Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : coastal caribbean (cco@) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Edwin S. Fujinaka who wrote (781)	4/29/1999 7:55:00 PM
From: Edwin S. Fujinaka	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4686

Although not directly relevant to CCO's situation with respect to Florida, it appears that other people have problems with the State preventing use of private property rights. I wonder if the Property Rights Foundation of America knows (or cares) about CCO? George Pataki's Snake-in-the-Grass Problem Dear Governor Pataki, New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, particularly its Minerals Division, would be a laughing stock if the situation were not so serious. In Fishkill, the DEC is holding up a concrete products manufacturer [Jay Montfort] for over nine years, and causing him over $4 million in application expenses, with neither a permit nor a denial of the right to mine aggregate on his property. This week I received a clipping from a PRFA [Property Rights Foundation of America] member in Florida with Associated Press's rendition in the Jacksonville Times-Union of how the allegation that the property containing the proposed quarry site might provide basking space for poisonous snakes is now holding up the mine permit process. Even though I already knew about this outrageous permitting process, I was newly embarrassed for New York State. How can the Governor of this great state stand before the people and proudly claim that there is justice in holding up a decision on a permit for over 9 years and deny a property owner the right to place a fence on his property line to stop the migration of rattlesnakes? The national TV and news services see the irony quite readily. But the attitude against minerals production in New York's DEC has become an embarrassment not only in respect to the area of essential aggregate production but in relation to petroleum and natural gas production and storage as well. Neither the Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform, which specifically requested that I compile in writing my criticisms of the Pataki administration to accomplish reforms, nor DEC, not the Governor's Executive Office itself has responded to my criticisms--now one year old--of the Mineral's Division. . . . The DEC Minerals Division harries small [oil and gas] producers with existing and proposed unaffordable brine rules, bonding and design details. . . . The DEC Minerals Division has been biased in its dealing with the solution mining and gas storage industry. EIL Petroleum and Bath Petroleum have an active lawsuit challenging biased, unfair treatment by DEC. In addition, Bath Petroleum has brought a RICO action in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York against two interconnected competitors and their environmental "citizens" front group because of DEC's unwarranted acceptance of false and misleading information and methodologies from the entities which have so impeded the permit process that Bath lost a contract with a major interstate natural gas pipeline company. (An interesting coincidence is that one of the false allegations raised against Bath by the environmental front group was that rattlesnakes exist on the site.) The DEC Minerals Division is hostile to productive businesses and an embarrassment to New York. Its policies fly in the face of the pride in regulatory relief which you as Governor publicly espouse. . . . -Letter to New York Governor George Pataki from Carol W. LaGrasse, President, Property Rights Foundation of America, April 22, 1999