by J. Flannery

Many individuals act on their own, in their own best interest, caring only about themselves, getting their own, and they waste shared common resources that are severely limited and essential, that need to be preserved, rather than squandered.

This is a classic dilemma, called the tragedy of the commons, how individuals motivated only by their own needs, gradually degrade and ultimately destroy a common that exists without sufficient, if any, restriction to protect itself.

The shared and ever-limiting resource that concerns us in Loudoun County, the common that is at risk, is water, clean water, from our streams, rivers and water table, the tributaries of water that flow into the endangered Chesapeake Bay. Water quality in Loudoun County and this region is at risk.

78% of our stream miles here in Loudoun County are “stressed.”

Fertilizer, manure, waste and pollutants feed into these watery channels. 

I heard a realtor at a public hearing before the Board of Supervisors make fun of those environmentalists who want to preserve our waters in a “pristine” condition. 

She said “pristine” with contempt, like it was two four-letter words. She seemed astonished that anyone could prefer water that was pure and unspoiled.  No matter.  The water we are talking about is no longer pristine.  It has been compromised.  Every 10th parcel in Loudoun County has been affected.

A Greek philosopher said “what is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.”

This is shamefully true here in Loudoun and we must now compensate for our carelessness.  We have allowed irresponsible industry and personal sloth to foul the air we breathe and the waters we drink.

The Loudoun Chamber of Commerce is an embarrassment.  Last year, the Chamber opposed insurance for autistic children, and this year it opposes stream buffers to clean our water.  I don’t know who this Chamber represents – but it’s not this businessman.  We have to do better because doing nothing is bad business.

Some say the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, passed by the General Assembly in 1988, doesn’t require that this Board do anything at all. 

They are right we are not required to do anything.

But we were empowered by the General Assembly to act when the need arises, now that our population has increased dramatically, and our water supply has become degraded. 

Some complain that it is inconvenient to abide by the County’s proposed rules and regulations, and that it may carry additional costs. 

Polluted water is an even more “inconvenient” legacy than setting things right. 

And, you know, sometimes we have to pay the price for people acting independently and selfishly without any concern for the commonwealth.

Among the worst of this number who are resisting change are the do-nothing table thumpers, those folk who ridicule clean water, who play on public fears of cost and limited freedom, who shift blame from themselves, and who spread disinformation about what’s proposed in the hope that misdirection and conflation will defeat these long-needed environmental safeguards.

The amendments that the Board of Supervisors are considering strive to strike a fair balance by creating areas that protect all water bodies that flow year round. 

They propose a 100-foot landward buffer adjacent to these water bodies, both standing alone, and when they are connected to wetlands.  These buffers will reduce sediments by 70% and reduce nutrients by 40%. 

The Board’s exempt and permitted uses, buffer requirements, waivers, exceptions and agricultural requirements that, among other things, permit farmers to graze livestock within the buffer and permit fencing within 25 feet of the stream demonstrate a nuanced understanding of this community’s right and just concerns.

But, if you don’t agree with any aspect of this proposal, speak to how you would improve it in the months ahead, while the Board is considering the proposal, rather than giving aid and comfort to those who would continue to compromise the common until polluted water becomes a sore reminder of what could have been, and how we despoiled a natural resource, when we should have protected it.

JPF

by John P. Flannery

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      When I was a young “puppy” prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, during the Administration of President Richard Milhous Nixon, the U.S. Attorney Paul Curran directed me to prosecute the illegal fishing of crustacean (mostly lobster) off shore on the Outer Continental Shelf (“O.C.S.”).

      With the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, we set out to seize the shipping vessels of foreign nation-states including Italy and Russia that were illegally fishing in our waters, brought them before a federal magistrate in lower Manhattan, and, in the end, made them agree not to fish the OCS any more, at least not for the endangered crustacean, and to pay high fines to release their seized ships and jailed captains.

But that was the ‘70s when we cared more than we apparently do now about husbanding our environmental resources and preserving our fisheries.

These days we are seeing wire service photos of oil-covered pelicans, hundreds of dead fish, dolphin, turtles washed ashore, and black fingers of oil reaching up sandy beaches from the brown-stained waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 

      We have been so craven for and dependent upon fossil fuel, and so lazy in our efforts to conserve the energy that we use, and to research and employ alternative energy sources, that our elected representatives have improvidently allowed the energy industry to trash our precious waters and destroy a large segment of our economy.

      We now know that we cannot believe a word that these energy officials say about the cause or extent of this recent oil spill or its remediation.

