Marcelle shoop

Marcelle Shoop worked in 2008 and 2009 as a lobbyist for Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies.

Climate change lobbying
Rio Tinto Services, Inc. spent $237,000 in 2009 on the services of Marcelle Shoop.

In 2009, on behalf of Rio Tinto, she sent comments to a Western Climate Initiative subcommittee requesting "that coal mines not be included in the categories of upstream fuel supplier" because it "would place an undue burden on coal mining."

History with Big Coal
In 2004, Marcelle Shoop was appointed to the State of Utah’s Air Quality Board.

The Air Quality Board granted permits for the construction of a coal-fired power plant known as Intermountain Power Project Unit 3. The Sierra Club and Grand Canyon Trust appealed the permits, stating that it "would result in a significant net emissions increase." Board member Marcelle Shoop "moved that the Sierra Club and Grand Canyon Trust not be granted standing in the matter" and the board, with her vote, denied the two groups standing, effectively shutting them out. Environmentalists wanted to block these two coal fired plants in part because toxic emissions could threaten air quality at nearby national parks. In an ironic twist, Marcelle Shoop's husband, Kurt Repanshek, is the editor of National Parks Traveler, a webzine with a focus on the preservation of national parks.

On June 1, 2005, Marcelle Shoop voted to "deny the Sierra Club’s motion to stay on both the Intermountain Power Project and the Sevier County Power Plant" ; in 2009, the Utah Supreme Court "voided the state air quality permit" for the Sevier coal plant. Additionally,

''This rebuke by the [Utah] Supreme Court is actually the second handed to the Utah Division of Air Quality and the Air Quality Board in the NEVCO power plant fight. The Utah Chapter of Sierra Club filed an appeal of the original 2004 air quality permit which the Air Quality Board denied because it claimed the Sierra Club did not have standing, or the legal right even to challenge the permit. The court… struck down the Air Quality Board’s illegal ploy—once again in a unanimous decision—on November 21, 2006. 

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