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Sierra Club cashes in on victorious lawsuit
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The state of Wisconsin announced Tuesday they paid $251,000 to the Sierra Club as part of a settlement that forced the state to reduce coal usage at a University of Wisconsin power plant.
UW and the state reached an agreement with the Sierra Club last November after the organization filed a lawsuit claiming the UW-operated Charter Street coal plant violated federal clean air regulations. District Court Judge John Shabaz ruled the plant failed to install proper pollution controls during several renovations.
As part of the agreement, coal usage at the plant had to be reduced by 15 percent by January this year, and the state had to pay the legal fees of the organization.
According to Sierra Club representative Bruce Nilles, the money was paid by the state “several weeks ago,” and the amount was the result of negotiations between the two parties. He added the organization requested less than the amount it spent on the case, however.
“The defendant we are dealing with is the state, so we wanted to be mindful of that,” Nilles said. “At the end of the day, it’s the taxpayers who are going to have to pay for it. A fair amount of our expenses we did not claim, that we would have claimed if we had been dealing with a defendant who was a privately owned company.”
Nilles said 80 percent of the money received by the Sierra Club paid for its outside council Garvey, McNeil and McGillivray of Madison. He said the rest paid for things like travel costs for depositions, copy fees and experts’ pay.
In addition to the $251,000 the state has paid to the Sierra Club, Wisconsin Department of Administration Administrator for the Division of State Facilities David Helbach said in February the state has also appropriated $1.2 million to “look at options to not only meet the lawsuit” requirements but to go beyond them to find the best options to improve the coal plant operations.
“We had identified problems at Charter Street … but the lawsuit brought it to a head that something has to be done,” Helbach said.
The Charter Street plant heats and cools buildings on the UW campus, making it unlikely the plant will be shut down, according to Helbach. He added UW needs to select an option to replace coal as the sole means of power by July in order to comply with another stipulation of the agreement.
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Another loooooong, cooooooold winter is coming soon to UW - Madison. Will the Sierra Club members be sitting in the cold and dark UW buildings then? Noooooooo….
Did the Sierra Club members contribute their $251,000 ‘award’ of taxpayer monies to suppliment existing energy generation with alternate energy sources? Nooooooooo….
Did the Sierra Club members contribute their ‘award’ of taxpayer monies to assist installation of “scrubbers” on the existing energy generation plant, to reduce emmissions? Nooooooooo….
But they assure us of their “goodwill” because they didn’t claim more than $251,000??!! Do you feel the care and concern here? Do you feel the love? Nooooooooooooo….
We have sufficient coal reserves within the contiguous United States to meet the entire countries energy needs for 250 years. We have technologies to “scrub” emmissions from coal fired generator plants. We have emerging Coal-To-Liquid-Fuel technologies that are capable of capturing sulphur, mercury, and other potential hazards directly during the production of exceptionally clean diesel, jet, and kerosine fuels. The path to energy independence from foreign sources for the United States is dependent on coal. Yet, under the unsubstantiated and misguided premise of “Man-Made Global Warming”, groups like the Sierra Club are preventing the efficient usage of our most abundent energy resource - coal.
The following is written by one of the senior reviewers of the UN-IPCC report on “Man-Made Global Warming”. He has renounced his participation in the report and summarizes the host of ways that the UN-IPCC report commits fraud. Keep this one real handy, to educate every person that believes Global Warming is ‘real’ or the ‘debate is over’.
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=1
Enjoy!
I am thoroughly disgusted with this lawsuit and finding. They should have been given a much greater time to correct such problems as they probably existed there as in many places for many years. Also, where does the Sierra Club derive any standing in a lawsuit where the club sustains no direct injury.