Most Recent Posts

Residents of Denton, Texas, voted Tuesday to ban hydraulic fracturing in the city.

According to unofficial results posted on the city's website, 58.64 percent of voters supported banning the controversial drilling method that is also called fracking; 41.36 percent voted against the proposition. It's the first time a city in the energy-friendly state has voted to ban fracking.

The vote is expected to be challenged, but Mayor Chris Watts said he would defend the ban.

"Hydraulic fracturing, as determined by our citizens, will be prohibited in the Denton city limits," he said.

Texas Railroad Commissioner David Porter, an opponent of the ban, said voters had fallen "prey to scare tactics and mischaracterizations of the truth."

"This issue will continue to be hotly contested. I am confident that reason and science will triumph, and the ban will be overturned," he said.

Supporters of fracking say it creates jobs and wealth, but its opponents say the environmental and health risks outweigh any benefits it provides.

Cathy McMullen, head of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group, which placed the issue on the ballot, called it a victory for the citizens of Denton.

"We know the oil and gas industry is going to sue to try to overturn the fracking ban," she said in a statement. "But we lawyered this ban every which way before launching this effort. And we consulted legal precedents for Texas home rule cities like Denton. And we're confident it will stand up."

The ban will take effect Dec. 2.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the vote divided the community. Here's more from the newspaper:

"Denton is in the middle of the Barnett Shale, which covers about 5,000 square miles in North Texas, one of the nation's largest natural gas fields. There are 272 active wells in the Denton city limits and 212 others within its extraterritorial jurisdiction, according to the city's website. ...

"Over the years, Denton, like Fort Worth, Arlington and Mansfield, has revised its ordinances to deal with urban drilling. In its most recent change, Denton imposed a 1,200-foot setback between wells and homes and other structures. But some drillers say their permits, issued before the stronger restrictions were in place, allowed them to sink wells at shorter distances. ...

"Frustrated with how the city was handling the situation, McMullen's group petitioned to put the ordinance on the ballot. The referendum does not ban all drilling, only hydraulic fracturing, a technique that pumps water, sand and chemicals underground to shake gas loose from the shale.

"But drillers say that traditional wells are not economical and that the ban would effectively stop drilling. They also said the ban usurps the authority of state agencies like the Railroad Commission, which is charged with regulating drilling."

The Wall Street Journal reports that residents of Athens, Ohio, also approved a ban on fracking, while those in three other places in the state — Gates Mills, Kent and Youngstown – overturned bans on the technique.

In California, voters in San Beniro and Mendocino Counties approved bans on fracking while those in Santa Barbara rejected a similar proposal, according to member station KPCC.

Denton, Texas

Texas

fracking

hydraulic fracturing

In the latest bids for states to compel companies to label foods that contain genetically modified ingredients, Colorado voters decided the issue in their state today.

Proposition 105, was defeated by a roughly 2-1 margin Tuesday.

Oregon voters also considered a measure, but it is still too close to call — the no vote leading the yes vote by two percentage points with more than 80 percent of the vote counted.

The issue has been both contentious and expensive. Last week, Oregon Live reported:

"The measure has already made history, becoming the costliest ballot measure fight in Oregon history. Opponents have raised just over $16 million — also a record for one side — and backers have raised nearly $7 million."

While more than half of U.S. states have contemplated similar GMO legislation, the only one that has come close to requiring a label is Vermont. The state's law, approved this year, still faces legal challenges, and it's not slated to take effect until 2016.

In Hawaii, Maui County voters considered an initiative that went far beyond labeling. By a slim margin, voters decided to temporarily ban genetically engineered crops.

"The county's first-ever ballot initiative targeting global agriculture companies Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences attracted nearly $8 million from opponents," Honolulu Civil Beat reports, "making it the most expensive campaign in Hawaii's history."

The site says the expense equates to "more than $75 per registered voter in Maui County, which has a population of just around 160,000."

GMO labeling

An effort to label genetically modified foods in Colorado failed to garner enough support Tuesday. It's the latest of several state-based GMO labeling ballot measures to fail. UPDATE: A similar measure in Oregon was also defeated by a narrow margin.

Voters in Colorado resoundingly rejected the labeling of foods that contain the derivatives of genetically modified - or GMO – crops, with 66 percent voting against, versus 34 percent in favor.

