kookomula Validated Poster
Joined: 17 Sep 2005 Posts: 328
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 11:16 am Post subject: C Whitman: Citigroup nuclear clean-up costs (01/02) |
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EPA Director Accused of Limiting Financial Liability For Citigroup in Superfund Clean Up
January 16, 2002
By Mark Hertsgaard
Jan. 14, 2002 | The ombudsman for the Environmental Protection Agency says he was punished by administrator Christine Todd Whitman after he opposed an agreement to sharply limit the amount of money financial titan Citigroup -- a principal investor in Whitman's husband's venture capital firm -- would have to pay in a controversial Superfund cleanup case.
http://ran.org/media_center/news_article/?uid=478
Although NYTimes says:
"Under an agreement between the agency and Citigroup before Mrs. Whitman took over, Citigroup's liability in the cleanup was to be limited to about $7.2 million"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEED9123DF930A35751C 0A9649C8B63
"For months Whitman had been trying to muscle Martin into the inspector general’s office, an investigating arm of the agency that answers to Whitman herself. But in January he went to court and got a temporary restraining order to keep him out of Whitman’s line of authority. In April, the clock ran out. Federal district Judge Richard Roberts refused to extend the order, ruling that Martin hadn’t exhausted all his administrative remedies. As Martin returned to the administrative process, Whitman made her move. While Martin was out of town on agency business on April 22, Whitman had her inspector general seize Martin’s files and computers and remove the telephones from his office. To ensure that Martin couldn’t soldier on with his cell phone and laptop, the raiders from the IG’s office changed the locks on the ombudsman’s office door.
Martin is a Makah Indian from Washington State, hired by the EPA at the end of the Bush I Administration. Early on, he got a sense of how the agency worked, Martin said last month in an interview at a restaurant close to the EPA offices in Washington, D.C. Two weeks into his job, he was in Pennsylvania responding to complaints about an EPA clean-up. He was disturbed by the agency’s lack of concern for the local community. "I used to think that the government mistreated only Indians," he said at the time. "I now know they mistreat all Americans."
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=740 |
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