BioMassacre industry and greedy corporations willing to lay waste to communities and the environment, such as Halliburton, are stunning. The tip of this lethal iceberg can be viewed in the following article and video clips:
By Michael Rubinkam and Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press
Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas — Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas — another message from townsfolk angry at him for signing a lucrative natural gas drilling lease on his suburban Dallas property.
By LM Otero, APProtestors holds signs accross the street from a working natural gas well in Flower Mound, Texas in November.
Across the country, in Damascus, Pa., drilling advocate Marian Schweighofer awoke one morning to the word “LORAX” — from the Dr. Seuss book about environmental destruction — spray-painted on the road near her family’s 712-acre farm.
Hilliard and Schweighofer are both living with the rancor erupting in communities nationwide over the volatile issue of producing gas by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
This technique — used with horizontal drilling — allows rich stores of natural gas to be extracted from once out-of-reach, dense shale formations more than a mile underground. Intense drilling is under way in the Barnett Shale of Texas, the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, and other shale regions around the country.
As tens of thousands of Americans become energy magnates in their own backyards, tens of thousands more worry about environmental dangers. The industry insists the process is safe, for people and the environment.
This energy boom has turned neighbor against neighbor, split towns and families in bitter disputes, and touched off sharp debates over the sudden emergence of gas companies and their 14-story drilling rigs, some rising in the middle of neighborhoods.
One side touts the jobs and prosperity drilling brings, allowing businesses to flourish and farmers to hang on to their land. Gas leases have made millionaires of some property owners. Regions long struggling economically are suddenly flush.
On the other side are those who either won’t gain anything or fervently believe the wealth isn’t worth the risk. Alarmed by toxic spills, scattered drill site explosions and tainted drinking water, they fear a decline in their property values and quality of life.
“Those who own their mineral rights are happier than a pig in mud,” says Flower Mound resident Chris Tomlinson, who is making thousands of dollars a month from the gas wells on his land. “Those who don’t, want it to go away.”
Fracking opponents complain the industry has taken environmental and safety shortcuts in their zeal to reap the vast stores of gas once locked tight within the shale.
The acrimony is not likely to subside soon. Even with some 26,000 wells drilled in 16 states through the end of 2009 — more than half in Texas — the shale gas revolution is still relatively young .
Most wells have been drilled in the past decade, particularly in Pennsylvania’s white-hot Marcellus Shale region and in the Barnett Shale of Texas, where the new extraction techniques were perfected and the boom began in earnest in 2006. Hundreds of thousands more wells could be drilled in coming decades, according to drilling companies and energy officials.
In Texas, a state so inextricably linked to drilling that an oil derrick adorns the license plate, the feuding in Flower Mound has been extraordinary.
A rural community about 30 miles northwest of Dallas, it had just over 15,000 residents in 1990 but exploded into an affluent and politically influential suburb of 70,000 by 2009. Relative newcomers drawn by its quality of life filled large brick homes in manicured subdivisions and send their children to highly ranked schools. By and large, they don’t own their mineral rights — and many were outraged when gas wells began popping up near their neighborhoods, sometimes just a few hundred feet from schools and day care centers. Today, more than 40 wells are extracting gas in town.
On the other side are the longtime residents, farmers and ranchers who own their mineral rights and stand to make a lot of money on gas leases and royalties.
“It was pretty much neighbor against neighbor. People just turned on people … and it’s left some pretty nasty divides here in town,” says Tomlinson.
Ron Hilliard’s decision to have two wells drilled on his land, a half-mile from a Starbucks, two schools and hundreds of homes, brought vandalism, anonymous phone calls and insulting blog posts and columns. He finally complained to police.
“I owned my mineral rights,” Hilliard says defiantly. “So I’m not doing anything wrong.” Hilliard, owner of a wholesale lumber business, would not disclose what he was paid for the lease or gas royalties.
Truck traffic on largely suburban roads in the Flower Mound area has increased significantly and the community has endured at least three major spills of thousands of gallons of production liquids.
The Environmental Protection Agency suspects fracking may have contributed to water well contamination in Denton County — where Flower Mound and another drilling town, Dish, are located— and other Barnett Shale drilling areas.
The issues in Flower Mound simmered for months, then boiled over at a January 2010 city council hearing on a proposed plant to treat toxic fracking wastewater. About 600 people showed up, many against the plant, but the council set the plan in motion anyway.
That galvanized anti-drilling forces. After a bitter campaign, the town’s pro-drilling mayor, Jody Smith, was ousted and an anti-drilling slate swept into office.
Less than 15 miles away is the town of Dish, population about 200, where Mayor Calvin Tillman raised a national ruckus about gas drilling. The Dish area now has about 60 drilling wells, gas production pads and rigs, 12 pipelines, a treating facility and a compressor station.
Cancer-causing benzene, sometimes in levels considered dangerous to human health, were reported last year by Texas environmental regulators who took air tests in the Dish area. Residents believe at least one domestic water well was contaminated and that gas operations killed horses on a ranch not far from the compressor — a claim the gas companies dispute.
Tillman, whose home is about a quarter-mile from the compressor, was afraid for his two sons’ health. Bad drilling odors coincided with nightly spikes in air emissions from the compression station, Tillman said on his blog, and were so bad that both of his youngsters were often awakened in the middle of the night with severe nosebleeds.
By February, Tillman decided to leave the community in which he had invested time, money and his heart. It was tough, he said.
“But it would be a whole lot tougher if my kids came down with some strange illness in five years,” he said.
New York, sitting atop the vast Marcellus Shale, has enacted a drilling moratorium that holds the wealth at bay while new regulations are drawn up. New Yorkers — some wary, some perhaps jealous — watch as landowners in Pennsylvania, Texas and other states get rich while regulators struggle with explosions, spills and tainted water.
