home | table of contents | previous | next
Chemical Council Statewide Releases
Current incumbents of statewide offices in Texas received $457,853 from the 20 reporting Chemical Council member PACs. Governor George W. Bush was the largest recipient of money from reporting PACs affiliated with Chemical Council members. His $115,871 share accounted for 11 percent of all the Chemical Council-related PAC money studied here.
Governor George W. Bush has been good to the chemical industry by being weak on environmental protection. Bush first signaled this weakness when he turned to industry, rather than the environmental community, for his TNRCC appointees. His first TNRCC appointees included an oil lawyer, an agribusinessman and a 30-year veteran of the Monsanto chemical company who has also been a Chemical Council lobbyist.17
Superfunds: Statewide Officials' Debts To Chemical Council-Linked PACs Statewide Official Governor George Bush Attorney General John Cornyn Comptroller Carole Rylander Lt. Governor Rick Perry Railroad Com. Tony Garza Land Com. David Dewhurst Agricultural Com. Susan Combs Bush also turned to industry to devise what he regards as the crown jewel of his environmental record: his industry-drafted Clean Air Responsibility Enterprise (CARE) program for grandfathered air polluters (see “Grandpa Polluters Write the Rules”). CARE invites the companies that own industrial facilities that were exempted from the 1971 Texas Clean Air Act to voluntarily bring those plants into compliance by getting permitted by the TNRCC. This permitting process typically requires them to install modern pollution controls on their old plants. Significantly, the CARE program does not require grandfathered plants to commit to quantitative pollution-reduction targets or to a reductions deadline (see “ALCOA: The Grandaddy of All Grandpa Polluters”).
Other current statewide officeholders also received substantial Chemical Council financing. From 1995 through 1998, Attorney General John Cornyn took $77,350 from reporting TCC-member PACs, or seven percent of all the PAC money studied here. Cornyn received 29 percent of this money ($22,750) for his 1996 Texas Supreme Court race and 71 percent ($54,600) for the 1998 Attorney General race that he launched after resigning from the court in October 1997. Both the Supreme Court and the Office of the Attorney General process a steady stream of lawsuits (including agency enforcement actions) involving Chemical Council members.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander took $67,500 from reporting Chemical Council member PACs. Rylander got 47 percent of this money for her second Railroad Commission race in 1996; the rest went into her 1998 Comptroller race. In a cozy relationship, Texas Railroad Commissioners run expensive statewide campaigns that are largely financed by the oil and gas industry that the commission regulates. Many of these oil companies have chemical divisions that are Chemical Council members. The oil industry and Chemical Council members also have a steady stream of tax disputes pending with the Comptroller. In a strategic move that kept the oil spigots open, Rylander did not resign from the Railroad Commission to run for Comptroller, an office that she won by a margin of just 20,224 votes. The industry knew that if she lost the Comptroller race, she would have continued to make oil and gas rulings at the Railroad Commission until 2002.19
Lieutenant Governor Rick Perry took $37,250 from reporting Chemical Council member PACs, with a quarter of this money coming in before then-Agricultural Commissioner Perry began his lieutenant governor’s race. When Perry ran the Texas Department of Agriculture,20 that agency fired a pesticide inspector who was investigating allegations of arsenic acid dumping by the state’s biggest pesticide manufacturer, the Voluntary Purchasing Group. Perry’s agency also stripped Texas farm workers of their right to know when the fields they were working were to be sprayed.21
Finally, Falcon Seaboard energy company executive and new Land Commissioner David Dewhurst subsidized his heavily self-financed race by taking $13,500 from reporting TCC-member PACs in 1998. Parent companies of Chemical Council members obtain oil and gas leases for state lands from Dewhurst’s agency, which also coordinates clean ups of their offshore oil spills.
ALCOA, The Granddaddy of 'Grandpa' Polluters ALCOA’s Rockdale plant is Texas’ No. 1 “grandfathered” polluter, spewing 104,303 tons of grandfathered pollution into Texas skies in a year. This represents 12 percent of all the grandfathered pollution in Texas.On April 16, 1999, the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC) announced that ALCOA had joined the Clean Air Responsibility Enterprise (CARE) program for polluters who volunteer to reduce their grandfathered air emissions.14 Like most CARE volunteers, however, ALCOA’s “commitment” does not specify the amount of emissions it plans to cut or a compliance deadline.
Asked about ALCOA’s pledge at the time of the announcement, company spokesperson Jim Hodson acknowledged that ALCOA’s “commitment” lacked these important specifics. Hodson said the company did not know when it would seek an air permit from the TNRCC or whether the plant would seek a permit based on the “best available retrofit technology” or on a cheaper, dirtier technology.15
Pollution from ALCOA’s Rockdale plant is not limited to its grandfathered emissions. The plant released 1.9 million pounds of toxic chemicals into Texas skies in 1996, including 681,005 pounds of hydrochloric acid, 675,100 pounds of carbonyl sulfide and 511,000 pounds of hydrogen fluoride.
The company’s website boasts that ALCOA received 10 environmental excellence awards in 1997, including a TNRCC award for the Rockdale plant. TNRCC employees say this is a gross exaggeration. The TNRCC issued a pro forma certificate to the plant that the agency routinely issues for drinking water wells that maintain low bacteria counts; even companies the agency is suing for environmental violations receive them. “A lot of these companies just make these [awards] up,” a TNRCC employee scoffed.
home | table of contents | previous | next