Tracking Money Trail of Dirtiest Power Plants

A study by two environmental groups finds close ties between the Bush campaign and some of the top polluters in the power plant industry. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A study by two environmental groups finds close ties between the Bush campaign and some of
the top polluters in the power plant industry. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


Public Citizen and the Environmental Integrity Project looked at political contributions made by
the owners of the top polluting power plants. Since 1999, the Bush campaign and its supporters
received $6.6 million from them. The director of the Environmental Integrity Project, Eric
Schaeffer, concedes it’s not a complete surprise.


“It’s true that we’ve always seen power companies make political contributions. We’re pointing
out that the amount of money that’s flowing to the Bush campaign from these industries has
broken all the previous records and they’re getting a lot of favors from the administration in
return for the money that they’re giving. Specifically, they’re getting pollution laws rolled back.”


Schaeffer says this is one part of a wholesale assault on the Clean Air Act. The Bush
administration says its policies encourage companies to do better rather than just punish them
when they don’t meet pollution reduction goals.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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