“People that don’t own the land are saying, ‘Let’s slow down and learn from the mistakes of other places,’” said Matthew Ryan, mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., in shale country about 70 miles northwest of Damascus. “Those that own land are anxious to ‘drill, baby, drill.’”
Binghamton hosted the EPA last September for the last of four national hearings to get public input on the environmental and public health impacts of fracking as the agency prepares for a national study on drinking water impacts.
EPA said 3,500 people crowded its hearings in Denver, Fort Worth, Texas, Canonsburg, Pa., and Binghamton. In New York, opponents carried signs saying “Kids can’t drink gas,” while supporters, including union workers eager for jobs, chanted “Pass gas now!”
“If you get a gathering of people together, there’s tension and raised voices,” says Ryan, who favors a more cautious approach that he believes would ensure strong enough regulations to protect public health and the environment.
Division in Pennsylvania
In rural Pennsylvania, where nearly 3,000 gas wells have been drilled in the Marcellus Shale since 2005 and tens of thousands more are planned, the tension is leaving deep fissures in once tight-knit communities.
Schweighofer, a 54-year-old mother of five, founded the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, more than 1,300 landowners who negotiated a master lease with New York City-based Hess Corp. to drill for natural gas in Pennsylvania’s scenic northeastern tip.
She got several death threats from anti-drilling residents or activists — one woman declared she was “gonna shoot you with my thirty-aught-six” and a man advocated in an online post that “one well-placed bullet” be put in Schweighofer’s head. Schweighofer began sleeping with a gun at her bedside.
“We’re farmers,” she said. “I’m not used to standing out and having folks holler at me, and saying evil things. I’m just not used to that.”
One member of her group, 70-year-old Mike Uretsky, says some neighbors don’t talk to him since he signed the lease. Yet, the retired New York University professor says he understands where the other side is coming from.
“Everybody’s interested in safety, aesthetics, community, quality of life,” he said. “The interpretations of those things, and where the boundaries are, differ from one person to another. The frustrating thing is people can’t sit down and talk and say, ‘Hey, how do we work together?’”
The northeastern Pennsylvania village of Dimock, population 1,400, is another prime example of the split over drilling.
State regulators blame Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas for contaminating residential water wells with methane gas. Some Dimock residents were able to light their tap water on fire — just as Colorado homeowners did in a dramatic scene in the Academy Award-nominated HBO documentary “Gasland,” about the effects of fracking.
Some homeowners with fouled water have become high-profile anti-drilling activists, suing Cabot and taking their case to media outlets worldwide.
Two years of negative publicity brought them a backlash.
When Pennsylvania regulators ordered Cabot to spend $12 million to provide municipal water to the 19 affected homes, pro-drilling residents and businesses banded together as “Enough Already” and circulated a petition that 1,600 water line opponents signed. State regulators relented and settled with Cabot for $4.1 million, enough to pay the homeowners twice the value of their ruined homes.
The homeowners feel sandbagged by the community.
“You want to feel like a really lonely, lonely person?” asked Scott Ely, one whose water well was ruined. “Move to Carter Road,” the gravel lane in the rural, forested area where most of the contamination was found. He said people he’s known his whole life have turned against him.
“They think we are money-hungry … we’re chasing the almighty buck,” he said of the settlement money. He and the other homeowners had not asked for money and were content with the plan to have clean water piped to them after nearly two years of bathing, washing, cooking and cleaning with trucked-in supplies. “We didn’t want this.”
Dimock attorney Bill Aileo, who helped lead the petition drive, believes the benefits of drilling have been lost in an isolated case of contamination.
“I don’t think anybody’s abandoned them. I think they’ve become somewhat detached from reality,” he said.
About 60 miles away, across the New York state line, business at Grady Avant’s Narrowsburg coffee shop plummeted after a false rumor circulated that he and his partner had signed a gas company lease. He opposes drilling.
His regulars — largely opposed to drilling — stopped coming. People shot him dirty looks and some called to complain.
“It took weeks for us to undo most of it,” he said, but eventually, business returned to normal.
Since then, Avant, 39, has helped start FrackAlert, a group that seeks to shift the debate to the larger political arena “to ease local tensions,” he said.
“People have to treat each other better,” he said, “or otherwise there will be no community when everything is done.”
Belfair Water District manager Dave Tipton dislikes satisfying requests for official documents.
Over 35 years ago, citizens of Washington State found their voice, in what was possibly their finest hour since Washington was admitted to the Union of sister states, when they overwhelmingly voted for an initiative worded in the strongest language possible requiring transparency in government.
The introduction to the statute explains the reason for the PDA: “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”
Since the voters’ overwhelming support of this initiative was recorded, the State’s legislature has endeavored to emasculate/kill its impact with the death of 1,000 cuts, i.e. dozens upon dozens of amendments to it eliminating whole ranges and entire categories of government documents subject to citizen review. Nevertheless, the courts have consistently upheld the initiative’s provisions, fining scofflaw agencies to discourage non-compliance as the law’s language intended. Political science analysts have applauded the law’s introduction of ‘sunshine’ into government and the democratic process.
Belfair Water District manager Dave Tipton
But District Manager Dave Tipton sneers at the law as he answers questions regarding a lawsuit filed by Bonnie Pope and Greg Wagget alleging non-compliance by the Belfair Water District in responding to their records requests. “This is a huge abuse of the antiquated law that allows people to demand information for no specific reason and then sue if they do not get it. I would encourage every voter to contact their legislators to demand this law be changed now,” he says. Presumably Mr. Tipton would prefer aggrieved citizens be limited to holding their breath until they turn blue…or that Jay Hupp be placed in charge of responding to such requests?
