Freedom to Pollute
By
Phil Mattera, Dirt
Diggers Digest
Editor’s
Note: some federal, state and local laws include provisions that block
law-breakers from getting permits. Called various names (“bad actor,” “bad boy,”
“good character” or “permit-block” provisions), they prevent criminals and
chronic violators from getting government approval to continue to harm the community.
Our own local poster child is Copar Industries.
Recent news reports out of West Virginia sound like they were
written as part of a parody of modern business: the company responsible for a
chemical leak that contaminated the water supply of hundreds of thousands of
people is named Freedom Industries and was cofounded by a two-time convicted
felon.
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| Compare that to tap water from Copar neighbor Tina Shea |
The situation, however, is far from a joke. Freedom Industries
spilled a substantial quantity of a substance called 4, methylcyclohexane
methanol (MCHM) into the Elk River near the intake valve for a water treatment
plant serving the Charleston area, sending more than 150 people to the hospital
and forcing residents to use bottled water for drinking, cooking and bathing.
The plume is now heading toward Cincinnati.
As is all too common in such incidents, it turns out that the
75-year-old facility where the rupture took place had not been visited by
government inspectors for more than 20 years. In fact, as a storage rather than
a production facility, it was subject to little in the way of federal or state
oversight. So much for the idea of regulatory excess.
Given that MCHM is used to process coal, this accident adds to
the heavy toll that mining has taken on West Virginia—from the Buffalo Creek
flood in 1972 to the Upper Big Branch disaster in 2010 in which 29 miners were
killed. It is also significant that Freedom Industries purchases MCHM, for
which it serves as a distributor, from a subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, which
in turn is controlled by the rabidly anti-regulation Koch Brothers.
To all this can be added the fact that Freedom Industries was
cofounded by an individual named Carl Lemley Kennedy II. As the Charleston
Gazette has reported, Kennedy filed for personal
bankruptcy in 2005 after he was hit with federal charges of tax evasion and
failure to remit employee withholding taxes. He is reported to have admitted to
diverting more than $1 million that should have gone to the Internal Revenue
Service.
Kennedy’s involvement in Freedom Industries, the Gazette notes,
does not seem to have been affected by the fact that he had once pleaded guilty
to selling cocaine in connection with a scandal that involved the mayor of
Charleston. The paper quotes the current mayor, who is said to have known
Kennedy since the 1980s, as an “edgy guy.”
Another remarkable aspect of the story reported by the Gazette is
that Freedom Industries was struggling in 2009, and its Elk River facility was
able to go on functioning only after the Army Corps of Engineers dredged that
portion of the river using federal stimulus funds.
To summarize: a tax evader and drug dealer helped to establish a
largely unregulated chemical company that benefited from the federal stimulus
but apparently did little in the way of preventive maintenance and set the
stage for large-scale drinking water contamination.
Editor's Note: review the record of Copar CEO Sam Cocopard and ask yourself why Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz and Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero authorized issuing a town business licess to Copar. Click here and here and here and here.
Editor's Note: review the record of Copar CEO Sam Cocopard and ask yourself why Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz and Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero authorized issuing a town business licess to Copar. Click here and here and here and here.
Large corporations such as Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobil have
caused vast amounts of environmental damage, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that
small-time operators such as Freedom Industries can also do substantial harm.
And it is not just producers of hazardous materials but also distributors that
can be the culprits.
It was another small distributor, West Fertilizer, that
was involved in the ammonium nitrate explosion in Texas last April that killed
15 people. Much of the reporting in the wake of that event, particularly with
respect to holes in the regulatory system, could have been recycled for the new
West Virginia accident.
As long as the illusion of regulation is perpetuated in place of
the real thing, these accidents will continue to happen, and the right to
pollute will trump the right to be safe from pollution.