Simmons, H $ Pb

Harold SimmonsRIP now anne

swift boat funder hegseth vet vff fail

lead and radioactive pollution

dark money

retroactive escape from liability?!

===

this fucking guy 10 25 fail up, slept to top; 5 affairs w 1st of 3 wives, 2nd ultimate

singer alito astroturf vet orgs and koch, 1st 3

not spec ops 101st? ; war crimes in his unit;

10 25

43:37

Now playing

Pete Hegseth: Everything You Didn't Know About His Sh*tty Past

Hysteria

•

:{:{75K views}:

Oct 12, 2025

In our 26th episode of This F*cking Guy, Erin and Alyssa dive deep into the past of United States Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. From his sexist ideologies, drunken antics, cheating scandals and Fox News career to his embarrassing failures to incompetent leadership, this is definitely our most inebriated and moronic fcking guy of all time.

Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b...

CHAPTERS

0:00 - Intro

1:10 - Pete's childhood

3:38 - Pete's early bad ideas

6:38 - Pete's first marriage and military career

15:45 - Pete on Fox News and drinking problems

21:00 - Ad break

22:54 - Pete gets into politics (and more drinking)

32:49 - Trump picks Pete for Secretary of Defense

harv ret to sender

princeton tory funder?

...

3:41

the Tories March 2002 issue that the reason that some Americans sympathized with the Taliban was because they lacked

3:47

a male disciplinary figure. Later in that article, Hexath advocated parental discipline that included spanking and

3:54

shoving soap in children's mouths. Hot take for the ages. Of course, there was

3:59

the requisite railing against DEI. Back then, it was just called diversity. Here's what Hegsth wrote about that.

4:06

Quote, "Race can be a legitimate part of what makes up a diverse campus, but it also doesn't define anyone. Allan Keys

...

them. So theatrical. He loves drama. Hexath also got himself into some hot water over publishing

5:19

claims that having sex with an unconscious woman was not rape. I'm sorry, what? Here's the exact quote

5:25

from an opinion column that ran in the Tory. The columnist is describing a session he had to attend during college

5:30

orientation where attendees had to determine whether a sketch mentioning a man having sex with a passed out woman

5:36

counted as rape. Quote, "The actual instance portrayed in the skit was in fact not a clear case of rape, at least

5:42

not in my home state. In short, though intercourse was not consented to, there was no duress because the girl drank

...

7:27

questioning the value in offering up human lives in defense of American business interests, he found meaning

7:32

again in advocating for more war. In 2006, he started working with a pro-war veterans organization called Veterans

7:39

for Freedom. VFF was meant to appear like it was a grassroots movement for pro-war American troops who just wanted

7:45

to get themselves and all their friends and colleagues blown up in the Middle East as soon as possible. But it was actually what's known as an astroturf

7:52

organization. Oh, Alyssa. Astroturf fake grass. I just got that like right now.

7:59

VF was actually founded with money from three conservative billionaires who are

8:04

now dead. Bernard Marcus, the founder of Home Depot. Jerry Parentio, a longtime Univision executive who lived in the

8:11

mansion from the Beverly Hillbillies, and businessman and former neighbor of Oprah Winfrey, Harold Simmons. Between

8:17

the three of them, they've been married a total of eight times. Just a fun fact about these boosters of conservative

8:22

family values. Journalist Jane Mayer also found ties between the organization and other shadowy right-wing moneymen

8:28

like Paul Singer. You might remember Paul Singer as the guy standing to the left of Supreme Court Justice Samuel

8:33

Alto wearing pristine waiters and holding a giant salmon in this photo which is from a ProPublica story about

8:39

how Paul Singer paid for Samuel Alito to go on a luxury Alaskan fishing trip.

8:44

Alto did not disclose it and later did not recuse himself from Supreme Court cases directly involving Paul Singer's

8:50

companies. These [ __ ] guys. In 2007, Hegth became the leader of VFF. He was a

===

https://www.texasobserver.org/rick-perry-exports-his-pay-to-play-politics-to-ukraine/

11/13/19

it appears that Rick Perry exported his pay-to-play politics from the Texas governor’s mansion to the notoriously corrupt

Ukrainian oil and gas sector,where, as President Donald Trump’s energy secretary, he has played an outsized role in opening up the industry to private investors.

As the Associated Press reported on Monday, two of Perry’s longtime political patrons won what could be an immensely profitable drilling contract on a sprawling patch of land owned by the Ukrainian government.

