BEAT's Blog

Corporate influence in government has gotten out of hand. Now you might say, “BEAT is an environmental organization. You focus on environmental issues. Why do you care about corporate influence in government?” Two reasons: regulation and enforcement. Regulation provides the rules that protect the environment. Enforcement ensures that the rules are followed.

We’ve notice a trend lately. Legislators are doing their best to limit the powers of regulators, and the regulators are showing less and less interest in enforcing regulations. This trend is evident at federal, state, and local levels of government. Is this trend related to corporate influence in government? Absolutely. Read more…

In 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists published an article called Smoke, Mirrors, and Hot Air: How Exxon Mobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics To Manufacture Uncertainty On Climate Science. In this article, the scientists point to strategies used by tobacco companies in an attempt to convince people that the science linking tobacco use with cancer and other diseases was inconclusive. The authors make a strong case that oil companies have adopted these strategies to create doubt in the public’s mind about climate-change science. I would like to suggest that GE has now adopted these strategies in fighting any attempt to make that corporation clean their PCBs from the Housatonic River. Read more…

I’ve said it before.  There is no climate-change debate.

More than a thousand of the top climate scientists in the world were pulled together by the United Nations and asked to research the issue of climate change. This group, the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), submitted their findings to about 100 of their peers who were not members of the thousand, and to UN member nations. The document was revised based on input and sent out again to the same reviewers. The final draft was then made public. In it, the scientists said clearly that climate is changing, we as a species are responsible, there are effective actions we can take to remediate the problem, and the consequences of inaction would be dire. In the face of this wall of unity, Exxon-Mobil almost single-handedly created the climate-skeptic debate. In addition to funding junk science, the oil industry has created the idea that there is a debate going on within the scientific community and that the media should always make sure that they present both sides of the issue. This furthers the perception that there is in fact a debate going on within the climate-scientist community and that “the jury is still out”. Needless to say, this leaves the vast majority of climate scientists very frustrated.(1)

Now, while the rest of the world works feverishly to deal with climate change, our government has apparently decided that chemistry and physics don’t apply here. Congress, led by representatives from oil industry dependent states, have been working hard at rescinding EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And just in case that doesn’t work, congress has drastically cut EPA’s budget. The plan agreed upon to avert a government shutdown hit EPA harder than any other agency. They lost $1.6 billion dollars. That’s about one third the tax credit the government gave to GE this year.  Read more…

This amendment affirms that constitutional rights extend only to human persons. Corporations, partnerships, and other organizational entities are not human persons and, therefore, are not entitled to constitutional protections.

This is the current wording of a proposed 28^th amendment to the US Constitution. It simply says that corporations aren’t people. That sounds kind of obvious, doesn’t it? Here’s the problem. In a recent case, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations should be allowed to donate as much money as they choose to political election campaigns because corporations have the same rights as people and giving money to an election campaign is an exercise of free speech.  Of course corporations had an inordinate amount of power in government even before this court ruling, but now, what they used to have to do under the cover of darkness, they can do in broad daylight.

Recently, in the middle of a public debate on how best to approach the cleanup of the Housatonic River, GE chose to exercise its right of free speech by giving $300,000 to 1Berkshires – a group that then publicly advocated for the same kind of minimalist cleanup that GE advocated. Because GE saw this whole debate as a public relations campaign, not as a discussion aimed at reaching the best solution, GE chose to make the donation secretly. For the same reason, 1Berkshires chose to hide the gift. As a matter of fact, they denied receiving it when asked. Right away we see one of the problems with corporations. By law, they are required to do what’s best for their profits and for their shareholders. Truth be damned. We can expect nothing more from corporations. We as a society wrote the rules. If you’re a corporation, profits come first – and second and third. Read more…

The recent and on-going battle with GE over how best to clean their toxic PCBs from our river is very frustrating for environmental groups such as ours. It’s difficult to get a message out when you’re out-spent by a corporation as large as GE. Their slick propaganda video which contained very few truths and more than a few lies was widely distributed. Their $300,000 payment to local economic groups who portrayed themselves as environmentalists in order to get their benefactor off the hook was a subversion and perversion of what should have been an open and productive discussion. The political pressure wielded by GE is second to none in the corporate world.

At BEAT, we recognize that to overpower this corporate beast and others who are causing equal and greater environmental harm we have to strike at the heart of the problem. As an introduction to the problem to which I’m alluding, please watch this video. I’ll be presenting my views on this topic and on some closely related topics, and some examples of how this issue plays out locally in this blog soon. Thanks for your time.
Bruce

EPA recently provided an opportunity for government agencies, organizations, and citizens to submit comments regarding the cleanup of the Housatonic River south of the confluence of the West Branch and the East Branch in Pittsfield. The comment period has ended, and EPA has compiled the comments in one long document and posted that document on their website. Here’s a very brief summary of the comments, and a few comments on the comments. Please understand that I am probably not an objective observer in this matter, so I encourage you to read the full text of comments on EPA’s website. Read more…

The February 2 issue of our newsletter, The BEAT News, carried the following story.

