According to Democracy Now yesterday, big polluters including BP and Dow have been exempted from environmental oversight on more than 179,000 stimulus-funded projects. You can read the entire very short item here.

My first reaction is “say it ain’t so, Joe.” But a little Googling shows it’s actually worse. According to the Center for Public Integrity’s original statement, the Obama administration was so eager to get stimulus-funded projects into the pipeline that it even granted a waiver for BP’s notorious Texas City refinery (site of a horrible accident in 2005), and claims…

…the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant. [emphasis added]

Surely, there are better ways to restore our economy.

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