      But it’s not just oil drilling that concerns us.

      It’s any fossil fuel and nuclear energy as well.

      You may have heard some soft-headed politician or nuclear energy spokesmen tell us how “clean” nuclear energy is because it causes no carbon emissions. 

      They blithely ignore the dangerous radiation that nuclear plants leak. 

      They overlook the fact that, after fifty years of trying, the nuclear industry still can’t figure out how to safely store spent radioactive materials that spew life-threatening rays for a thousand years.
     
      We suffer lies about how safe it is to drill off shore, and how easy it is to fix a drilling mishap in the unlikely event it ever happens. 

      We are also victims of the lies told about how safe it is to extract coal.

      The fossil fuel and nuclear energy industry tell these lies because they make less profit if we folk are truly energy efficient.

      Heaven help them if we were ever to change our energy mix, even by a fraction, from these limited and dangerous energy sources to safer alternative renewable sources that appear to be unlimited.

      Thus, they continue to tell us we can have clean coal and may drill safely for untapped oil in the waters off our beaches, and that nuclear energy is as environmentally green as a freshly picked Shamrock on St. Patty’s Day. 

      We are being played for a fool by an energy industry that knows better but cares less about anything other than its excessive profits.

      We are easy marks for these cons because we want energy that costs the least – and so we think our “low” energy bills prove that we’re doing the right thing. 

      But we pay for this so-called cheap energy with our health, safety, security, and with our taxes when we clean up the messes and spills that these energy malefactors cause.

      What we pay in an envelope to the energy company is but a fraction of what energy really costs.

      If you don’t think you are paying the energy bill in other ways, look at this Administration’s 2011 Energy budget that proposes $36 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. 
By contrast, we expect to spend a pittance of the national budget on alternative energy sources.

      The best way to appreciate the centrifugal force of this reckless energy industry tearing away at our health, safety and security are the most recent environmental disasters, in coal, oil drilling and the radioactive leaks at nuclear power plants.

      These are not isolated incidents – although energy industry and public officials would have us believe otherwise, and the media does little or nothing to correct this misleading impression.

      These recent tragedies are the tipping point of an energy industry out of control, choosing to risk our nation’s well being so that they may pocket excessive profits. 

      They are assisted in their unworthy undertaking by compliant elected officials, regulatory indifference and cronyism.

      These explosions, leaks and spills happen because the energy industry cuts corners, having sought and gotten permission to do so.

      President Theodore Roosevelt warned us long ago about how “[m]ore and more it is evident” that this nation “has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures.”

      The “great corporations” that are the energy industry don’t care that they endanger their workers, or evade the rules and regulations designed to protect us all; in fact, they actively lobby for less regulation, and complain when constrained in any way, shape or form. 

      The U.S. Senate Republican nominee, Rand Paul, the tea-party backed candidate from Kentucky, attacked the President for demanding that BP take responsibility for its oil spill in the gulf; Paul said, “I think that sounds really un-American in [the President’s] criticism of business.”

      The energy corporations spend kingly sums to elect and “persuade” compliant public officials who bow and scrape before their industry patrons; it appears that nominee Rand is a candidate for such compliance; but he need not worry, he won’t be lonely.

      The industry also uses its “influence” to place “its people” in key “regulating” agencies so that they won’t be regulated.

      They file false reports, often with impunity, and, when they pay a fine or fee, or some paltry amount for the damages they’ve caused, it’s the small cost of doing a multi-billion dollar business.

      Among the most notorious misconduct of late, we have the following:

1. MASSEY ENERGY - COAL

      First, Massey Energy allowed dangerous levels of methane and coal dust to fill the twisted pathways of its West Virginia coal mine deep underground, prompting an explosion, and the collapsed earth and rock suffocated and killed hard-working miners. 

      Massey would have you believe that they never saw this coming.  But this mine had been evacuated 69 times in the year leading up to the disaster, had 500 safety violations, and the government had charged Massey $897,235.00 in fines. 

      One month before this mine exploded, Massey had less than half of the air flow necessary to dispel dangerous methane levels.  The Labor Department claimed there were three other Massey mines that had more total citations. 

      How could this happen? 

      President Barack Obama explained afterwards that the mine safety agency was “stacked with former mine executives and industry players.” 

      We all may ask what is it about the integrity of regulatory agencies that the obvious is only uncovered after a tragedy occurs?

      I think the answer is simple.  The agency’s integrity and competence was compromised beforehand.  They knew or should have known what was going on but did nothing to investigate or correct it – because they had a different mission driven by a hidden agenda.

