Are we trading integrity
for an environmental power play?

EDITORIAL

by Hudson Old

I'm queasy, having slammed the people I once trusted as guardians of the environment, loading a news story with inferred bias.

And just plain old garden-variety bias, too.

The big bias in the story about American Electric Power's Welsh Power Plant permit violations came about during laborious interviews with state environmentalists. Asked to lead a walk through of their agency's charges, the accusers who should be able to spell out their case gave guarded responses, not full answers.

I made less clear my bias concerning Public Citizen, one of the state's leading environmental groups. That one goes back to the time Tom "Smitty" Smith, Public Citizen's Texas director, came to the office of the East Texas Journal. I'd tracked him down because he was quoted by the big guys, talking about Titus County to The Wall Street Journal, telling them about "pollution transport."

He said emissions from East Texas power plants ride winds from here to Dallas.

I'm against pollution.

I'm just as much against pollution as I am against people who try to snow me.

If you believe, like I do, that our prevailing winds come from the northwest in winter and the southwest in summer, then you'll appreciate the burning question I wanted to ask Tom "Smitty" Smith, which was this: "If our prevailing winds don't blow that way, how is it that stuff from here is transported to the Metroplex?"

His answer was that scientific study was underway, which leads to one certain conclusion - it takes no proof to warrant an accusation that the press will buy into.

Years have passed. I've never found a story about Smitty's outfit's study, but Smitty's still out there on the trail, stumping pollution transport.

Smitty asked me a question, too. He asked me if I knew anybody with cancer.

Could it be that a geographic association of cancer with industry was the missing link Public Citizen's man in Texas needed to make the leap to another environmental headline?

Yea, that and a willing reporter.

We didn't talk long.

The presence of the generating industry in Titus County gives us vested interest in environmental issues. That interest leaves us dependent on the wisdom, integrity and judgement of federal and state workers who regulate industry on our behalf. Those guys are legally accountable to us.

Environmentalists representing the non profits are morally accountable, responsible for providing sound information as the basis for good decisions.

Sadly, I don't trust Public Citizen to do that.

Nor am I convinced that our regulators effectively monitor those they are duty-bound to watch, or that they respond to facts as opposed to being driven by media.

There's all of the future for me to be proven wrong.