As the President’s Commission on the “spill” of oil in the Gulf of Mexico concludes, it was inevitable that there would be a spill like BP’s massive pollution of our Gulf of Mexico. See below.
I’ve seen corporate environmental crime in the suites first hand since the 1970s.
I’ve seen what strip-mining does to traditional communities in Appalachia, where the Tennessee Valley Authority virtually invented strip-mining and mountaintop removal through economic pressures designed to provide cheap power for industry.
In 1983, our Appalachian Observer newspaper won Department of Energy declassification of the world’s largest mercury pollution event (Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 4.2 million pounds emitted into workers’ lungs and brains). No one was never prosecuted.
I’ve seen Environmental Racism at its fiercest. I uncovered the fact that the U.S. Army moved the segregated Oak Ridge, Tennessee African-American community of Scarboro (Gamble Valley) to just downstream of the polluting Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant – the forced move was on U.S. Army orders in 1949-1950, just before the worst pollution started at Y-12.
I testified at and watched as two House of Representatives subcommittees held a July 11, 1983 investigative hearing on the mercury pollution (where I was the only witness to call for criminal prosecution of Union Carbide and Department of Energy managers). I asked then-Rep. Albert Gore, Jr. and Rep. Marilyn Lloyd (and their subcommittee staffs) to investigate environmental racism by the Army. Nothing ever happened.
I’ve seen environmental and nuclear whistleblowers harassed, hounded, intimidated, fired, blacklisted and hounded by government and business wrongdoers.
I’ve seen our Americans governments do precious little to help protect the people who speak up for us – environmental and nuclear whistleblowers. Some of those same governments (and government contractors) moved heaven and Earth to suspend/disbard me for zealous advocacy on whistleblowers’ behalf.
I’ve seen our City of St. Augustine dump 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste into our Old City Reservoir (which former EPA Regional Administrator John Henry Hankinson, Jr. told me was an “open sore going straight down into the aquifer and the groundwater”).
I’ve seen the longtime City of St. Augustine City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, and compliant City Commissioners, insult activists when we kept asking questions about the illegal dumping (2006-2009), until we won and got the problem solved. I watched and heard HARRISS smirk and laugh when we asked questions he knew City Commissioners would not ask.
I watched on November 13, 2006 as our outgoing Mayor (George Gardner) emitted perjoratives in my direction in retaliation for reporting the City of St. Augustine’s illegal dumping to federal and state law enforcement officials.
Then six days later, the St. Augustine Record defended my honor, in an editorial entitled “Always Important to Stick to Your Guns,” exaggerating just a wee bit (calling me “brilliant”) and defending the right of citizens to speak out.
In the illegal dumping case, I’ve seen the City of St. Augustine pay the corporate law firm of Akerman Senterfitt more than $200,000 to propose bringing that contaminated solid waste from one Environmental Justice community (West Augustine) to another (Lincolnville), where they planned to make the 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste into a “park” in Lincolnville
I’ve seen the City and Akerman Senterfitt rely on junk science and hired guns to justify the plan to make 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste into a “park” in Lincolnville.
Working with Judith and Tony Seraphin and other local activists, I’ve seen the City of St. Augustine and Akerman Senterfitt halted in their tracks. The 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste is now in a Class I landfill.
I watched as City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, the fiend who deposited the 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste, was never indicted.
I’ve watched as a criminal defense lawyer partner in Akerman Senterfitt, BP’s law firm (ex-State Senator DANIEL SAUL GELBER) practice flummery and dupery, pretending he had not been a partner when his Martindale-Hubbell, state legislature and law firm profiles all said he was a partner/shareholder in Akerman Senterfitt. I watched in horror as GELBER was nominated for Attorney General by the Democrats, over the better-qualified candidate (Dave Aronberg). I then watched as GELBER was trounced in the general election by Pamela Bondi, who is now our State Attorney General.
I’ve watched as EPA and DEP refused to prosecute HARRISS and other city officials for what RFK would have called the “willful, heedless destruction of natural beauty and pleasures,” including the City’s criminal dumping in the Old City Reservoir and the City’s criminal emission of 611,294 gallons of raw sewage in the San Sebastian River (which was preventable had the City heeded the reports that Judith Seraphin and I made about visible sewage in the San Sebastian River some nine months before).
I’ve watched many cover-ups of environmental crimes. Enough.
I look forward in the New Year seeing British Petroleum (a/k/a BP) indicted for corporate homicide and environmental pollution over the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Of course, handing up criminal indictments of BP will no doubt mean more lavish legal fees for Akerman Senterfitt (BP’s defense counsel in Florida). More importantly, prosecuting BP will protect workers, the environment and governmental integrity.
It’s time for American juries --- which the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist wrote are a “bulwark against oppression” – to be empowered to punish wrongdoers.
As the late African-American Gay poet Langston Hughes said, “let America be America again.”
The President’s Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Disaster found that three mega-corporations – BP, Transocean and Halliburton – are culpable for the BP disaster. They committed corporate homicide and fouled our Gulf of Mexico.
Also culpable are government regulators in the Department of the Interior, whom the DoI Inspector General found shared sex, drugs and gifts with oil company executives they were supposed to regulate.
In the New Year, America shall continue to follow in the footsteps of our American Founders, who in our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain pledged “[their] lives, [their] fortunes and {their] sacred honor” to standing up for human rights.
As Charles Sumner’s favorite Latin legal maxim says, “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.” (Fiat justitia ruat caelum).
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