[CitizensTruth] Obama nominates Superfund Polluter Lawyer to Run DOJ Envirnt Div

[Jay Becker]

See:

> http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/15/ignacia-moreno-superfund/


Obama Nominates Superfund Polluter Lawyer To Run DOJ Environment Division
May 15

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws. On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice.
Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton
administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General
Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“:

    Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric
has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and
stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites
they helped create.

This February, General Electric lost an
eight-year battle to “prove that parts of the Superfund law are
unconstitutional.” One of the 600-person DOJ environmental division’s
“primary responsibilities is to enforce federal civil and criminal
environmental laws such as” the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund.

Before General Electric, Moreno worked as a corporate attorney at Spriggs and Hollingsworth. Moreno’s name is found in the Westlaw database as an attorney defending General Motors in another Superfund case, the GM Powertrain facility in Bedford, Indiana:

 
  Historical uses and management of PCB containing hydraulic oils and
PCB impacted materials has contaminated on-site areas as well as the
sediment and floodplain soil within Bailey’s Branch and the Pleasant
Run Creek watershed.

Although General Motors entered into an
agreement in 2001 with the EPA to clean up the site, a number of local
residents whose land has been contaminated by polychorinated biphenyls
(PCBs) have sued for damages in Allgood v. GM (now Barlow v. GM), in a
contentious and caustic dispute over cleanup, monitoring, and lost
property values.

During the Clinton administration, Moreno was involved in another controversial case, unsuccessfully defending the Secretary of Commerce’s decision to weaken the dolphin-safe tuna standard. In Brower v. Daley, Earth Island Institute, The Humane Society of the United States, and other individuals and organizations brought suit against the United States government for actions that were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law,” winning their case in 2000.

    Stop thinking like an American, 
Start thinking about humanity!



      
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