A lobbyist for a utility company that heavily relies on coal-fueled power plants and has clashed with regulators is the new acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice division that oversees environmental crimes.
The appointment of Jeffery H. Wood, who up until last week was a lobbyist for Southern Company, was announced only with a modest notice posted on January 23 on the Environment and Natural Resource Division’s website.
It’s the latest personnel move that signals the coal industry’s return to power in the Beltway.
President Trump has yet to nominate anyone to hold the assistant attorney general job on a permanent basis, but for the time being Wood will be overseeing the division that enforces civil and criminal environmental laws to reduce pollutants discharged into the air, water and land, and brings cases to enable the clean-up of contaminated waste sites.
The division has previously prosecuted coal firms and utilities, including a 2015 case against Duke Energy, which pled guilty for spilling coal ash into the Dan River in North Carolina. The division also led a major initiative against companies for illegally operating coal-fire power plants, winning settlements that have forced firms to install pollution controls to reduce emissions.
Wood has worked for the last two years as a lobbyist for Southern Company, an investor-owned utility that generates 33 percent of its power from coal. The firm’s “clean coal” plant in Kemper, Mississippi is the current target of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe over disputed “accounting measures.”
Southern Company is also one of the more politically active coal-reliant utility firms. The company provided funding for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that lobbies state lawmakers to undermine environmental regulations, as well as at least $409,000 to Dr. Willie Wei-Hock Soon, a controversial scientist who doubts that the Arctic is warming.
Lobbying disclosures show that Wood, formerly a partner with the Alabama law and lobbying firm Balch & Bingham, worked to influence the licensing of nuclear power plants, the Clean Air Act and climate change issues on behalf of Southern Company. His deregistration forms were filed on January 17, three days before taking the Justice Department position potentially overseeing his former client.
Trump has not yet announced his promised ethics reform package, but the lobbying ban Trump promised on the campaign trail was focused on preventing Trump administration officials from lobbying after they leave government, rather than preventing lobbyists from joining the administration in the first place.
Wood’s biography on his lobby firm web page, now taken offline, touts his experience in working to influence Congress on EPA regulations and on advising industrial clients on Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, among other environmental laws. Wood, a former legal counsel to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, also advised Trump during the campaign.
In 2016, he filed an amicus brief in a suit against the Environmental Protection Agency to block the enforcement of the Clean Power Plan, the rule-making that represents that primary Obama administration push to address climate change. He was also the attorney for a similar suit on behalf of lawmakers seeking to block the plan.
In a Q&A published by his former law firm last year, Wood explained that “[t]o the disappointment of many in the regulated community,” the 2016 budget bill failed “to block the most contentious environmental rules issued recently such as the Clean Power Plan, the ozone standard, or the ‘Waters of the U.S.’ rule.”
Republican lawmakers appear poised to roll back Obama administration rules as soon as next week. Meanwhile, Trump administration appointees are also well-positioned to block enforcement of any environmental regulation opposed by industry.
Top photo: Coal hoppers sit coupled on a spur track in front of a coal tower in Kentucky.
The article while pointed failed to even bring up that fact that how Coal is going to be used to to produce Carbon Nano-tubes. Coal is far more valuable used in Carbon Nano-tubes than being burned for energy in coal fired plants. No one is ever mentioning that fact. Mr Fang is not blind and should be upfront about all the facts instead of omitting certain information.
Lee conveniently leaves out the fact that these big bad lobbyists of Southern Company chose Hillary Clinton as their third biggest recipient of cash, ahead of even of the Republican congressional re-election committees, which they also heavily favored:
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000168
Moral of the story: Liberals don’t think Southern Company is evil, nor do they care about the environment. If they did, it would be a far bigger story that a presidential candidate was accepting money from them than the hiring of one of their gophers. If the lobbyists are so bad for spreading cash around, then who gets the cash should be a story too. This story should have been written before the election, given how concerned now Lee is about their lobbyists.
The epistemic closure of liberals is astounding. If you are a politician with a ‘D’ next to your name, you can take billions from companies — that suddenly become evil just because an ‘R’ politician hired one of their errand boys. It is sort of a visual-based conditioning, not unlike Pavlov’s’ dog.
Clinton’s association with energy companies -was- a story. it’s true that it wasn’t a story Democrat supporters really wanted to hear, but it was a story. i don’t see why it should be a bigger story than putting Wood in a position of environmental oversight. and certainly it isn’t a bigger story now, is it.
you may have noticed that Clinton was unable to generate sufficient support amongst much of the progressive electorate and largely due to her brand being widely seen as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall St and Big Energy.
Great Article
The canary is dead.
great article. the intercept is really coming out with some good articles these days.
Sad sad day the SWAMP is filling up with more billionaires more @more
The Kemper plant has much more than “accounting” problems. Massively over budget and still not operational, Southern Co lobbyists got Mississippi to pass a law allowing recovery of cost overruns, even though the plant has never been online.
Tree Huggers should be for nuclear power. Materials and designs have come along way since the 1950s. No more Fukishimas, but the rest of world woud benefit.
too bad about the cost.
oh, and that pesky waste material.
Robert Stone has the answer to global warming if you’re brave enough to watch his documentary on Netflix right now. PANDORA’S PROMISE. It will make a believer out of those that watch it: Breeder Reactor’s. Enough clean energy (with Wind & Solar where it will work) for the next 1000 yrs. First we must have Environmental oversight by physicist’s & environmentalists. I guess that means 4 more years of this” hot” mess.
