By Paul Chesser on 7.21.09 @ 1:15PM
My former John Locke Foundation colleague
David Bass (also an AmSpec contributor) has
another great story up today about how lawyers for the North
Carolina Department of Justice, which sued the Tennessee Valley
Authority in a "nuisance" lawsuit (they couldn't come up with
anything better) over pollution from coal-fired power plants
drifting into the NC mountains, did not look fondly on evidence
that wouldn't help their case.
My former John Locke
Foundation colleague
David Bass (also an AmSpec contributor) has
another great story up today about how lawyers for the North
Carolina Department of Justice, which sued the Tennessee Valley
Authority in a "nuisance" lawsuit (they couldn't come up with
anything better) over pollution from coal-fired power plants
drifting into the NC mountains, did not look fondly on evidence
that wouldn't help their case. It turns out that the state's
Division of Air Quality was ready to release a report that showed
a dubious connection between nitrogen oxide (spewed by the
plants) and the actual pollution that forms particulate matter.
The timeline David put together makes it look like DOJ had a role
in nixing the report:
DAQ staff decided to abandon the report shortly after
meeting with Cooper’s attorneys in September 2008.
The air quality official responsible for the document,
however, says the attorneys never pressured her to drop
it.
“They never once told me you all can’t do this,” Laura Boothe,
attainment planning branch supervisor for DAQ, told
Carolina Journal.
But e-mail correspondence suggests that Cooper’s team was
concerned about the report’s potential impact on the TVA case.
After being informed of DAQ’s findings, special Deputy Attorney
General Marc Bernstein wrote in an e-mail dated March 17, 2008,
that it “hopefully … won’t create any issues in TVA. … ”
Six months later, DAQ staff met with Bernstein to discuss a
final draft of the report. Shortly afterward, DAQ declared the
project “officially dead.”
An example of the great investigative reporting being
increasingly produced by several conservative/libertarian think
tanks across the country. David's
previous story told how Washington lawyers hired by NC DOJ to
press the TVA case lived exquisitely on the state taxpayers'
dime. Grandstanding attorney generals wedded to environmental
extremist groups and bedding high-powered DC lawyers on the side
-- lots of fodder for scrutiny there.
topics:
Environmentalism
