Industry front group...accused of lawbreaking in pipeline promotion

As reported by Sue Sturgis in Facing South:

A leading front group for the energy industry is coming under scrutiny for fraudulent and potentially illegal activity in its campaign to promote a gas pipeline through Ohio and Michigan into Canada.

Based in Houston, the Consumer Energy Alliance was created and operated by HBW Resources, a high-powered lobbying firm that represents energy interests, and it gets funding from industry groups including the American Petroleum Institute.

The article quotes Toledo-based environmental attorney, Terry Lodge:

Now the industry-backed Alliance is facing allegations that it engaged in potentially criminal activity in its efforts to promote the Nexus Gas Transmission Pipeline in the Midwest. Opponents of the pipeline project say that a slew of letters submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shortly before a public comment period closed in August were generated by the Alliance, and included potentially hundreds of names from people who didn't consent to their names being used — and in some cases, people who aren't even alive.

Terry Lodge, an attorney representing groups opposed to the pipeline, and pipeline opponent Paul Wohlfarth were tracking the comment letters submitted to federal officials and began contacting signers.

One letter allegedly in support of the pipeline came from a man who died in 1998. Another came from a woman who suffers from dementia and whose son said she would have been unable to write such a letter. In all, Wohlfarth spoke with 14 people whose signatures or those of family members were found on pro-pipeline letters to FERC but who said they did not sign them. He found 200 other letters with very similar language, leading him to suspect the number of fraudulent letters could be higher.

The massive Nexus project would deliver 1.5 billion cubic feet of Appalachian shale gas per day over 225 miles from Ohio to Canada. Houston-based Spectra Energy, an Alliance member, is a partner in the pipeline project along with Michigan-based DTE Energy.

Lodge has long served as legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear, and anti-nuclear environmental coalitions, in the Great Lakes and beyond. This includes fighting Detroit Edison on both its proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor, as well as resisting the 20-year license extension at the Fermi 2 atomic reactor (a Fukushima Daiichi twin design).

Lodge also leads the legal work on grassroots anti-fracking efforts in Ohio, extending into Michigan. 

Anti-fracking, anti-nuclear, and anti-oil groups -- including the Water Protectors at Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in North Dakota, resisting the Dakota Access crude oil Pipeline -- often stand in solidarity. And their adversaries often engage in similar dirty, dangerous, and expensive energy schemes.