2. BP OIL - OIL

      Second, BP Oil promised anyone who would listen how they could safely drill for oil 50 miles offshore at a water depth of a mile in the cold dark, deep, shifting currents of the Gulf of Mexico. 
When BP’s million-dollar-a-day Transocean oil rig blew up, and they couldn’t seal the well because of a defective valve, BP released more crude into the Gulf than the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska.
BP Oil claimed at the outset that its “leak” was 40,000 gallons a day, but then admitted that this estimate was wrong and an independent estimate, by Sky Truth (http://oilspill.skytruth.org/ ), based on satellite imaging, set the “leak” at 200,000 gallons a day; Sky Truth now has an estimate that it’s more like 1.1 million gallons of crude a day; and government spokespersons concede this is the worst disaster in American history, if not unprecedented world-wide.

      This oil spill disaster means the loss of wildlife, perhaps the extinction of species, most certainly the loss of subsistence and commercial fishing and tourism, the loss of personal and business capital, of jobs, this will prompt bankruptcies, and there are already reports of illness related to the clean up. 

      After the spill began, the BP Oil CEO confessed that BP didn’t know how to stop the flow of oil a mile down in the dark where the water pressure was great and the temperatures cold; BP Oil didn’t know how to stop what they promised this nation could never happen, and what they assured us they could stop – if it ever did happen. 

      BP now concedes that they may not be able to stop the oil for months. 

      By August, you have to wonder whether the well will have emptied before it’s ever capped.

      Reportedly the so-called regulators at the Minerals Management Service (MMS) in the Department of Interior (DOI) granted BP Oil favored leases to drill wells that entitled the Government to collect royalties from their off shore drilling.

      MMS reportedly looked the other way when it came to vetting industry applications by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as to whether the drilling would harm endangered species and marine mammals; MMS also reportedly muzzled experts and manipulated scientific reports – to give a green light for proposed drilling sites. 

      The Director of the Center for Biological Diversity reportedly said MMS “seems to think its mission is to help the oil industry evade environmental laws.”

      Like Massey, this was not BP Oil’s first disaster. 

      When BP Oil’s refinery exploded in Texas City, Texas in March 2005 killing 15 workers and injuring another 170, BP pleaded guilty to a felony in violation of the Clean Air Act, and paid $150 million in fines.

      When BP Oil ignored maintenance of a pipeline in Prudhoe Bay and the pipes corroded, 200,000 gallons of crude oil were released directly into the tundra.

3. RADIOACTIVE LEAKS - NUCLEAR

      Third, the government promised us we had learned how to stop the leak of radioactive material after Three Mile Island (TMI); but that’s not even half right; we are still leaking radioactive isotopes into the ground water at an alarming rate – 45 leaks in the last year – according to the NRC. 

      When Three Mile Island (“TMI”) went wrong in 1979, a pilot-operated relief valve got stuck open, and large amounts of reactor coolant were released. 

      The control room operators couldn’t understand what was happening because they had a faulty solenoid switch, and didn’t even know the valve was open. 

      In the end, there was a partial core meltdown, releasing 13 million curies of radioactive noble gases (Iodine and Xenon 133), over a 20-mile radius, and those living near the plant said that’s how they contracted acute lymphocytic leukemia and other cancers including thyroid cancer and Hurthle cell carcinoma; industry experts disputed their health claims and a federal court prevented the case from going forward. 

      Government reports and declarations catalogued the lessons “learned” from TMI but truly, the nuclear energy industry learned little – except that they didn’t have to take safety seriously. 

      In a recent report, by Beyond Nuclear (http://www.beyondnuclear.org ), titled “Leak First, Fix Later,” you’ll find there have been 45 radioactive leaks from March 2009 through April 16, 2010 from buried pipe systems at 13 different reactor sites; and 102 reactor units with recurring radioactive leaks into groundwater from 1963 through February 2009; these instances are all sourced by NRC reports.

      Instead of mandating compliance, Beyond Nuclear charged that the NRC ceded responsibility to industry voluntary initiatives that the industry ignored.  http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/LeakFirst_FixLater_BeyondNuclear_April182010_FINAL.pdf

      So what do we need to do about this as citizens if we are mad as hell – or at least as concerned as ever?

      What we don’t need is another finger-pointing duel at a Hill congressional hearing, with industry spokesmen swearing to fictional nonsense, and shifting blame between and among themselves, in response to vague rambling speeches and half-formed questions by members of the U.S. House and Senate about matters that few among them understand and regarding which many suffer disqualifying conflicts because of industry contributions and connections. 

