Your Economy OT - Conspiracy, Politics, Religion, Terrorism, War

[Ayock]

“When environmental regulators do their job properly, that can mean serious trouble for Perry's largest political donors.”
Published: Saturday 27 August 2011

Like so many Re­pub­li­can of­fi­cials of the tea party per­sua­sion, Rick Perry de­spises the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency — a feel­ing he has ex­pressed re­peat­edly in speeches, law­suits, leg­is­la­tion and even a book ti­tled "Fed Up!" Per­haps that is only nat­ural for the gov­er­nor of Texas, a "dirty en­ergy" state where the pro­tec­tion of air, water and human health rank well below the de­fense of oil com­pany prof­its for most politi­cians.

But Perry has at least one other rea­son for smack­ing down those bu­reau­crats so ea­gerly. When en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tors do their job prop­erly, that can mean se­ri­ous trou­ble for Perry's largest po­lit­i­cal donors.

The out­stand­ing ex­am­ple is Harold Sim­mons, a Dal­las mega-bil­lion­aire in­dus­tri­al­ist who has do­nated well over a mil­lion dol­lars to Perry's cam­paign com­mit­tees re­cently. With Perry's eager as­sis­tance — and de­spite warn­ings from Texas en­vi­ron­men­tal of­fi­cials — Sim­mons has got­ten ap­proval to build an enor­mous ra­dioac­tive waste dump over a cru­cial un­der­ground water sup­ply.

"We first had to change the law to where a pri­vate com­pany can own a li­cense, and we did that," Sim­mons boasted in 2006, after the Texas leg­is­la­ture and the gov­er­nor rub­ber-stamped ini­tial leg­is­la­tion and ap­provals for the pro­ject. "Then we got an­other law passed that said (the state) can only issue one li­cense. Of course, we were the only ones that ap­plied."

Most Amer­i­cans have never heard of Sim­mons, de­spite his fan­tas­tic wealth, be­cause he wisely keeps his head low, gen­er­ally re­fus­ing press in­ter­views and avoid­ing media cov­er­age. Last year, a local monthly in his home­town pub­lished the head­line "Dal­las' Evil Ge­nius" over a scathing and fas­ci­nat­ing in­ves­tiga­tive pro­file that ex­am­ined not only the pe­cu­liar his­tory of lit­i­ga­tion be­tween Sim­mons and his chil­dren (who no longer speak to him), but his po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions, cor­po­rate raid­ing and con­tin­u­ing cor­po­rate pen­chant for pol­lu­tion.

In D mag­a­zine, re­porter Laray Polk ex­plained how Sim­mons and a com­pany he owns — in­nocu­ously named Waste Con­trol Sys­tems — ma­nip­u­lated state and fed­eral law to allow him to build a nu­clear-waste dis­posal site in West Texas. But con­struc­tion has been de­layed for years in part be­cause the site ap­pears to over­lay the Oglalla Aquifer, an un­der­ground water sup­ply that serves 1.9 mil­lion peo­ple in nine states, rais­ing ob­vi­ous con­cerns over ra­dioac­tive con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. In the Sim­mons pro­file and sub­se­quent posts on the In­ves­tiga­tive Fund web­site last year, Polk ex­plored the con­tro­versy over the pro­posed WCS fa­cil­ity, in­clud­ing strong ob­jec­tions by staff an­a­lysts at the Texas Com­mis­sion on En­vi­ron­men­tal Qual­ity who found ev­i­dence that atomic waste might in­deed leach into a huge pool of drink­ing water.

Now re­porters for the Los An­ge­les Times have re­vived, ad­vanced and up­dated the WCS story with much ad­di­tional de­tail, in­clud­ing in­ter­views with the Texas en­vi­ron­men­tal of­fi­cials who over­saw the ap­proval process for the fa­cil­ity. For a pe­riod last sum­mer, that process ap­peared to have been slowed down to allow se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the sci­en­tific data col­lected by the com­mis­sion's staff.

In other words, the reg­u­la­tors were try­ing to do their job, which meant ex­pen­sive de­lays and per­haps an even­tual rul­ing against the nu­clear waste site. That would have pro­tected the Oglalla Aquifer and cost Sim­mons hun­dreds of mil­lions in lost in­vest­ment and profit. But then Perry's ap­pointees on the com­mis­sion voted by two to one to issue li­censes for the WCS site.

This year, of­fi­cials on an­other Texas com­mis­sion ap­pointed by Perry — who over­see low-level ra­dioac­tive waste in the state — voted to allow the WCS site to ac­cept nu­clear waste from 34 other states in a highly con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion later rat­i­fied by the state leg­is­la­ture and signed by Perry him­self. Not long after that, ac­cord­ing to the Los An­ge­les Times re­port, Sim­mons gave $100,000 to Amer­i­cans for Rick Perry, an "in­de­pen­dent" com­mit­tee sup­port­ing his pres­i­den­tial can­di­dacy. (Back in 2004, Sim­mons was a major con­trib­u­tor to an­other "in­de­pen­dent" po­lit­i­cal com­mit­tee, the no­to­ri­ous Swift Boat Vet­er­ans group that dis­torted De­mo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee John Kerry's war record in a se­ries of TV ads.)

Ac­cord­ing to a spokesman for WCS, the Texas gov­er­nor's happy and lu­cra­tive re­la­tion­ship with Sim­mons did noth­ing to help the com­pany ex­cept to turn the bil­lion­aire into "an easy tar­get. ... It made the state re­dou­ble its ef­forts to be thor­ough." But the Texas of­fi­cials who op­posed the ap­proval on prin­ci­ple have since quit their jobs with the state. As one of them told the Times re­porters, "This is a stun­ningly hor­ri­ble pub­lic pol­icy to grant a li­cense to this com­pany for that site ... . Some­thing had to hap­pen to over­come the quite bla­tant short­com­ing of that ap­pli­ca­tion. ... The only thing I know in Texas that has the po­ten­tial to do that is money in pol­i­tics."

As for the Texas of­fi­cial (and Perry ap­pointee) who over­ruled his own sci­en­tists and ap­proved the deal, he left state gov­ern­ment, too — to work as a lob­by­ist for Sim­mons. He says that no undue in­flu­ence led to the fa­vor­able out­come for his new em­ployer.

Texas must be the only place on earth where any­one would be­lieve that.