Last week the perpetrators of Lake Restoration Solutions filed a SLAPP suit against my son Ben for his advocacy against their plan to dredge Utah Lake and to build islands eventually inhabited by up to 500,000 people. Should the development take place, the developers would reap untold riches through their avaricious privatization of parts of our lake.
The “substance” of their claims against Ben follow, revealing that they don’t care about the science he and others have put forward regarding Utah Lake but simply want to punish his “public participation”… as in a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation
There are, fortunately, unintended consequences to filing such a suit. Interesting to me at the moment is that they draw attention to Ben’s blog and to a letter he and more than 100 scientists signed about the devastation the proposed development would have on the ecosystem.
Read the blog post “Seven Problems” and the thoughtful letter and contrast them with the petty claims of the lawsuit, laid out as follows:
These false and Defamatory Statements include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Statements Abbott made in a November 28, 2021 blog post Abbott
authored titled “Seven Problems with the Utah Lake islands proposal,”
published at www.benabbo.blogspot.com and shared at least via Abbott’s
Facebook account, that: “the project has no scientists on its team”; “no
researchers are willing” to work for Lake Restoration; and “no one in the
research or management communities thinks [the Project] is a good idea.”
• Statements Abbott made in his November 28, 2021 blog post that “[t]he
project has shady foreign funding,” and that Lake Restoration’s funding
“comes from Dubai.”
• A December 14, 2021 statement Abbott made at a Provo City Council
work meeting that Lake Restoration has “financing from out of the
country” and has received “international funding.”
• A statement Abbott made at the December 14, 2021 Provo City Council
meeting that Lake Restoration “went public on the SEC last year and only
managed to raise $200,000.”
• A statement Abbott made in a letter dated December 29, 2021, which
Abbott co-signed, shared via Abbott’s personal Twitter account, and sent
to various media outlets, that Lake Restoration “has no Ph.D. scientists on
their team.”
• A statement Abbott made in the December 29, 2021 letter that “Project
failure during design or permitting would leave the state [of Utah] with
loan guarantees.”
• A statement Abbott made in a January 5, 2022 Utah County Commission
Public Meeting that Lake Restoration “submitted a proposal to [the Utah
Division of Forestry, Fire, & State Lands] that would privatize the lakebed
and cover about 1/5 of the lake in private islands.”
• A statement Abbott made on his personal Facebook account in response to
a Facebook post about the Project that he “met repeatedly with the
developers.”
THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY 