Legal News

For ExxonMobil, the Bird is Now a Criminal Word

By Amir Efrati

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday scored a victory in its enforcement of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it a misdemeanor criminal act to kill a protected bird species regardless of whether the killing was intentional.

A plea agreement filed Wednesday in federal court in Denver between ExxonMobil and the Justice Department could ruffle a few feathers in the corporate world, as “the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company” agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and community service payments for killing 85 birds, including waterfowl, hawks and owls, at its facilities in five states including Colorado and Texas, over the past five years, according to this DOJ press release. Here’s the plea agreement.

The birds died after exposure to hydrocarbons in uncovered natural gas well reserve pits and waste water storage facilities. The company said it will implement an environmental compliance plan over the next three years to prevent bird deaths and has already spent $2.5 million to that effect. Among the solutions it will use are “bird balls” that cover open wastewater ponds at oil and gas facilities.

This case is a drop in the bucket compared to the $1 billion then-Exxon Corp. paid to settle state and federal claims for the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which killed 36,000 birds.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has been busy. Another investigation it led ended in settlement last month between DOJ and a power company, PacifiCorp, whose power lines electrocuted at least 232 golden eagles, 46 hawks and 59 owls, along with 193 other migratory birds in 2007 and 2008 alone. The company, in a plea agreement filed in Wyoming federal court, agreed to a $1.4 million fine and said it would spend more than $9 million for a plan to protect birds in the future, according to this DOJ press release.

While we have birds on our minds, here’s a clip from the Family Guy dedicated to the Trashmen’s 1963 hit about the four-letter B-word.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 13, 2009 (boomark / email).