News Coverage
EPA Chief Briefed On PCBs Week Before Agreement
Published June 17, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The head of the Environmental Protection Agency was briefed on PCB contamination in Anniston just days after a state jury found chemical companies liable, raising new questions about the role high-ranking officials played in negotiating a controversial agreement with the firms.
The Environmental Working Group, a public watchdog, released an agenda Wednesday from a March 6, 2002, briefing EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman requested concerning the polluted Anniston site. Although the briefing itself isn't much of a surprise, EWG officials say its timing is suspicious.
Ten days before the meeting, a jury found Monsanto, Solutia and Pharmacia liable for poisoning the site. Seven days after it, the federal government assumed jurisdiction over cleanup of the most contaminated portion of the site in what critics called a watered-down deal that could save the companies hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup fees.
Under the consent decree, the companies are still susceptible to individual damage lawsuits, but the immediate cleanup a judge was expected to order was replaced -- at least for now -- by a less-costly federal study.
"If you compare what the agreement looked like before a meeting with Administrator Whitman to the agreement that emerged after that meeting, you see Monsanto getting off the hook," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group.
Stan Meiburg, deputy administrator for EPA's southeastern region, said Wednesday that the briefing was designed only to give Whitman an update, not to seek direction from her. He said the administrator did not try to influence the process.
"In this, as in almost all sites, the regional office is the one that makes the calls on these things," said Meiburg, who attended the briefing.
PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were used as an insulator in electrical transformers when manufactured at the Anniston plant by Monsanto from 1935 to 1971. Later they were suspected of being a cause of cancer and other illnesses and were banned by the government. Solutia was spun off from Monsanto in 1997.
Much of the meeting's discussion topics were redacted from the document released Wednesday, but it indicates the briefing took 45 minutes and was conducted by officials from the EPA's regional office and the Department of Justice.
Some Anniston activists have been outspoken in their belief that high-level administration officials had a conflict of interest favoring Monsanto and therefore pushed to get the company a better deal.
"What we really would like to know is what part Monsanto played in it," said Shirley Baker, health consultant to Anniston-based Community Against Pollution. "We just really want to get to the bottom of the truth."
Monsanto and Solutia contributed heavily to Attorney General John Ashcroft's unsuccessful Senate race in Missouri, and Deputy EPA Administrator Linda Fisher removed herself from the case. But in February, a federal judge rejected claims by 3,500 Anniston residents that Whitman had a financial stake in the EPA-approved cleanup plan.
Still, regional EPA officials -- not Whitman -- appeared at a Senate hearing on the cleanup last April. When Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala., pressed them on why higher-level representatives didn't attend instead, the officials said the consent decree was made at the regional level and Whitman had nothing to do with it.
"It has always been my belief that the agreement between Monsanto and the EPA to clean up the PCB contamination fell short of everyone's expectations," said Shelby, who added the company should be held accountable for "every penny of the cleanup."