“EcoLaw” Biopower Antagonist Tied to Petro Interests

By: Neil Ward

An electronic magazine called Farm, Field & Forest, apparently run single-handedly by “professional writer” Genevieve Fraser, focusing mostly on sustainable agriculture and forestry in the Northeastern U.S., includes a frequently updated blog with some interesting feature-length content, including what appears to be some top-notch investigative journalism. The May 30 entry looks at the assets of the Sheehan Family Foundation, of which Margaret “Meg” Sheehan was until recently Executive Director, and which has provided a large portion of the endowment of EcoLaw, the anti-biomass crusader behind the Stop Spewing Carbon Campaign, which seeks to discredit any relationship between biomass-generated power and sustainable carbon cycling. The Campaign’s major coup, last year, was to persuade the Massachusetts Department of of Energy Resources that deriving energy from forest biomass is not carbon neutral.

EcoLaw seems to consist of Dr. William Sammons, “Physician,” who advocates the harmfulness of particulate emissions from biomass burning; and Meg Sheehan, “Attorney At Law,” who practices public interest environmental law; both are the prime movers behind the www.nobiomassburning.org web site, which agitates against the renewability of forest biomass, both in Massachusetts and nationwide.

Fraser’s lengthy blogpost, “An Environmental Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Leading Anti-Biomass Proponent Tied to Oil/Gas/Coal and Mining Industry,” finds that the income that supported the Foundation’s charitable giving during tax-year 2008 was derived from sales of coal, oil and gas industry stocks. “In 2007, the Foundation’s 24,970 shares of Exxon Mobile stock sold for a $2,016,550; their 1,295 shares of Chevron Corporation stocks commanded a sale price of $104,718, while their 1,240 Occidental Petroleum Corporation shares netted $61,510.” And there’s more—Fraser finds records of the Foundation’s interests in coal processing in China, oil sands in Canada, energy services enterprises (including an offshore drilling equipment supplier); to say nothing of tobacco and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production.

At first glance, it might appear to be merely a case of the beneficiaries of the family fortune doing penance for its origins, in manner of the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, or the Mott Foundation. At a second look, however, the vendetta against biomass utilization, with the determination to fling any stray factoid that will stick—health impacts, land impacts, habitat impacts, carbon-balance—except for economic arguments, begins to look more parochial: protecting the interests of the Sheehan Family Foundation’s income engine.

One final note, that Fraser doesn’t mention: the basis of the Sheehan family fortune is beer distribution—Meg’s brother, Tim Sheehan, is president of Union Beer Distributors, now a unit of L. Knife & Sons, which is the origin of SFF’s endowment. Is it possible that the cost/benefit analysts at the Foundation have discovered that barley and woody biomass compete for the same land base?

Neil Ward is the Director of Communication for the Forest Resources Association that represents diverse segments of the wood fiber supply chain, promoting forest products industry members' ability to compete successfully in the global marketplace.