To block EPA regulations, Koch Industries expands lobbying campaign to children

Original Link: http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11-08-block-epa-regulations-koch-industries-expands-lobbying-children

By Brad Johnson

Koch Industries, the privately owned industrial conglomerate, is using any available method to fight the enforcement of laws to limit its toxic pollution. This summer’s “Regulation Reality Tour,” produced by Koch’s grassroots marketing arm Americans for Prosperity (AFP), featured a “moon bounce in the shape of a SWAT car for children,” ostensibly symbolizing the boogeyman of Environmental Protection Agency “Carbon Cops.” “Let’s make sure we keep doing our part to ensure that our generation passes on to our children and grandchildren the same freedoms we enjoyed,” AFP cries, in protest of sewage overflow rules.

While AFP stokes fear in its Tea Party network about the supposed economic and libertarian disaster of reducing pollution, Koch’s lawyers and contractors flood the Obama administration with submissions challenging proposed rules so that it can keep pumping out pollution for free. Here are just a few of the health and environmental rules that Koch Industries and its many subsidiaries are challenging:

– Koch Industries is protesting the EPA’s effort to update the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. [Docket EPA-HQ-OPPT-2009-0187]

– Koch Nitrogen Co. LLC, the Koch Industries fertilizer subsidiary, is challenging the disclosure of unit-specific or facility-specific greenhouse pollution, calling it “misguided.” [Docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0508]

– Flint Hills Resources, LP, the Koch Industries oil and gas subsidiary which operates six major hazardous air pollutant facilities, is protesting EPA’s proposed national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants from industrial boilers. [Docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2002-0058]

– Flint Hills Resources “supports the elimination of all crude oil data reporting requirements” for greenhouse pollution compliance. [Docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2010-0109]

– Georgia Pacific, the Koch Industries forestry product subsidiary, claims that dioxins aren’t really toxic or carcinogenic. [Docket EPA-HQ-ORD-2010-0395]

– Georgia Pacific, is fighting the EPA’s efforts to tighten water quality standards for stream-dumping. [Docket EPA-HQ-OW-2009-0596]

– Invista, a Koch Industries chemical subsidiary, argues that chemical plant greenhouse pollution should not be monitored. [Docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0508]

After eight years of inaction under the Bush presidency, the health and safety of the American public is now a higher priority than polluter profits — but Koch Industries and other industrial polluters are fighting tooth and nail, even if they have to poison our democracy to win.