Charlestown
Town Council paralyzed by misinformation and fear
By
Will Collette
Click here for Part One
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| Current or old mine sites are all over Charlestown (Google Earth) |
If
you live in Charlestown, you live near an operating or abandoned granite quarry,
gravel bank or sand pit. While most of what you read in the Westerly Sun or
hear about in Charlestown relates to the renegade operation in Bradford run by a
Connecticut company, Armetta LLC (former called Copar), they are not Charlestown’s only mining problem.
As
I showed in Part One, there are six operating quarries inside Charlestown – and
that does not include the Bradford quarry – and at least a dozen or more
abandoned, inactive or unregistered sites.
Since
the victims of the Copar quarry raised public awareness – and they did so
without using ice buckets – Charlestown has been trying to figure out what
they can or should do. Charlestown town government has have largely concluded there is nothing they can do
about the Bradford quarry, though that’s not entirely true, and they don’t seem
to have a grip on what to do about local threats.
Our
Town Council members all seem to have bought into the false statement that the
only problem is Copar in Bradford. In Part One yesterday, I debunked that
statement, as well as three other untrue beliefs that have stupefied our
Councilors and paralyzed them from acting on the broader and wider problems our
town faces.
In
this article, I’ll address the remaining four false statements that Council
members used at their recent Council meeting to once again do nothing to protect the citizens of Charlestown (click here to see and hear that discussion).
Here
are the four falsehoods I’ll address tonight:
- Charlestown doesn’t have the authority to add additional requirements on mining.
- The “General Assembly let us down.” It’s their fault that we can’t do anything.
- It’s none of the town’s business to know whether a mining operation pays its bills.
- If people have suffered damage from a mining operation, it’s a simple matter of putting in a claim with your home insurance carrier.
FALSE STATEMENT: Charlestown doesn’t
have the authority to add additional requirements.
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| Peter Ruggiero thinks Charlestown does have the authority, though he's been known to be wrong. A lot. |
Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero disagrees about the extent of the town’s power to require mining permits.
Charlestown’s
mine operators already have general business licenses.
Charlestown does not have a “bad actor” provision (i.e. a requirement that businesses meet a certain standard of obeying the law and paying their debts) either for issuing business permits or contracts for town business, although it could amend the business license ordinance to add one.
Charlestown does not have a “bad actor” provision (i.e. a requirement that businesses meet a certain standard of obeying the law and paying their debts) either for issuing business permits or contracts for town business, although it could amend the business license ordinance to add one.
The
town of Richmond, host to the third Copar/Armetta quarry in the area, does have a short “bad actor” provision
in their general business licensing ordinance [see §5.04.030[1] in their Code
of Ordinances], which is great, but does not
require mine operators to get a business license, which is very dumb. It did not apply to Copar/Armetta which is
quarrying at the potential site of Richmond Commons on Route 138. MSHA has
cited Copar at that site repeatedly for unsafe working conditions.
Town
Council members seemed to buy the argument that they lack authority to enact a
mine permitting ordinance even though their own Town Solicitor says otherwise
and even though this Town Council has enacted some remarkably stupid ordinances
that will undoubtedly fall the first time they are challenged.
As
I noted in Part 1, lawsuits happen all the time on controversial measures. Indeed,
Evelyn Smith stated at the Council meeting that inevitably it will be up to the
state court to determine how far the town can go.
However,
rather than choose to take the chance to protect public health and safety
understanding a chance of losing some or all of any new law in a court challenge, the Council decided to get around the
question of whether or not they had the authority to pass a new mine licensing
ordinance.
They
opted to try to get General Assembly approval to regulate mining, even though
they probably already have that authority (but are afraid to use it). That
didn’t work out, as we’ll discuss in this next section.
INCREDIBLY FALSE STATEMENT: The
“General Assembly let us down.”
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| Boss Gentz - intentional liar? |
This
is a whopper of a lie on several
levels. First, the bill the Council sent to the General Assembly late in the
session was hastily cribbed by the Town Solicitor from another town’s
ordinance. It was very poorly worded, almost as bad as the town ordinance that got trashed in April by just about everybody. Nonetheless, there
was a hearing on the bill (H-8152) on May 15.
Gentz
was at the hearing and was told what needed to be fixed in the bill. He was
also told to get those changes back to the House ASAP since the legislature was
getting close to adjournment.
It
was not until five weeks later, on June 20, that Gentz finally convened a
special meeting of the Town Council to address these needed changes. That also
happened to be the final day of the General Assembly session. The
Council session adjourned at 11:40 AM.
Presumably
someone was then sent dashing up to the State House to deliver the Council’s
resolution to make the changes it was asked to make more than a month before[2].
The earliest they could have gotten inside the State House is after 1 PM on the
final day of the General Assembly session.