      What we must do instead, at least to get started, is quite simple:

      First, we need to scrutinize for ourselves the elected officials who are beholden to the energy industry.  We must consider the contributions that the members receive, the constituent corporations that they “represent,” the energy bills and amendments they introduce and support, the energy initiatives they oppose, the statements they make, and the votes they take.  We must also follow the careening career paths of their senior staff from and to industry and to regulatory agencies, and how the member interacts with these staffers before and after they serve in his or her congressional office.  When we find an unworthy official, by these standards, we must cashier him or her – as our nation can’t afford to trust these industry lackeys any more.  The converse is to write and support those elected officials who “get it” and let them know you know what they are up against and offer to help them to organize, to write letters to the editor on reform policies that will get us out of this mess, to testify if you have an incident or expertise that makes the case, and to encourage others to reform “business-as-usual.”

      Second, we need to move the questionable crony “insiders” outside the agencies that they now disserve so well.  This has already started but it is hardly finished.  We have this cycle from industry to overseer to industry again and the “insiders” are beholden to the industry that brought them to the dance so that they don’t oversee in favor of the public, instead they facilitate the industry’s business plan.  We can’t have our commonwealth compromised by bias and industry advantage that disfavors good energy policy, sound science, public health, safety, and national security.

      Third, we need a fearless and independent special prosecutor to conduct a grand jury investigation into the energy industry generally, but especially into the circumstances of these recent incidents. 

      Plainly, our nation is doing too little to police these greedy executives and we have to consider what the corporate and public officials knew and when they knew it. 

      There are highly questionable circumstances surrounding each of these terrible incidents, that caused death and destruction and untold economic calamity.

      When we investigate these wrongdoers, we shall chill those who would mimic this bad behavior and that would be a welcome change.

      Sunshine, shame and disgrace have served this nation well in the past.

      A handsome dollop of it now might have a marvelous salutary effect.

      Fourth, we require not only an administrative overhaul but legislative reform as well, to make seamless the porous loop-hole ridden legal structure that passes for our energy policy. 
We must at last correct the imbalance favoring industry over the public interest, and give our energy laws some bite – the historic big stick that Theodore Roosevelt wielded - lest the nation continue to be at risk from these bad actors and their selfish motives.

      Fifth, we must impose a moratorium on old energy technology – as we are making policy based on political influence, profits, false assurances, and junk science – and that has got to stop and fast so we may go forward based on what’s best and true and without compromising this nation further.

      Sixth, we have to do our part.  We have to shop locally for goods grown locally to cut transportation (and thus energy use), garden more what we may eat (same reason), turn off the lights and computers and dormant electronic devices that we are not using, get those funny looking energy saver light bulbs, use less heat and air conditioning, layer or shed clothing as fits the weather, shun plastic bags (oil-based), use rain barrels to catch water (not using power to get water), wait until the dishes or clothes accumulate to justify a clean load, and when we all have to get our next car, get one that’s more gas efficient, even a hybrid, use the truck when we really need it to haul or pull, and think ahead to make one trip with our energy-saving vehicle for multiple errands and give family and friends a lift (when you can). 

      If we do this and more, we will make a difference in energy demand, and nothing is cheaper or greener or more effective than our personal efforts to do better than industry expects of us.

We have a tragic example in the mining industry that is more widely instructive about what’s wrong with the excesses of corporate America.

Our federal and state governments have shown themselves in recent years to be over-matched, unable to restrain or regulate corporations, and heavily, if not corruptly, influenced by these corporate behemoths that line their pockets with excessive profits no matter the financial or health cost to the workers or the public; and their cost of doing this dirty business, with a recent assist by the Supreme Court, is to make scandalously outrageous campaign contributions, and extend questionable favors, to elect the officials they prefer to govern “us.” 

We have to demand our elected officials do more and that workers not be obstructed in their efforts to organize and bargain for wages, benefits and safe working conditions.

As early as 1864, President Lincoln feared that “corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands …” 

President Teddy Roosevelt sided with the workers against these “malefactors of great wealth.” 

The Robber Barons, the captains of commerce and finance, and their speculations prompted the stock market crash in 1929.

In our time, we reportedly have bankers at Goldman Sachs celebrating the fall of housing prices so they could reap a profit from the financial disaster and the recession they helped to cause.
We have to stop thinking of ourselves as consumers who want the cheap price, no matter who may die or suffer producing the product we choose to “consume,” no matter the health or environmental cost associated with getting what is cheap for our pocketbook.

