It seems that the WI Court of Appeals’ March 25, 2014 Decision in favor of Oneida Seven Generations Corp. & Green Bay Renewable Energy may have been written by Wisconsin judges seeking a pat on the head and more than a few pennies in their campaign funds from the likes of Gov. Scott Walker’s patron saints, the Koch Brothers, whose goal is a world where corporations can mislead municipalities in order to get permits, contracts, government funding and tax breaks only for the public to discover later that they lied their way to the bank and pushed common people over the brink.
The appeals panel claims that the City of Green Bay cited no misrepresentations by OSGC, but then they acknowledge the very ones that the City did cite, only for the judges to claim that City officials weren’t ‘really’ being lied to because a few officials said they didn’t feel misled, and because only a fool would have believed OSGC’s obviously misleading statements.
Just like OSGC, the appeals panel claim that facilities like the ones OSGC proposed (which turn garbage into something they combust making them de facto incinerators and not a means of ‘renewable’ energy) are said to be in operation ‘somewhere,’ yet the judges cannot or will not name one concrete example of a commercially viable operation in a specific location.
Even BC Chair Ed Delgado has said that when he asked OSGC executives & Board members point blank where he could go visit such a commercial facility he was met with dead silence.
The appeals panel’s Decision says: “Oneida Seven Generations is a tribal corporation chartered under the laws of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin.”
Yet the Oneida Tribe has no corporate laws other than corporate charters and by-laws which are not designed for external oversight of the corporation but simply internal guidelines of the corporation which OSGC violates anyway.
BC Secretary Patty Hoeft admitted at a December 9, 2013 Community Discussion that the Tribe has “weak to no third-party enforcement powers” for any corporate regulations or actions.
The judges stated: “According to the materials [which OSGC itself supplied], the facility would utilize pyrolysis, described as the “thermal decomposition of organic matter at temperatures sufficient to [vaporize] or gasify organic material in the absence of oxygen ….””
In reality, the materials used contain oxygen, hence the ability of the process to create dioxin which the Oneida Business Committee voted unanimously in November 2000 to seek to prohibit because there are no safe levels of dioxin which poses a unique threat to native peoples, endangering the very existence of the Oneida Tribe according to BC Resolution 11-08-00-B.
But why should a little thing like human suffering get in the way of dioxin-for-dollars schemes, especially plans to exploit other tribes by pitching them unproven, hazardous technology which is only lucrative for those selling it?
Documents in the ACF Services, ACF Leasing and Generation Clean Fuels lawsuit against the Oneida Tribe show that Green Bay Renewable Energy only had the bare minimum amount of liability insurance, about as much as a banana stand would have.
Given the fact that OSGC & GBRE used the same bank account and P.O. Box, and executives simultaneously working for both companies couldn’t be bothered to use different letterhead or business cards, the comparison may be unfair to legitimate banana stands.
The truth is that OSGC lied about its gasification incinerator projects and the appeals panel is being intellectually dishonest. Together they’re a match made in hell as far the ability of concerned citizens and officials to expect and require business ethics and honesty goes.
In sum, the Wisconsin judges who sat on the appeals panel appear to be kangaroo court corporate lackeys who’d prefer a planet where citizens are at the mercy of lawless, incompetent energy businesses, and where society would have to wait until toxic inevitabilities or terrible accidents happen before communities are allowed to try to hold polluters accountable, if even then.
It’s now obvious that neither the current Oneida Business Committee nor certain Wisconsin courts are going to defend the health, safety or welfare of the Oneida Tribe nor surrounding communities from shady companies like Oneida Seven Generations Corp. and Green Bay Renewable Energy.
Which is exactly why General Tribal Council had to do so by voting to dissolve OSGC in December 2013, and will continue to do so by reaffirming the dissolution of OSGC at the July 7, 2014 GTC Meeting.
And on July 12, 2014 GTC can vote for a new BC which will serve GTC by holding Tribally chartered corporations accountable rather than put out PR statements saying how “pleased” they are that Wisconsin Judges See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil & Speak-No-Evil were willing to give corporate fiction and dangerous falsehoods a pass.
UPDATE: Remember back when the Oneida Tribe used to fight against putting dangerous pollutants into the air, land & water rather than fight for the right of Tribal companies to get away with it for money?
- March 27, 2014 Green Bay Press Gazette: Paper companies, cities reach $54 million settlement for PCB contamination in Fox River
Four paper companies, the city of Appleton and the Neenah-Menasha Sewerage Commission agreed Wednesday to pay $54.1 million to settle federal, state and tribal claims for the decades-old discharge of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the lower Fox River. …
Damage claims were brought by the federal and state governments, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin. The $54.1 million payment and individual shares were negotiated with the help of a mediator, U.S. District Magistrate Judge Aaron Goodstein. …
The settled claims relate to discharges of PCBs into the Fox River originating from the manufacture of carbonless copy paper from 1954 to 1971 by Appleton Coated Paper Co. and NCR, and from the recycling of that paper by some paper mills throughout the Fox River Valley.
