by Alan Journet, Trail of Tears Group Conservation Chair
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| When Kinder-Morgan began exploratory drilling, a hole and cavernous cracks appeared in the soybean field of the neighboring Seabaugh farm. |
As a consequence of its scandalous Board Room mentality and subsequent actions, Enron became a household word. Enron has become an icon for what is wrong with leadership in U.S. corporations. The CEO of Enron as this mentality developed was Richard Kinder, cousin to Missouri State Senator and Senate Leader Pro-Tem Peter Kinder. Before the shenanigans at Enron brought the company to its knees, Kinder bolted the company and with a long-time friend and colleague in the energy business, established the energy company Kinder-Morgan (K-M). This quickly became one of the shining stars in a free-wheeling energy industry, an industry that we now learn was significantly responsible for the so-called “California energy crisis” that the Bush Administration has used as an arrow in its campaign to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
A major component of the Kinder Morgan business was to buy, construct, and operate energy pipelines throughout the nation. In the 1990s, however, the company decided to diversify into energy generation, and start constructing and operating power plants. Apparently because they own a power grid that runs to nearby Marble Hill, K-M decided to attempt the construction of an electrical power generating plant in Cape Girardeau County in Southeast Missouri.
Currently, Cape County enjoys relatively clean air. Because of this, Kinder-Morgan argued to the State Department of Natural Resources in its application for a license to operate its plant, that it should not be required to install Best Available Control Technology (BACT) to maintain air quality in the county. Kinder-Morgan also successfully negotiated with the pliant Cape County Commission to gain a series of tax breaks that would have had the county guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in construction loans for the plant, and suffering tax losses for several years. The Commission defended their largesse to K-M on the grounds that the company would provide jobs to the area – both in plant construction and plant operation. In order to promote local public support for the project, K-M worked out deals for payments in lieu of taxes to a local school board and a rural fire district. Naturally, these payments represented a small fraction of what their tax liability should have been and would have been had they been negotiating their own loans as a business independent of public support and County guarantees.
Opposition to the proposed power plant sprang up almost immediately in the form a loosely knit group styling itself the Cape Citizens Against Pollution. This group, aided by local Trail of Tears Sierra Group members, held town hall meetings to publicize the issue and energize the community. While little local interest seemed to have been generated either by the proposed plant itself, or the opponents, Missouri’s DNR abided by its constitutional mandate to protect Missouri’s environment and refused to cave in to the political pressure that K-M was attempting to exert by calling in heavy hitters to prevent DNR from doing its job.
When K-M appealed the DNR decision to the ultimate authority, the state Clean Air Commission, a hearing was held at which DNR and K-M made their respective cases. After some unavoidable delays, not the responsibility of DNR but of the hearing officer, and after repeatedly claiming that the company was in for the long haul, K-M abruptly withdrew its application for permission. In doing so, the company incorrectly blamed DNR for delays rather than acknowledging that the fault was in its own refusal to abide by clean air requirements of the state
When K-M started exploring the areas as a potential site for its power plant, the company dug and began drilling exploratory wells in the southwestern corner of Illinois. The power plant was destined to use thousands of gallons of water to cool its facility, more, indeed, than the entire city of nearby Jackson, Missouri. Within days of this well being dug and accessed, a huge plug of land about 30 feet in diameter on the property of adjacent land-owner 80 year-old Alvin Seabaugh collapsed 25 feet downwards (see photo). Additionally, huge cracks in the soil radiating from the well site opened within days and the water table in the area dropped 6-9 feet. Typical of its abdication of responsibility to the environment, K-M denied responsibility for problems that appeared after it began to drill.
In its initial air permit application, K-M argued that the company would have negligible economic impact on the community. This argument, however, changed when the project became public. When the number of potential employees jumped from just 5 to over 20, it was explained that the application was wrong. “If wrong here, where else?” project opponents argued. Interestingly, the company never seemed to address the issue of the impact of discharging heated wastewater into local waterways; this should have required a permit from DNR, but an application was apparently never filed.
Considering that State Senator Peter Kinder has long argued against tax incentives, or public financial support from taxes for programs serving social or environmental and human health goals, it is ironic that a company bearing the Kinder name should adopt a business venture dependent entirely for its success on financial assistance from public governmental sources.
In its letter to the Missouri DNR, K-M whined about state regulations and delays in hearing the appeal. This gave State Senator Peter Kinder an opportunity to lambaste Governor Holden and the state DNR for turning away millions of dollars of economic investment. Curiously, however, on exactly the same date (October 28th), K-M sent a similar letter withdrawing from a power plant project in Virginia. In that letter, it cited dramatic changes in the power generation market as the cause. Maybe K-M ultimately suffered outfall from the power generation manipulations for which Enron and the industry as a whole had been responsible a few years earlier.
The only shame coming from K-M’s withdrawal from the project was that it came but a few weeks after the death of Alvin Seabaugh, who never was able to see that the threat to his property had been averted.