We really have to think of ourselves as workers instead, as that is what most of us truly are, who receive salaries and wages and, hopefully, other benefits. 

If we appreciate that we are workers, we may realize that when we diminish others because we encourage low pay, long hours, few benefits and unsafe conditions, we endorse standards that we would not want applied to us, that we would find degrading.

Conduct the thought experiment, what it would mean to you, in your present job, in this economy, if your employer could make your product or service less expensive so he could swell profits by changing your status from employee to contractor, from full to part time employee, if he could extend your hours and dictate your shifts at will, if he could reduce or eliminate your health insurance coverage, forego the bonus you depend upon, dilute or delete what job security remains, so you could be fired without severance for an even cheaper labor substitute.

The most recent inglorious example of corporate excess with disastrous results is how CEO Don Blankenship and Massey Energy’s greed for profits, favored mining coal, but not the care or expense necessary to make the mine safe for the workers.

Dangerous levels of methane and coal dust filled the twisting dark passages deep underground, until the explosion, when ceilings collapsed, and escape routes became walls of rock and earth, trapping the men.

There’s a coal miner’s prayer that each day a miner rises to work “knowing too well” they face “a pit filled with hell.”

Homeric rescue efforts failed, followed by days of intense anxiety and prayer.

In the end, 29 coal miners lay dead and buried in the Upper Big Branch mine, southwest of Charleston, West Virginia, the worst such mine disaster in many years.

The miner’s prayer concludes, the worker “harvests the coals” and they pray that the Lord “harvests their souls.”

Too many folk talk about these deaths as if they were an act of God, that they are inevitable in this industry, and that everything was done that could avoid this disaster.

One of the principals circulating such claptrap was Mr. Blankenship himself.

Despite federal safety regulations, purportedly designed to keep the mines safe, Blankenship’s Upper Big Branch mine was evacuated 69 times since just last year.  He had 500 safety violations, and was charged with $897,235 in fines, mostly appealed by Blankenship.  Perhaps the most ominous sign, only a month before this latest disaster, was that Blankenship’s mine was circulating less than half of the air flow necessary to dispel dangerous methane levels. 

According to the Labor Department, there are reportedly at least three other Massey mines that have more total citations than Upper Big Branch. 

So why didn’t the federal regulators regulate and shut this hell hole down?

President Obama weakly explained in the Rose Garden afterwards that the mine safety agency was “stacked with former mine executives and industry players.” 

Yeah, sure. but haven’t we gotten rid of those ne’er do wells yet?

Instead of a harsh reaction from the locally elected public officials, it was more like a genuflection. 

Senator Jay Rockefeller said, “This disaster did not need to happen and we are going to get to the bottom of this immediately.” 

Representative Nick Rahall said, “something needs to be done.” 

Yes, like representing your constituents and defending these workers lest this happen again and soon.

The pattern here of officials and elected representatives is repeated all too frequently in the face of corporate abuse.  The regulations failed.  The regulators give incoherent explanations for their inaction to anticipate the abuse.  The elected officials call for an investigation like they can’t possibly understand how this could have happened.

The one irrefutable conclusion we may draw is that the workers in the mines and workers across this nation are unprotected and at risk from big corporate abuse.

We must demand that the balance be restored between corporate America and the American worker, and that means reform legislation guaranteeing that workers may protect themselves, by organizing and bargaining for themselves.

Consider what happened at this mine where the disaster occurred.

Blankenship mounted a campaign to oust the United Mine Workers in 1995 with promises of bonuses, and assurances that the more they worked, the more they’d get in pay. 

Blankenship “romanced” the miners on lavish road trips to Dollywood and Busch gardens, and, according to a Vanity Fair article, some union fence-sitters got new homes and cars to help them vote against the union in the 1997 election. 

Once the union was ousted from the Upper Big Branch in 1997, Blankenship increased coal production, cut bonuses in half, increased 8 hour shifts to 12 hours (making it only 2 shifts a day), and the sole mantra that he demanded repeated aloud and implemented with strict discipline, on penalty of discharge, was to “run coal” and do little else.

What was fair for the worker in terms of pay, hours, benefits or safety was forgotten once Blankenship had defeated the union. 

Lincoln said, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.  Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed.  Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

So don’t sell short the value of these workers who survived the mine disaster who will tomorrow re-visit the “pit filled with hell,” for, if you do, you’re selling all workers short and compromising your own human dignity as a worker.

John Flannery