In Oregon the outcome was closer, with fewer than 51 percent voting against the measure. Political ad spending in Oregon was more competitive than in Colorado, where labeling opponents outspent proponents by millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, a proposal in Maui County, Hawaii, skipped the labeling debate altogether. Voters there narrowly approved a moratorium on GMO crop cultivation. The state has been a battleground between biotech firms and food activists. Some Hawaiian farmers grow a variety of papaya genetically engineered to resist a plant virus.

Polling prior to the GMO labeling vote in Colorado was scarce. Polls found Colorado's measure faced an uphill battle in the final weeks before the election. A Suffolk University poll found only 29 percent of registered voters favored the measure, while 49 percent were likely to vote against it. A Denver Post poll was even more damning. According to that poll, 59 percent were opposed to GMO labeling in Colorado, 34 percent in favor.

Colorado's Proposition 105 would've required food companies to label packaged foods with the text "produced with genetic engineering." Oregon's Measure 92 says food labels would need to include the words "genetically engineered." Many processed foods contain soybean oil, corn syrup, refined sugar and cottonseed oil. Those oils and syrups are often derived from GMO crops that farmers have adopted over the last 18 years. Few whole foods, like the ones you see in the produce aisle, are genetically engineered, though some GE varieties of sweet corn, squash and papaya are approved for sale in the U.S.

The failed measures in Colorado and Oregon follow a nationwide trend. Similar ballot questions in California and Washington state were rejected in 2012 and 2013, respectively. This summer, Vermont's governor signed the nation's first GMO labeling requirement into law. It's supposed to take effect in 2016, but a coalition of biotech firms and farmer groups have filed suit to prevent that from happening.

Groups opposed to GMO labeling poured big money into efforts to quash the ballot measures, spending more than $15 million in Colorado alone. In Oregon, opponents of labeling raised more than $18 million, making the ballot measure the most expensive issue campaign in the state's history. Most of that money came from large seed corporations like Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer, and from processed food companies like Pepsi, Land O' Lakes and Smucker's. All of that outside money opened labeling opponents up to criticism of being tied to corporate interests.

"The reality is, campaigns cost money, and I'm really proud to say that groups like Smucker's, like Pepsi, stood shoulder to shoulder with the farmers that are growing their ingredients," says Chad Vorthmann, executive vice president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, which also contributed to the "No on 105" campaign.

Supporters of GMO labeling efforts took issue with opponents' claims that the measure would result in the cost of food going up and increase the burden on farmers. Despite Tuesday's loss at the ballot box, Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the national Center for Food Safety, which supports labeling efforts, saw a silver lining in the outcome.

"Despite an aggressive and deceptive anti-consumer campaign, hundreds of thousands of Colorado voters spoke up in favor of GE food labeling," Kimbrell said in a statement.

Even with a down vote in Colorado, don't expect a dramatic shift in the debate around genetically modified crops.

Labeling proponents say the elections have been bought, not just in Colorado but in California and Washington state as well, and vow to keep trying. Earlier this year, the Grocery Manufacturers Association – which includes members like Kraft and Pepsi — proposed its own voluntary national labeling standard, but that effort has yet to gain any significant traction at the federal level.

GMO labeling

The government looks at that language and says the plain meaning covers more than just financial records. Indeed, for more than a decade, federal prosecutors have used the statute in obstruction cases involving everything from terrorism to environmental safety violations; the "tangible object" that defendants sought to alter or destroy has included human bodies, bloodstains, guns, drugs, cash and automobiles. Most recently, the statute was used to win the conviction of a Boston man for helping the accused Boston Marathon bomber conceal physical evidence of his crime.

At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Assistant Public Defender John Badalamenti, representing captain Yates, will tell the justices that the government's argument is a huge overreach.

"This statute does not cover the destruction of anything but records or documents," he says. Indeed, he notes, the title of this section of the law is "Destruction and Alteration of Records" and, he contends, the purpose of the law was to prevent and punish obstruction in the financial industry.

"I would not dispute that anything can be a tangible object under the broadest dictionary definition. But they have to be read in the context of all the words that Congress legislated," Badalamenti says.

Supporting the argument and opposing the government's position is a phalanx of business organizations, as well as defense and civil liberties lawyers. They contend that if the Court upholds the government's broad reading of the statute, it will give prosecutors the power to seek penalties of up to 20 years in prison if an individual destroys any object, no matter how trivial, with the intent of obstructing a federal investigation.

The government replies that the "records only" argument would make it a crime for a murderer to destroy his victim's diary, but not the murder weapon.

fishing industry

evidence

Supreme Court