Yeah, yeah, just like magic. Oops!
ThorCon: A Thorium Molten Salt Reactor System that can be built Now -by Lars Jorgensen @ TEAC7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfsOYzOpYRw
Thorium – Debunking the lies
Refuting the spurious claims about thorium nuclear power’s safety, cost, no wastes etc
Coal is the least polluting source of energy
After the initial collection of the coal the plants themselves don’t produce any pollution whatsoever. At least here in the US
Once again we must remind you that co2 is not pollution and under no conditions does co2 or warming hurt the environment. Your plan to limit co2 is an ill-conceived attempt to pick human property values over the environment and save coastal cities of humans from a theorized flood
Liberals and science do not mix
Take it from Joe! He knows!
The Dunning-Kruger effect strikes again!
In layman’s terms: Stupid people are too stupid to know how stupid they are.
And, as the kidz say on the interwebz, you can’t fix it.
just like lead, right? i mean, how can a naturally occurring element be a pollutant?
Burning coal produces no pollution … apart from carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic and carbon monoxide. It’s a leading cause of smog, acid rain, and toxic air pollution. Some emissions can be significantly reduced with readily available pollution controls, but most U.S. coal plants have not installed these technologies. See also: China!
Environmental impacts of coal power
In northern China there are a lot of factories using coal, now try living in a big town close to this area, even Beijing which is not exactly close.
I used to live there and believe me, I’ve seen with my eyes and experienced with my lungs over a long period of time what kind of effect Carbon does to the atmosphere. Don’t say it doesn’t produce pollution, please. It’s simply false.
COAL POLLUTES AIR and WATER….PERIOD
If you are so sure of your self burn coal in your home for heating and then pour that ash in your water supply and tell us all about how you feel Oh that’s right, you’d be unable to do so because you’d be dead.
Trump is a hypocrite, and this is evidence of it. He should be grateful to Barack Obama for if not setting a precedent at least carrying it to its absurd extreme by appointing people whose interests are in direct opposition to those of the agencies they were appointed to lead. Is this any worse than appointing Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary or Eric Holder as Attorney General? I think not.
We need to keep reminding ourselves that Trump is not worse than Clinton, just different. As hard as that might be.
I read this on Wikipedia: “The project is more than two years behind schedule, and its cost has increased to $6.98 billion, more than double the original estimate $2.9 billion.[6][7] According to a Sierra Club analysis, Kemper is the most expensive power plant ever built for the watts of electricity it will generate.”
Any bets how much more money they’ll shake out of the government now that they have their own employee in office? Drain the swamp, indeed.
The Wikipedia article you mention starts out by saying that the plant is one of the center pieces of Obama’s clean energy program. Dubbed “clean coal”, an oxymoron if ever there was one, the plant is supposed to extract CO2 from the exhaust gasses and sequester it deep underground whee ostensibly it will not percolate up to the surface. It is a classic example of what happens when policy makers completely lack an understanding of science and engineering and instead devise their policies based on political expediency.
It will be interesting to see how Trump deals with this one. On one hand, his supporters profit from the boondoggle, but on the other hand, its fundamental premise is that CO2 emissions must be reduced. My bets are on continued funding. One thing that is clear about Trump is that he highly values loyalty.
I think that old coal fired plants can’t be upgraded. They are supposed to be phased out. During Bush they ignored rules and started upgrading (I worked on some of those near St Louis).
Blah , blah ,,,blah
Who gives a flying F what you think ?
Your SMARTPHONE ?
Uk has no coal plants look up miners strike police bad bad
THOU SHALT NOT CHANGE THE LAW UNLAWFULLY
STRAIGHT FROM GOD’S BOOK
Start with the EPA employees that poisoned the Animas river.
private contractors and epa employees (more noxious privatizaton imo) operating on an inadequate budget because the locals turned down superfund money in order to protect tourism.
Trump doesn’t believe in gas, if it’s invisible.
Didja ever do the fart-match test ?
It’s really funny watching a human fart flame up !!!
Donald trump has been in office less than a month . . . and he has all the answers?? He is going to revamp everything and do away with regulations…..Do you think he is the smartest person in the world – insane – or a fool??
Yes, but will Balch & Bingham maintain a posh office for Wood the way Covington & Burling did for Eric Holder?
whoa. how far back in time are we going?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5apEctKwiD8
Barb , as far as I can tell , going back might be a better choice than going forward !! Seems to me in the last 60 years the human scourge in now in full un-control .
agreed. no doubt :-)
I think you misspelled “not prosecuting”.
The Alternate National Park Service people and the various other rebels in agencies under assault have the the right idea.
Monkeywrenching, of all kinds and at all levels, has never been more appropriate.
By any means necessary. (h/t Jean-Paul Sarte & Malcolm X)
Obviously we have to wait too see how this awful person plays his years in charge of usa_naziland. But it certainly doesn’t bode well how he’s putting the most corrupt & opposing people in charge of these organization. It doesn’t ‘feel’ good that america is becoming far more totalitarian in only the past 7-days.
More great news from the anti-regulation, anti-clean air, anti-clean water party: to serve the economic needs of the chosen few. It is weighty and depressing.
Great reporting, Lee Fang.