Covering Up an Environmental Disaster Larger Than Exxon Valdez
April 22, 2004
campaignmoney.org
Shortly after President George W. Bush’s inauguration, his Administration scuttled an investigation by the Mining Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) into coal company Massey Energy’s role in a massive mining waste spill in October 2000 in Kentucky, which decimated streams for a hundred miles into West Virginia.
Massey Energy board member James H. “Buck” Harless of West Virginia is a major Bush fundraiser, having collected more than $275,000 for Bush’s 2000 campaign, contributed $100,000 to the President’s Inaugural celebration, and raised more than $100,000 for Bush this election cycle,[1] bringing his total to close to half a million dollars.
"We were looking for friends, and we found one in George W. Bush," Harless told the Wall Street Journal in 2001.
Bush appointed his new friend to the Administration’s Energy Task Force led by Vice President Dick Cheney. In early 2001, Harless and other coal industry leaders met with Cheney to discuss the Bush energy policy, which emphasized coal-based electricity production.
With the new emphasis on coal came a whole host of mining-executives-turned-regulators, with allegiances to their former industry. An example: David Laurinski was appointed Bush’s Assistant Secretary of Labor for mine safety and health (and heads up MSHA), was formerly an executive with Energy West Mining. Laurinski oversaw the investigation into the Massey spill.
But it appears that mining executives had little to worry about. "You did everything you could to elect a Republican president. You are already seeing in his actions the payback, if you will, his gratitude for what we did," said Bill Raney of the West Virginia Coal Association.[2]
Back in Kentucky and West Virginia, however, some residents weren’t happy. The investigation into Massey’s responsibility in the 310 million gallon slurry spill was being sidetracked.
Investigators discovered claims made by company officials – that after a small spill at the same impoundment in 1994 the company had taken measures to prevent another occurrence – were false. But, according to several reports, within days of the Bush Administration taking over, the investigation was narrowed and cut short.
Jack Spadaro, a veteran of various agencies with mining jurisdiction, was on the investigation team. Spadaro and other investigators felt that they would gather enough evidence to issue Massey Energy citations for willful and criminal negligence – and implicate their own MSHA as well. But higher-ups in MSHA presented further investigation into these discoveries, Spadaro refused to go along and resigned on April 3, 2001.[3]
"I had never seen anything so corrupt and lawless in my entire career, what I saw regarding interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States," Spadaro told 60 Minutes.[4]
Spadaro thought that the company should be cited for at least eight violations and pay a hefty fine. Instead, Massey Energy was cited for two violations and paid only $110,000. Then Massey successfully challenged the one of the violations and had the company’s fine reduced to $55,000, and again to just $5,600.[5] By comparison, the Commonwealth of Kentucky fined Massey $3.25 million.[6]
Ultimately, Spadaro was demoted when he refused to sign the report and had his pay cut by $35,000.[7]
Unfortunately, expect more of the same from the Bush Administration. In total, the mining industry gave close to $2.7 million to elect Bush in 2000 (when unlimited soft money to the political parties was allowed). In the 2004 election cycle, the mining industry had already given more than $430,000 to Bush and the Republican National Committee up until the end of 2003.[8]
The Bush Administration changed the Clean Water Act to allow for the dumping of millions of tons of waste in valleys and waterways throughout Appalachia. Mountaintop removal mining is so widespread in West Virginia that there are bumper stickers that ironically claim, "Almost level, West Virginia."
Meanwhile, Massey board member Buck Harless sees progress in mountaintop removal. According to the Wall Street Journal, Harless "praises the resulting flat spaces as an added benefit for this mountainous state; he owns part of an industrial park on a flattened mountain near his tiny hometown of Gilbert. His own company has blown up several peaks…"[9]
But it has engendered the ire of local leaders and activists. "Using stealth tactics, the Bush Administration has made an end-run around Congress, making administrative rule changes within federal agencies so that the illegal becomes legal – enriching his allies in the coal industry – while putting the environment and citizens living in the coalfields at greater risk," Janet Fout, co-director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition said.
Harless, it should be underscored, is back to work trying to keep George W. Bush in the White House. So far this election, he has brought in more than $100,000 this election as the President's West Virginia Finance Chair.[10] For Harless, it is time and money well spent.
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