Apparently, Boss Gentz was asleep during Civics class when the subject of how a bill becomes law was covered. Here’s
what it takes for a town resolution like Charlestown’s June 20 resolution to
become law:
- Legislative Counsel must translate the resolution into proper legislative language;
- The appropriate House and Senate committees must vote to sign off on the bill usually after public hearings that must be announced and posted;
- The House must pass the bill and
- Then the Senate – without many any amendments because
- If the Senate makes amendments, the House must pass the Senate-amended bill.
Only
an idiot or someone totally clueless about the legislative process would think
this was possible. Or someone so arrogant as to think that the world comes to a halt on his command.
And speaking of which, Boss Gentz had to know while he and
his colleagues held their scam “special” meeting. Unless, of course, Gentz
cynically knew this was impossible.
Yet
Boss Gentz has the unmitigated gall to say that Charlestown was “rebuffed by the General Assembly”
apparently because the House and Senate didn’t drop everything and take up this
special measure just hours before final adjournment.
No,
the General Assembly didn’t rebuff Charlestown. Town Council Boss Tom Gentz (CCA
Party) screwed up and now wants to pass the blame for his own ineptitude.
You won’t see this extraordinary display of bad character on Gentz’s campaign
flyers.
NOT TRUE: It’s none of the town’s
business to know whether a mining operation pays its bills.
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| Phil Armetta, owner of Armetta LLC (Copar) Photo by Stephen DeVoto, Middletown Eye) |
She is referring to one of the key “bad actor” provisions that could disqualify a permit applicant for unpaid business debts and tax liens. This provision was an essential and very controversial part of the federal coal mining law where this concept was pioneered.
The
answer to this question is pretty simple: if Charlestown requires mine
operators to abide by certain environmental standards while they are operating
and to reclaim the mine when they’re done, Charlestown needs to know they’re
not deadbeats. If they’re being sued by their vendors or IRS has slapped a lien on them,
the chances that they have the money to do reclamation are slim to none.
Further,
a deadbeat company might not be able to get a bond to cover reclamation costs,
or worse, as happened at the University of Rhode Island, they might buy a fake bond.
A
legal and financial background check provides some protection for the town
against companies like Copar/Armetta[3].
You can bet that Westerly wishes they had done such a check, rather than leave
it to Dale Faulkner at the Sun and to me to dig into their shady background after the fact.
RIDICULOUS STATEMENT: If people have
suffered damage from a mining operation, just put in a claim on your home
insurance
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| Mageau gives his opinion on how victims should trust in those nice home insurance folks to solve their problems |
It
was not germane to what the Council was considering, a fact Councilor Lisa
DiBello pointed out. DiBello also suggested that Mageau might not want to take a
poll to see how many votes he would get to protect himself from himself.
However,
Mageau’s whopper is such an insult to the long-suffering victims of the
Copar/Armetta Bradford quarry that it needs to be addressed.
It
is brutally hard for people to collect on insurance claims for blasting damage.
I saw this all over the country at mine sites, and it’s the same here. But even
if a homeowner does manage to satisfy the insurance company’s demands for proof
of cause-and-effect, the homeowner’s policy is almost always cancelled or the
premiums are jacked up to the roof.
Mageau
doesn’t own a home so I suspect it’s been quite a while since he’s had to deal
with homeowners’ insurance, but these are the facts of life for mining victims.
When I worked on coal mining problems, this was such a widespread and vexing
problem that I co-authored a citizens’ guide just on the
subject of what people should do to protect their property from blasting damage caused by mining.
What’s next?
By
a 5-0 vote, the Town Council voted to kick the can back to Peter Ruggiero who has already made a big mess of this whole affair. Ruggiero will
supposedly produce an advisory that lays out what
he thinks the Town Council can and cannot do to regulate mining.
Of
course, this will be after the election leaving the Town Councilors running for re-election with a convenient excuse.
FOOTNOTES
[1]
Richmond’s Clerkbase is set up differently than Charlestown’s. They list their
Code of Ordinances in the left-hand column. Click on that and go to Title Five
and the section I referenced to see the language they have on “bad actors” and
business permits.
[2] The
resolution passed by the Charlestown Town Council – which you can read by
pulling up the Council minutes for June 20, 2014 on Clerkbase – is not written
in language that easily translates into the General Assembly's format for legislation. The Legislative Counsel’s office has to translate such municipal
resolutions into proper language, a process that usually takes several
days.
[3]
Nearly all of the main players in Copar/Armetta either have criminal records or
lots of legal trouble. Copar/Armetta has been sued by dozens of its vendors and
hit with state and federal tax liens.
Nearly all of the registered mine sites in and around Charlestown have been hit with numerous MSHA safety violations. When a company endangers its own workers, it is unlikely they will care all that much about the well-being of their neighbors or the environment.
Nearly all of the registered mine sites in and around Charlestown have been hit with numerous MSHA safety violations. When a company endangers its own workers, it is unlikely they will care all that much about the well-being of their neighbors or the environment.