Seattle Times takes Governor and department to task for secretly negotiated agreement on coal plant emissions.
Reinforcing criticisms from Northwest environmental groups, the Seattle Times is criticizing Governor Chris Gregoire and the Washington Department of Ecology for a closed-door deal with a Canadian-based company that operates a large coal-fired power plant in Centralia. As the Times reported yesterday, even the National Park Service is publicly irritated with being kept out of negotiations that will determine how much toxic mercury and smog-causing nitrogen oxides the
plant will be allowed to spew from its towering 470-foot smokestack. The Park Service is concerned because pollution from the plant contributes to haze at Mount Rainier National Park.
As of yesterday, Ecology was still refusing to make public the terms of the agreement, the negotiations on which were apparently instigated out of fear that the company, TransAlta, would close the state’s only coal-fired power plant if it were forced to meet new and more stringent emissions requirements related to haze reduction and green house gas reductions.
In today’s editorial, the Times offers a public criticism of Gregoire and Ecology that has flowed mostly privately from state environmental organizations who’ve watched the state’s once-sterling reputation as an enforcer of environmental rules being undermined by a series of private deals with polluters ranging from field burning wheat growers to Spokane river dischargers.
“Gregoire made her reputation in part by holding polluters accountable and making them deal squarely with the state,” wrote the Times in today’s editorial. “In this case,” it urged her, “direct the state to deal candidly with the public.”
Ironically, the newspaper’s editorial blast at the Governor comes a day after it published a lengthy guest column by Gregoire in which she wrote, in glowing terms about, “a Washington that can lead the nation and world in reducing harmful greenhouse-gas pollution that threatens our environment, our economy and our way of life.”
No comments yet.