Selenium is a by-product emitted from the oil refinery operations of Shell and other companies located on the Bay. As a result of these discharges, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has designated portions of the Bay as "toxic hot spots" under the Clean Water Act.
The settlement of the Clean Water Act lawsuit brought by the California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG) requires Shell, the largest Bay selenium discharger, to cut its selenium pollution by more than a ton compared to the less-stringent reductions agreed to by state regulators last year.
Under the terms of the proposed consent decree, Shell must pay a total of $2.2 million for environmental projects benefitting the San Francisco Bay and must meet strict deadlines calling for annual reductions in selenium discharges each year until 1998.
"There doesn't appear to be an appropriate technology today for eliminating selenium from discharge," says Shell spokesperson Tomi Van de Brooke. "We will continue to dedicate significant resources to find a solution, and we are very optimistic."
"The method Shell has chosen to remove selenium is producing hazardous waste," says CalPIRG's state-wide campaign director Tom Subak. "But this waste can be disposed of in an appropriate way. Shell was breaking the law, and the suit was to force compliance."
The 34 programs targeted by the Green Scissors Report include water projects, highways, energy research and development programs, public land subsidies, foreign aid projects, agricultural programs and federal flood and disaster insurance. The report cites the price tag for each program and describes the environmental damage that results. It proposes terminating most of the programs, delaying a few and instituting user fees for others.
The coalition is being led by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation and the Friends of the Earth. On the fiscally conservative side were groups such as the Concord Coalition, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (successor to the former Grace Commission) and Citizens for a Sound Economy, which advocates free market economics and deregulation. On the progressive side, supporting organizations include the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG), the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Taxpayer Assets Project.
The report describes an irrigation project that wastes $4 billion; an Indiana highway that would waste more than $800 million; an unneeded Los Angeles County highway that would cost $900 million; $1 billion in taxpayer losses through handouts to mining conglomerates under the 1872 Mining Law; and the proposed $600 million Auburn Dam in California.
"These programs are a double whammy on the taxpaying public because they waste money and harm the environment," says Friends of the Earth's Ralph DeGennaro.
Eighteen officers and directors of the Consolidation Coal Company, the second largest U.S. coal company, were each hit with $198,000 in civil penalties last year for the company's failure to reclaim its Burnham mine located on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. In settling the case, the penalties were dropped and Consol agreed to reclaim the mine.
The decision prompted a harsh reaction from a coalition of Native American and environmental groups. "We are asking that Bob Uram step down as director of OSM and that he be replaced with someone who is willing to enforce the law, especially on Indian lands," says Ernest Diswood of the Navajo Nation's Nenahnezad Chapter. "We have found that OSM's top management has hampered, interfered with and taken steps to keep enforcement from happening on Indian lands."
Without addressing any of the specific criticism of Uram's handling of the Consol case, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt issued a statement in February 1995 defending him. "OSM is fast becoming one of the finest regulatory agencies in the country, and Bob Uram deserves much of the credit for this accomplishment," Babbitt said.
Tom Hoffman, vice president of public relations at Consol, says the company was not to blame for failing to reclaim the mine. Last year, he says, OSM's Albuquerque office, responding to a complaint, demanded that the company begin reclamation within 90 days. Consol was caught in a catch-22, he says, because the Denver OSM office forbid the company from proceeding until it had approved the reclamation plans and the Denver office did not view the Consol site with urgency.
"There is no reason a company our size would just walk away from those [reclamation] obligations," Hoffman says.
- Russell Mokhiber
Correction: The headline "Consol Fined" in the January/February 1995 Names in the News was inaccurate. As the story indicated, proposed fines were levied against executives and officers of the company, not against the company itself.