Probe Broadens into Allegations of White
House Pressure on EPA in Cabrillo Port Flip-Flop
•Internal Communications and Other
Documents Requested as Key Licensing Hearings Are About to
Begin•
BY HANS LAETZ
Rep. Henry Waxman has expanded his probe
into alleged White House interference on behalf of BHP Billiton
at the Environmental Protection Agency, and asked the company
to turn over all letters and memos between it, the White House
and EPA.
In a letter Friday, Waxman gave EPA just
five days to turn over two documents that were requested
earlier but not provided, as well a list of 12 additional
e-mails, memos and notes that his investigators believe exist.
One of the documents is an EPA memo
entitled “Talking Points, Proposed LNG Deep Water Port
Offshore Ventura County, Calif.” Another is handwritten
notes taken by White House appointee Jeff Holmstead during a
conversation with a high-ranking EPA smog administrator in
2005.
In a second letter sent Friday, Waxman told
BHP Billiton’s president he wants copies of all
communications from within the Australian company, its Houston
subsidiary and its agents “that reference the White
House, White House officials or personnel, the EPA headquarters
in Washington, or EPA personnel.”
Existing public files are full of scores of
letters sent by BHPB to regional officials in San Francisco,
but Waxman’s letter is asking for records about
conversations the company and its agents had about EPA
officials and the White House. Billiton has spent millions of
dollars on public relations firms in Washington and Sacramento,
and the terms of the congressional probe appear to include
their documents as well.
BHP Billiton president Chip Goodyear, an
American who works out of the company’s Australian
headquarters, was given two weeks to supply those documents and
e-mails to congressional researchers.
A public relations firm executive working
for BHPB said neither company had seen the letters Friday
morning, and could not yet comment.
In the letter to EPA, Waxman said what he
has learned so far has convinced him that EPA’s decision
in 2005 to grant BHPB what amounts to a smog rule loophole for
Cabrillo Port “is likely to result in degraded air
quality in California.” Waxman also said documents
already sent to him by EPA indicate that EPA officials had
“sound policy and legal basis” for the tough stand
they took in 2004 and 2005 in analyzing BHP Billiton’s
request. But the agency’s tentative ruling, Waxman said,
was reversed after intervention from a political appointee who
may have been acting after consultation with the White House.
Waxman is chair of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, the powerful house investigations
committee that has been rejuvenated after he assumed that post
in January. The committee is also investigating the role of
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the firing of eight U.S.
attorneys, the Valerie Plame affair, and other high-profile
probes.
The BHP Billiton investigation was started
after a Malibu newspaper reported in 2005 that, after two years
of strongly insisting that Cabrillo Port abide by strong
on-shore smog regulations, EPA staffers abruptly said they
would “use our discretion” to tentatively decide to
allow the LNG terminal 13.8 miles off Malibu to be built under
lesser air pollution standards.
The company still contends that its 484
tons per year of emissions are not subject to onshore Ventura
County smog rules, because the county in 1992 exempted two
small federal generators on Anacapa and San Nicolas islands
from the tougher rules. The Ventura regulation in question says
the smog exemption applies only to emission sources
“on” the islands, and EPA officials steadfastly
said the Cabrillo Port ship was not an island until that 2005
reversal.
Lawyers for the Environmental Defense
Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and found a
chain of documents between Billiton, the White House and EPA
showing that regional EPA officials in San Francisco were
pressured to adopt what the White House called “the
Anacapa rules.”
Five EPA officials in the San Francisco
have been asked to appear before House investigators for
interviews with a court reporter present, Waxman revealed in
his letter to EPA Friday.
Included in the five was Amy Zimpfer, the
EPA official who told a Malibu reporter in 2005 that the
EPA’s reversal had come after BHP Billiton had lobbied
for it.
In several official letters in 2004 and
early 2005, Zimpfer and her boss, Gerardo Rios, had told BHPB
that EPA would not grant the Anacapa exemption to Cabrillo
Port. EPA several times told the company it was expected to
follow the Clean Air Act and local provisions, which would
require the company to purchase and retire air pollution offset
credits in order to gain permits to build the LNG ship.
Ventura County smog officials have said it
is likely that there are not enough smog offset credits
available in their air basin at any price to allow the port to
operate, meaning the EPA ruling could block construction of the
$800 million terminal.
After news of the EPA reversal was
published, more than 12,000 people sent protest form letters to
the agency, and officials said it would reevaluate the
tentative finding. A final decision on the Anacapa exemption
issue may come this summer, after other licensing decisions are
already made, EPA officials have said.
