Modern political scandals are funny. Funny strange, not funny haha.
Strange because the initial acts that trigger the scandal are obscured by the technical reasons that the person is in trouble. Nixon was sunk by the cover-up of the Watergate break-in more than the actual act. Clinton was nailed for lying about an act that was not illegal at all.
Tom DeLay, indicted for money laundering and violating campaign finance laws, seems to be an exception. DeLay played fast and loose with ethical considerations. He’s accepted vacations from lobbyists, paid family members hundreds of thousands of dollars, used government resources for partisan gain and illegally shifted corporate money to state elections. As a result, he’s been admonished by the House Ethics Committee and indicted on charges of money laundering and violating campaign finance laws.
Fundamentally this is a scandal of business as usual being pointed out to the American public. There’s never been any doubt that Tom DeLays and Jack Abramoffs exist; up until now there just hasn’t been any interest in the mainstream media or in the halls of justice to document their crimes. What still isn’t being discussed is how DeLay’s habit of representing corporate boardrooms and not the citizens of Texas’ 22nd congressional district has been harmful to the whole country.
The taint of DeLay’s corruption reaches far from his home in Texas. It travels 1500 miles and reaches us here in Western Pennsylvania. It gets discharged into the Conemaugh River. It gets emitted into the air in Indiana county. And it gets ingested by residents all over the state who eat sport caught fish.
That’s because one of the donors of Tom DeLay’s illegally handled money is Reliant Energy, who operate 7 coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania. Based out of Houston, Reliant operates 13 coal-fired power plants, among other facilities, throughout the country.
Two of Reliant’s plants in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Keystone power plant and the Conemaugh power plant, are among the region’s worst violators of water pollution permits. They are also large sources of toxic mercury emissions.
Reliant Energy Conemaugh Power Plant
Reliant first became involved in DeLay’s legal and ethical woes at a June 2002 golf fundraiser with a $25,000 contribution for Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (TRM PAC). DeLay’s failure to report that contribution earned him his first rebuke from the House Ethics Committee.
Gifts from that fundraiser, among others received by TRM PAC, were illegally used on the Texas state legislature’s 2002 election. The results of that election were a Republican majority in the Texas house that was strong enough to ram through an almost unprecedented mid-decade redrawing of Congressional boundaries, favoring DeLay and other Texas GOP legislators.
DeLay and Reliant Energy do not have the ordinary lobbyist/ lobby relationship. It goes deeper. One indication of that is the baby shower for Tom DeLay’s daughter that was held at Reliant’s office building in May, 2002. An energy lobbyist who organized it claimed that she did so because she was good friends with DeLay’s daughter.
On Reliant’s corporate web page, as is usually the case with the worst environmental offenders, they tout their environmental stewardship. They claim to “exceed federal, state or local regulations that govern air emissions to the atmosphere, wastewater discharges to surface waters or groundwater, or industrial waste disposal at offsite or onsite permitted disposal sites.”
However a quick view of their compliance record on the EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) web site disproves this. Both the Keystone and Conemaugh power plants were out of compliance with their water pollution permit for every quarter over the past three years. This means that both plants regularly discharged contaminants out of their facilities in quantities much larger than legally allowed.
For ten of the past twelve quarters, due to discharges of iron up to 4 times the legal limit, the Keystone plant has been in “significant noncompliance,” an EPA term for the worst instances of pollution. The Conemaugh plant was also in significant noncompliance for 9 of their 12 last reporting quarters. In the most recent available quarter they released highly illegal volumes of five different contaminants: iron, boron, aluminum, selenium and mercury.
It’s unclear what penalties, if any, Reliant has faced for their chronic law breaking in Pennsylvania. The state Department of Environmental Protection is responsible for enforcing violations of water pollution permits in Pennsylvania, but they have their hands full with too many violators and not enough resources for enforcement. A situation which usually leads to the worst violators being locked into consent agreements that detail small fines for regular violations. These fines are generally not large enough to deter future violations, but just get factored in as part of the cost of doing business.
Reliant, and other energy companies, thrive in this scenario and seek to ensure that enforcement of current environmental laws remains lax. They also lobby for the regulations themselves to be diluted.
A guideline from the Clinton Administration lumped mercury emissions in with the federal Clean Air Act, requiring that coal-fired power plants reduce their mercury emissions by 90% within four years. The Bush administration, as part of the deceptively titled “Clean Skies Act” changed that to a decrease of only 70%, in place by the year 2018.
For Reliant’s western Pennsylvania plants, that adds up to quite a difference. The Keystone plant is the highest emitter of mercury in Pennsylvania, and third in the country, releasing 1280 pounds in 2003. Conemaugh, fifth statewide, released an additional 541 pounds. Statewide, the nine Reliant Energy power plants emitted 3345 pounds. of mercury, nearly half of Pennsylvania’s total from coal-fired power plants.
Mercury is a neurotoxin, that after being emitted into the air works its ways into our rivers and streams and bioaccumulates in our fish. Currently there is a general warning to only eat one sport caught fish per month from Pennsylvania’s waters. However, for many areas, such as large stretches of the Allegheny and the Conemaugh rivers, there are more specific warnings to only eat one serving of fish caught there per month. Pennsylvania is third nationally for mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the main industrial source of mercury pollution.
A recent Senate vote fell three votes short of negating the Bush rollbacks to the mercury regulation. That isn’t merely good luck for Reliant and other energy companies, but the result of years of politically charged contributions.
As long as there are companies like Reliant Energy who want to profit while destroying our environment, there will always be politicians like Tom DeLay who will aid them to enhance and secure their own power.
New Florence, PA, across the river and in the shadow of Reliant Energy
