Dubya in Bed with Environmental Outlaw

By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch. Posted July 25, 2000.

Early last October, every member of a ninth grade girls track team and the freshman football team at suburban Houston's Deer Park High School's north campus returned from practice reporting severe breathing problems. That day Deer Park registered 251 parts of ozone per billion, more than twice the federal standard, and Houston surpassed Los Angeles as the smoggiest city in the United States.

One of the biggest contributors to Deer Park's pollution is a plant owned by Enron, Houston's wealthiest company. Enron is also the single largest contributor ($555,000 and counting) to the political ambitions of Texas Governor George W. Bush, Republican Candidate for President of the United States. Kenneth Lay, the chief executive of Enron, has personally given over $100,000 to Bush's political campaigns, more than any other individual. He is also one of the "Pioneers" -- a Bush supporter who has collected at least $100,000 in direct contributions of $1,000 or less.

Enron is best known as the largest buyer and seller of natural gas in the country. Its 1999 revenues of $40 billion have made it the 18th largest company in the United States. Enron is invested in energy projects around the world including the UK, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, India and Mozambique.

The company has recently expanded from energy to "bandwidth" capacity for the Internet, making it one of the world's largest Internet-based trading companies, buying and selling a dizzying array of products ranging from pulp and paper to petrochemicals and plastics, as well as esoteric products like clean air credits that utilities purchase to meet emission limits.

Texas activists say that this tight connection between Bush and Lay bodes ill for the country, if Bush is elected. Andrew Wheat, from Texans for Public Justice, a campaign finance advocacy group in Austin, compared the symbiotic relationship between Enron and the Governor to "cogeneration" -- a process used by utilities to harness waste heat vented by their generators to produce more power. "In a more sinister form of cogeneration, corporations are converting economic into political power. A Bush election fueled by Enron dollars could fill the White House with dangerous levels of Enron gas. When that gas ignites in the public-policy arena, consumers will get burned," he said.

Indeed Bush campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan said that, if elected president, the governor is keen to promote the kind of policies that he has crafted with companies like Enron for the state of Texas. "The governor believes in competition, free enterprise, better service and technology improvements. He has promoted sweeping and effective reforms in education and has been the first governor in Texas to seriously address limits on emissions. He will carry his agenda to Washington to do what he believes is best for the country."

But is what Bush believes is good for Texas, good for the United States? Texas has one of the worst environmental records in the country, particularly in the field of air pollution. And its education record is not much better. Unfortunately, the Bush platform for the country is very similar to the kinds of programs that he has worked on with Enron, cutting corporate taxes, deregulating industry and replacing social programs with private sector volunteerism.

In addition Enron is invested in energy projects around the globe -- some of which have been tainted by charges of human rights abuses. For example, in India construction of it's controversial Dhabol power plant has brought charges by international groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of complicity with police brutality in rural communities. It is also accused of human rights violations in Bolivia, where it is building a major gas pipeline threatening indigenous communities and the rainforest environment, according to California-based Amazon Watch.

Houston, We Have a Problem

The Enron Methanol plant in Pasadena, Texas lies in the Houston Ship Channel area, the nation's largest concentration of petrochemical plants, just east of the city. The Enron Methanol plant has won special concessions from Governor Bush allowing the company to pollute without a permit, as well as giving the company immunity from prosecution for violating the law. Indeed, plants like this in Texas actually emit twice as many nitrogen oxides, a key ingredient of smog, as do all the nine million cars in Texas put together.

Only seven percent of the more than 3,500 tons of nitrogen oxide emitted by the Enron Methanol plant in 1997 were permitted. Enron got away with this under the "grandfather clause" of the 1971 Texas Clean Air Act which allows plants built before 1971 to continue their polluting practices. Governor Bush extended this clause under the 1999 Clean Air Responsibility Enterprise (CARE) program that his office drew up in a series of secret meetings with representatives of the top polluters in the state. CARE waives permit requirements for plants that volunteer to cut emissions.

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