Arkansas No Environmental El Dorado
EL DORADO, Ark. - Smoke from the incinerator drifts over this small city in southern Arkansas. Forty thousand tons of hazardous waste are burned up each year in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
The Ensco plant has been cited for hundreds of environmental violations over the past decade, including hazardous-waste fires, spills and emissions.
In its worst offense, the plant illegally burned radioactive waste for eight years. Ensco officials say they were not aware of what the containers held.
What did Gov. Bill Clinton's administration do through the controversy?
Ensco was fined repeatedly. But it was also allowed to expand more than half a dozen times.
A swinging door seems to have existed between Ensco and the state. Seven state officials charged with overseeing Ensco eventually went to work for the company.
The relationship between the Clintons and Ensco is close. Ensco owner Melvyn Bell and his family are campaign contributors. Hillary Clinton's law firm represents Ensco. And when Clinton decided to run for president, he named an Ensco director to manage the governor's office in his absence.
The Ensco story shows a Clinton environmental record based on benign neglect, with open support for some polluting industries.
He backed tax breaks totaling more than $400 million for paper mills reported to be releasing dioxin, a poisonous byproduct, into rivers. The contamination is reported to be high enough to make
eating fish downstream unhealthy.
Clinton regularly appointed industry representatives to the state agencies expected to oversee those industries. Not surprisingly, the watchdogs often seem most concerned about protecting industry. State environmental officials, for example, worked to keep the paper mills off a national toxic-waterways list.
He forged close personal relationships with many of the leaders of Big Timber and Big Chicken, flying frequently at no charge on their planes. Like Bell, they became generous contributors to his campaigns.
His priority, Clinton says, was promoting economic growth in an impoverished state. He has created manufacturing jobs at 10 times the national rate.
After taking a stand his first term against timber clear-cutting - and losing re-election, partly because of the opposition of Big Timber - Clinton has waffled ever since. He would like to see an end to clear-cutting, but supports the Forest Service plan that allows the practice.
The state Sierra Club backed Clinton in his last race for governor. But Mary Weeks, a club leader who helped get the endorsement, said the move was more an assessment of Clinton's character than of his record.
"I thought endorsing him would help get him on our side," she said.
And Clinton's 1991 legislative session was his best in the eyes of environmentalists. The governor backed improvements in the state's pollution-control agency that should make it less a tool of industry.
Clinton has been slow to implement his own reforms. But a veteran environmental lawyer is not surprised. "Arkansas is a relatively underdeveloped state with a handful of powerful industries, all of which rebel against regulation," said the lawyer, Bruce McMath. "Clinton's just reflecting the political reality of the situation."