Stimulus freed big polluters from following key environmental law
Some of the nation's biggest polluters including BP and Duke Energy won exemptions from a basic environmental law under the Obama administration's economic stimulus, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity:
Some of the companies that won exemptions from NEPA under the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have histories of serious environmental violations. In all, CPI found that the Energy Department granted NEPA exemptions for stimulus-funded projects to about three dozen companies with past environmental problems.
For example, BP secured a waiver for a preliminary phase of a carbon capture experiment at its Texas City, Tex. refinery, which was the site of a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others. Earlier this year the same refinery -- which has the industry's worst safety record -- also experienced a leak of benzene, a chemical known to cause cancer.
The Energy Department granted a NEPA waiver to North Carolina-based Duke Energy for a wind farm project in Texas and an electrical grid update project in five other states. For the past decade Duke Energy has been embroiled in two of the biggest air pollution cases in U.S. history, including one in which it was sued by the Environmental Protection Agency for allowing a number of its coal-fired power plants to illegally emit pollution.
Meanwhile, a top executive at Duke Energy resigned yesterday following publication of controversial e-mails he exchanged with David Lott Hardy, chair of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. In the e-mails, James L. Turner -- Duke Energy's second-highest-paid official -- offered Hardy boat rides and discussed sensitive personnel issues at the same time his agency was overseeing the company's building of a $2.9 billion coal-gasification plant in southwestern Indiana.
Environmental advocates told CPI that the goal of using stimulus money to create a clean energy economy and more green jobs doesn't outweigh the risks of foregoing supervision of repeat polluters.
"Why bring somebody who was a known bad actor and give them government money and a categorical exclusion for their project?" asked David Pettit, a Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer who has litigated cases under NEPA.
To read the full CPI investigation, click here.
The administration has awarded more than 179,000 "categorical exclusions" to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.Passed by Congress in 1969, NEPA is one of the few U.S. environmental laws to address pollution proactively by requiring companies to study possible threats to human health and ecology before a project is approved.
Some of the companies that won exemptions from NEPA under the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have histories of serious environmental violations. In all, CPI found that the Energy Department granted NEPA exemptions for stimulus-funded projects to about three dozen companies with past environmental problems.
For example, BP secured a waiver for a preliminary phase of a carbon capture experiment at its Texas City, Tex. refinery, which was the site of a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others. Earlier this year the same refinery -- which has the industry's worst safety record -- also experienced a leak of benzene, a chemical known to cause cancer.
The Energy Department granted a NEPA waiver to North Carolina-based Duke Energy for a wind farm project in Texas and an electrical grid update project in five other states. For the past decade Duke Energy has been embroiled in two of the biggest air pollution cases in U.S. history, including one in which it was sued by the Environmental Protection Agency for allowing a number of its coal-fired power plants to illegally emit pollution.
Meanwhile, a top executive at Duke Energy resigned yesterday following publication of controversial e-mails he exchanged with David Lott Hardy, chair of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. In the e-mails, James L. Turner -- Duke Energy's second-highest-paid official -- offered Hardy boat rides and discussed sensitive personnel issues at the same time his agency was overseeing the company's building of a $2.9 billion coal-gasification plant in southwestern Indiana.
Environmental advocates told CPI that the goal of using stimulus money to create a clean energy economy and more green jobs doesn't outweigh the risks of foregoing supervision of repeat polluters.
"Why bring somebody who was a known bad actor and give them government money and a categorical exclusion for their project?" asked David Pettit, a Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer who has litigated cases under NEPA.
To read the full CPI investigation, click here.
Tags
Sue Sturgis
Sue is the editorial director of Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies.