Public Comments Meetings- BushCo Style

Bush and Co. continue to destroy basic democratic traditions in the US. One of the latest is the erosion of the public comment process. In the development of coal resources on publice and native lands in the desert Southwest, the tried-and-true town hall meeting is now quietly being replaced with the Orwellian-named "Open House" meeting. This travesty of democracy has just happened in Northern AZ communities, concerning the Black Mesa Coal Mining Environmental Impact Statement.

At least as far back as 2003, the Interior Dept. showed its disdain for public participation in its decision-making process. This is an exerpt from a letter from the Upper Green River Valley Coalition (pdf file) to the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, taking the agency to task for the public comment process being used at that time around energy exploitation in Wyoming:

"For example, during the scoping “open house” for the Jonah Infill Drilling Project (in the
Pinedale Field Office), the BLM moved a public open house to the site of a gas industry
pep rally. In this case, your agency granted a last minute request from industry and
changed the meeting from its scheduled location at the Sublette County Library to the site
of a company barbecue held by the EnCana Corporation and British Petroleum. Workers
from the gas fields were given time off from their jobs and a free meal as incentives to
speak for the industry at this “public” event. Clearly the BLM cannot make the case that
this forum was fair and open to all points of view, and indeed a number of local residents
have since said that they were too uncomfortable to speak at such a biased venue. This
change in location prevented the fair and even-handed exchange of ideas that Federal
agencies are supposed to provide for the public."

As we learn with great sorrow, non-democratic practices evolve too. Public participation in government decisionmaking is becoming a victim of Republican narcissism. One of the characteristic policies within the Bush administration has been the stealthy morphing of public comment meetings from the townhall format, where individuals are given a chance to speak to and be heard by everyone present, into the open house meeting "procedure" (pdf file), when individuals must stand in a line and wait their turn to speak to a government representative or a machine in order to make their voice "heard".

One of the latest examples of this kind of Animal Farm outreach is occurring this month in Arizona communities. It is so blatant that I can't even mince the words properly to present the situation in decent language. Let the words of Cyndi Cole, reporter on the AZ Daily Sun, a Flagstaff paper, relate the news:

"A new mining and pipeline proposal for the Black Mesa coal mine turned contentious Thursday night at a meeting at Little America attended by 100 people.

The meeting was an open house where the public could read about the project, watch a video, ask questions of Office of Surface Mining officials and, individually, make comments to a person writing them down or recording them."

The meeting became soon became contentious:

"Office of Surface Mining officials declined to answer questions publicly.

So a crowd of about 60 pipeline opponents followed one official in particular around the room, asking questions and shouting his replies so all could hear. The questions turned into verbal attacks, where the opponents were complaining about the proposal or shouting disagreements toward the Office of Surface Mining man.

A second Flagstaff police officer arrived to stand by.

"If we're not going to have a civilized discussion, we're not going to have a discussion," Office of Surface Mining employee Rick Holbrook said.

The crowd began giving statements to the recorder, one by one."

So, after first declining to publicly answer questions, the OSM officials used the subsequent outrage to justify it.

Similar open houses have been taking place in local Hopi Nation and Navajo Nation meeting places. Last week, there was one in Kayenta, one of the towns most affected by the Peabody-Salt River Project combine. People who attended said the same format that was used in the Flagstaff meeting was used. It didn't help that this whole process is being conducted in the middle of Winter, when the roads are icy and snow-packed in much of the affected area, making it exceedingly difficult for people to even get the word of the meetings, much less attend them. The 753-page Environmental Impact Statement was released without publicity, around the time of Thanksgiving. The public comment period ends Feb. 11th, still the middle of winter in Northern AZ.

A similarly flawed process surrounds the imminent construction of the Desert Rock coal-fired power plant, also on Navajo lands, the same area where three existing coal-fired plants generate the equivalent of 3.5 million automobiles' worth of pollution. This greenhouse-outgassing project is gaining its permits by the awful use of pollution credits. Thus, the local population breathes and eats mercury, as Sithe Energy Co., the appropriately-named Houston-based company that is behind Desert Rock, will still profit handsomely after making cap and trade transactions in the pollution market.

How long must we wait for the Congress to impeach them?