Linzey, The Most Dangerous Game, Speaks Sun. Nov. 3 at 6 PM: Ag Center
By: Bill Whaley
30 October, 2013
Below Local Progressives Announce and Debate the Presence of the “Most Dangerous Game!”
From David Cortez:
On Nov. 3, Sunday, at the Taos County Ag Center, from 6 to 8 pm, sustainability partisans will present Thomas Linzey, ESQ, attorney and Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Linzey will speak about “community rights,” a movement emerging nationwide, according to supporters. Basically, the movement consists of local governments, which use local lawmaking power to support economic and environmental sustainability initiatives.
Linzey will discuss how communities in 8 states are using legal means to improve sustainability while elevating the rights of people, communities, and nature above those powers claimed by corporations. He will address the 5% cap on renewable energy that Tri-State has placed on the Kit Carson Electric Coop.
The event is sponsored by Renewable Taos and PPC Solar.
Editor’s Note: As the Friction understands it, CELDF helped Mora County pass local laws aimed at curtailing potential “frackers.”
“The oil and gas cabals are out to frack us so we must frack back,” says Flavio, a longtime opponent of those who would poison the ground water. “I quit driving and ride a bicycle. Zorro still rides his horse in downtown Taos. We are anti-fracking.”
Though Linzey is not from here—he might have some useful advice for those who oppose the Tri-State Behemoth that wants to destroy the Rio Grande Del Norte Monument with transmission lines while forbidding the use of renewable energy. Besides, we must protect our water at all costs because the deep pockets from down stream are coming. Given the victories of the Battle for Blue Lake and the controversial but successful funding of the Abeyta-Taos Pueblo Water Settlement, Taosenos are no slouches when it comes to battling the feds and the corporate giants.
But the next war over energy and water is just beginning. We must educate ourselves and make common cause to protect and preserve our resources against the figurative frackers. Plus we need some younger folks to join in the battles for community. And it doesn’t hurt to listen and learn.
From the Desk of Robin Collier
Thomas Linzey will be speaking in Taos tonight, promoting his “community rights” ordinances, supposedly to stop fracking. In Mora such an ordinance was recently passed with wording tightly controlled by Linzey’s organization, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) represented in New Mexico by Kathleen Dudley. Anyone listening to Linzey’s seductive talk should read the Mora ordinance carefully, especially the last two pages.
While CELDF has held many “Democracy Schools” in NM, the details show how undemocratic and unconstitutional his ordinances are. Once passed, it can only be overturned by a unanimous vote of the commission and a 2/3 vote of the voters. If any part of is overturned by any level of government, it calls for the County to “separate the County from the other levels of government” in other words to secede from New Mexico and/or the United States. When the mayor of Las Vegas asked that that language be removed, Kathleen Dudley insisted that not one word could be changed or CELDF would not defend it. The mayor refused to to sign the ordinance citing his oath to uphold the constitutions of NM & US.
As far as I know, none of CELDF’s ordinance have ever been upheld in court or ever actually stopped any fracking. In Pennsylvania, where most of the CELDF ordinances have been passed, as a result, all local regulation of oil & gas was preempted by the state legislature, as is very likely will happen in New Mexico. Because it makes an outright ban on drilling, it is clearly considered a “taking” and thus would be thrown out of the first court that hears it. In most cases CELDF carefully passes these ordinances in places where there never can be fracking, so the ordinances never get challenged. The Mora ordinance is an exception, since oil leases already are in place in some parts of the county, and likely will lead to a legal challenge. These are some of the reasons that Mora County commissioner Paula Garcia, with decades of leadership in protecting water as director of the New Mexico Acequia Association, voted against the Mora ordinance.
In contrast, the successful way to stop fracking is with well written zoning ordinances which address the environmental harm that fracking may cause and requiring the drillers completely meet very high environmental standards. This is how fracking has been stopped in New York state, and strictly controlled in Santa Fe and Rio Arriba counties. Both Mora and San Miguel counties have been working on such zoning ordinances, with San Miguel’s likely to pass by the end of the year. Zoning ordinances to protect the public welfare and health have been upheld in court for more a century, even when they restrict as much as 90+% of the use of a land owners property. Case law on zoning is extensive and gives good guidance on what will be upheld, in contrast no case law exists for Linzey’s type of ordinance.
The real issue in Taos County is to protect water, since fracking is totally unlikely here, particularly with the protections of the Valle Vidal and the Rio Grande National Monument. Citizens have been working for more than a decade with the county creating a regional water plan and more recently with the county water advisory committee. Members are considering adding sections to the planned county zoning ordinance to further insure that water is protected. It is interesting that I saw no one from the organizations sponsoring Linzey’s talk at the recent 3 hour hearing of the water committee at the county.
And consider the greatly overstated claims Linzey has made about writing “the rights of nature” into the Ecuadorian constitution. This is how Linzey spins it:
“Over the past year, the Legal Defense Fund was invited to assist the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly to develop and draft provisions for the new constitution to put ecosystem rights directly into the Ecuadorian constitution. The elected Delegates to the Constituent Assembly requested that the Legal Defense Fund draft language based on ordinances developed and adopted by municipalities in the U.S.” …. “The Pachamama Alliance, with offices in San Francisco and Quito, played a key role in facilitating the Legal Defense Fund’s involvement in the drafting of Ecuador’s new constitution.”
“The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, mentioned in this article, was indeed in Ecuador and two of their delegates went to Montecristi with us, where the Assembly was meeting, where they shared their experience of helping American communities recognize rights for nature in their local legislations. We had a formal breakfast with the Assembly members and spoke with the interested assembly members; however, neither we nor the CELDF wrote the text that was approved yesterday with the New Constitution. Articles: 10, 71-74, of the New Ecuadorian Constitution are a product of intense and controversial debate, changes, proposals and votes in at least four formal plenary sessions and many other sessions that lasted several months. This recognition would not have been possible without the support of the former president of the Constitutional Assembly, Alberto Acosta, who even wrote an article before the visit of the CELDF and his team who always believed that this recognition was needed to protect our amazing country. ” – Natalia
I am totally against fracking, but it is best controlled by well written zoning regulation, which has been held up in court for more than a century. This is how the communities in New York are stopping it, and the way Taos County should proceed.
Robin Collier, Taos, New Mexico. November 3, 2013
These are the views of Robin Collier personally and not those of Cultural Energy as an organization.
Editor’s Note:
Collier enclosed the Mora ordinance and his analysis of “9” and “10” is correct. The Mora ordinance as written would never pass in Taos County.