Anniston Star
February 7, 2003

Anniston attorney accuses EPA head of conspiracy with Solutia

By Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writer
02-07-2003

The lead attorney in a long-running PCB lawsuit has accused the country's top environmental official of conspiring with Solutia to protect her family's financial interests.

In a motion filed in federal court Tuesday, Anniston attorney Donald Stewart alleges that Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, improperly influenced the Anniston PCB cleanup agreement negotiated between Solutia and the EPA.

Whitman's husband has financial ties to Citigroup, whose business with Solutia includes millions of dollars in loans, according to documents filed with the motion.

The proposed agreement, or consent decree, was designed to control the amount of money Solutia will have to spend in the cleanup, Stewart alleges in the motion.

The decree will not go into force until it is approved by U.S. District Court Judge U.W. Clemon.

EPA and Solutia representatives denied there was any collusion.

"We would strongly disagree with any allegations of conflict of interest, and will be filing papers with the court expeditiously," said Steffanie Bell, spokeswoman for Whitman.

Solutia spokeswoman Beth Rusert called the accusations "preposterous."

"There have been no dealings with the administrator," Rusert said. "There's no understanding between the EPA and Solutia related to the cost of our actions. In reality, the consent decree has no cap."

Local and state officials have come out in favor of the consent decree.

Thursday, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley released a letter in which he urges Clemon to approve the agreement.

"I believe this consent decree is important to the continued economic viability of the area," Riley wrote.

The agreement is not perfect, he wrote, but is "good for residents and for the environment."

Stewart's motion is part of an effort to persuade Clemon not to approve the decree.

Last month, at a hearing in Anniston's federal courthouse, Stewart submitted to the judge thousands of pages of documents in support of his position, and called EPA officials to testify.

The evidence Stewart submitted this week includes testimony from Hugh Kaufman, a long-time employee of the EPA.

Kaufman worked for the EPA's ombudsman's office, which was "defanged" when he "raised questions about Administrator Whitman's involvement at sites where she had a conflict of interest," the motion says. Whitman owns Citigroup stock and her husband worked for the company, it says.

The EPA's inspector general's office looked into the allegations and announced in October that Whitman had not acted improperly at cleanup sites in Colorado, Pennsylvania and New York. The report did not address the Anniston PCB site.

For decades, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were manufactured at a plant in west Anniston. Solutia, a Monsanto spinoff, now owns the plant.

Before the plant stopped making PCBs in 1971, unknown quantities of the insulating chemicals washed into local ditches, streams and yards.

Thousands of residents are suing the companies for polluting their properties and bodies with PCBs, a suspected carcinogen.

The cleanup agreement was announced in October. It replaces one that was made public just after a jury decided Solutia was liable for damages in Stewart's case.