Industry dominates lobbying of pipeline, hazmat agency.
By Rachel Leven, Bloomberg (Feb 8, 2016) – “Hardly any environmental nonprofits focus on pipeline issues. From our standpoint, that’s kind of sad. We’d love to have some allies,’ Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, told Bloomberg BNA. ‘There’s room to lobby on issues that PHMSA has control over.’”…. “In Weimer’s view, this increased activist involvement is important. His organization was initially funded as a watchdog group by a 2003 court-order that dedicated $4 million in criminal fines as a result of a 1999 Olympic Pipe Line Co. pipeline rupture in Bellingham, Wash. that killed three people. When asked why public input was important, Weimer pointed to that 2003 court sentencing where Judge Barbara Rothstein of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington said ‘with $4,000,000 … they’re nowhere near the lobbying potential of the oil industry. It’s not even David and Goliath. It’s more like Bambi and Godzilla….They need to make a difference, because they are the ones that will be the watchdogs. No industry polices itself very well,’ Rothstein said. ‘You need outside people, and these are going to be the people so pay attention to them,’ she added.”
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