Busted for dumping snow in Merrimack River

Tuesday February 1, 2011
LAWRENCE, Mass. (AP) — An investigation has been launched after surveillance video caught a contractor allegedly dumping snow plowed from a parking lot into the Merrimack River in Lawrence.

Mayor William Lantigua says he personally witnessed the dumping, which involved 42 trucks over a three-hour period late Sunday night and into Monday morning.

Police Chief John Romero tells The Eagle-Tribune that dumping plowed snow into water is a violation of federal clean water laws, because the snow contains salt, oil and other contaminants.

Police have informed both state and federal environmental regulators.
<full story with video>

Lawrence DPW workers suspended for dumping snow in river
Source: eagletribune.com

One day after Mayor William Lantigua caught a private contractor dumping snow into the Merrimack River, he suspended three public works employees, one of them a School Committee member, for allegedly doing the same thing.

We also posted on February 2 a reminder to residents and to municipalities that dumping snow in the river is not an acceptable means for disposing of snow – it is in fact illegal.

Recently we observed snow-removal equipment sending snow into the river along West Street in Pittsfield.  On February 13 the following letter to the editor appeared in the electronic version (probably the print version too) of The Berkshire Eagle.

Sand, salt don’t belong in river

Sunday February 13, 2011

My wife and I made our daily trip to Harry’s on Elm St. Monday afternoon and were amazed to see the city’s self-propelled sidewalk snowblower unit removing the nasty sand and salt snow from the bridge near the Clip Shop by sending it right over the sides and into the river! When we left Harry’s the other side was being done.

Isn’t there some kind of EPA law being violated here? Couldn’t that snow have been blown into the back of a truck?

BILL PLUDE

Pittsfield

To which we responded online:

Yes there certainly is a law against that. Dumping anything in the river without a permit is a violation of the federal Clean Water Act. We recently put a reminder of this in our newsletter, The BEAT News. You can always call Mass DEP’s Environmental Strike Force at 1-888-VIOLATE (1-888-846-5283) when you think you see a violation. Thanks for the heads-up.
Bruce Winn (Berkshire Environmental Action Team)

We would like to remind everyone again.  It is illegal to dump anything in the river without a permit.  BEAT has reported the violation to the City of Pittsfield (Mayor’s Office), the Pittsfield Conservation Commission, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and the DEP Environmental Strike Force.

The Consent Decree – everyone knows what it is, and nobody has anything good to say about it.  This is the legal agreement made in 2000 by which the cleanup of PCBs in and around the Housatonic River is conducted.  The participants in the agreement were:  the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), General Electric (GE), the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the State of Connecticut, the City of Pittsfield, and the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority (PEDA).

From time to time, the parties involved in the cleanup wish to modify this decree.  The Consent Decree has in fact been reopened at least ten times – usually when GE is inconvenienced by one or more of its provisions.  EPA refuses to open it for environmental groups, because they fear that high-powered GE lawyers will take advantage of the opportunity to make more of their own own changes.  Does this make any sense?  Isn’t it more likely that GE will use any opening in the usually locked-down decree to their own advantage when they are the ones planning the opening?

Even when the decree has been opened, environmental groups have little input.  Take the case of the opening of the decree just last September.  This was a reopening of the decree to allow GE to modify the remediation plan for Silver Lake.  BEAT and other environmental organizations thought this might be a good opportunity to make some of our own adjustments to how the cleanup of Silver Lake should proceed.   Our concerns fell on deaf ears.  Only GE’s concerns were addressed.  This makes it difficult to take seriously EPA’s rationale for refusing the requests of environmental organizations.  The rule seems to be that only GE can reopen the decree, even though the decree itself places no such restriction on the process.  EPA won’t act for fear of GE’s lawyers, and now, for political reasons, this situation may get worse. Read more…

Lately I’ve been trying to understand the motivation of those people in our community who are arguing against a cleanup of the Housatonic River and are arguing instead that GE has the correct perspective in saying that the river should be left to heal itself. I understand GE’s motivation. Any cleanup will cost them money. They are bound as a corporation to protect the interest of their shareholders, which means they must protect their bottom line even if it means leaving their poisons in our river. But what about those in our own community who don’t want the PCBs removed from the river and who have been spending quite a bit of money to add their voices to GE’s PR campaign? Read more…

This was to be the sixth and final chapter of my critique of GE’s video, “The Fate Of The River.” Instead, I combined chapter’s 1 through 5 into one document and then finished by adding what would have been chapter 6. I then put the entire document up on BEAT’s website. You can now read the whole series, including the exciting conclusion on our website. Thanks for following this story.
Bruce