Per the AP, Perry traveled to Ukraine to attend the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky in May. During the trip, Perry urged Zelensky to appoint all new members to the advisory board of the country’s massive state-owned natural gas company, Naftogaz,helpfully giving him a list of recommended energy advisors. At the top was Michael Bleyzer, a silver-maned Ukrainian-American who has made a name for himself in Houston as an eccentric oil and gas investor. He also happens to be a longtime benefactor of Perry’s political career.

In the meeting with Zelensky, the energy secretary emphasized his friendship with Bleyzer. A week later, Bleyzer and his business partner Alex Cranberg, also a longtime Perry backer, filed a bid to drill on a government-controlled plot. They were ultimately awarded the contract despite offering several million dollars less than the only other bidder.

The revelations that Perry engaged in what looks to be a classic example of political cronyism should be unsurprising to those familiar with Governor Goodhair’s tenure.

Since 2017, Perry has played the role of international salesman for the American energy industry, particularly as an enthusiastic hawker of liquified natural gas, which he famously dubbed “freedom gas.” But as one of the Trump administration’s so-called “three amigos” who have led the United States’ diplomatic efforts in Ukraine, Perry is now embroiled in the impeachment inquiry into the president. He refused to comply with House Democrats’ subpoenas for documents related to his meetings with the Ukraine president and has declined to testify before committee members leading the impeachment investigation. Reports of his donors’ receiving a lucrative drilling contract in Ukraine now only heightens the scrutiny on Perry.

The revelations that Perry engaged in what looks to be a classic example of political cronyism should be unsurprising to those familiar with Governor Goodhair’s tenure. Over his 12 years running Texas, he developed a reputation as a brazen purveyor of pay-to-play politics, shamelessly installing his biggest political donors in powerful positions of public trust.

Of the 4,000 jobs that he filled during his gubernatorial career, more than a quarter of them went to political donors—many of them woefully unqualified. From 2001 to 2010, those appointees gave Perry more than $17 million, about 20 percent of his total haul, according to Texans for Public Justice.

In turn, those donors were treated kindly by the Perry government. In 2011, Texas billionaireHarold Simmons, who had pumped $1.2 million into Perry’s coffers, got his radioactive waste dump permit greenlit by Perry’s appointees on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality despite objections from some staffers.

Perry also used massive economic development slush funds to shovel money back to his donors. In 2010, the Observerfound that 20 of the 55 companies that received grant money from Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund—a state warchest for corporate economic incentives—had contributed to either his campaign or the Republican Governors Association that he helmed. Those companies had a combined $2.2 million in political contributions and received a windfall of $175 million in taxpayer-financed incentives. More than $16 million from his new Emerging Technology Fund was given to Perry’s major donors. These programs have notoriously little accountability when it comes to job-creation metrics, often falling far short of original promises. One $30 million grant went to an energy group that never existed.

In hindsight, it was a small miracle that Perry made it this long without getting stuck in the swamp.

Bleyzer and Cranberg—currently embroiled in Perry’s latest scandal—have deep ties to Texas and Perry. In 2009, then-Governor Perry appointed Bleyzer to the advisory board for the Emerging Technology Fund, his new tax-incentive fund for startup ventures. The following year, Bleyzer cut Perry’s campaign a $30,000 check.

Cranberg—an energy investor, longtime GOP mega-donor, and University of Texas at Austin graduate—was appointed to his alma mater’s board of regents by Perry in 2011.That same year, Perry’s campaign paid $16,000 to Cranberg’s company for use of his private luxury jet. During his controversial tenure on the board of regents, Cranberg was seen as “the ringleader of a bloc of regents” who were influenced by outside interests that aimed to “stage an attack on academic research” and coordinate an ouster of UT’s president, the Texas Tribunereported in 2011. Perry’s former campaign manager Jeff Miller is now a lobbyist for Cranberg’s company and has visited Perry’s Energy Department at least a dozen times, according to the AP.

Perry’s office said he is only doing his job as a booster for American energy interests. “What he did not do is advocate for the business interests of any one individual or company,” Shaylyn Hynes, the Energy Department press secretary, told the AP. Bleyzer and Cranberg also denied any wrongdoing.

In hindsight, it was a small miracle that Perry made it this long without getting stuck in the swamp. He was almost able to slip out the back door while he was still in good standing as a member of the federal civil servantry. Last month, just as the Ukraine heat was turning up, he announced that he was resigning in December.

Helping two political pals secure a massive contract in Ukraine is another example of the pay-to-play approach that served Perry so well in Texas; this time, it’s at a global level. Perry has talked about his aspirations for Ukraine to become “the Texas of Europe.” On the corporate cronyism front, he may just have succeeded.

===

==

Billionaire behind Swift Boat ads funded anti-Obama spot ...

https://www.latimes.com › la-xpm-2008-aug-23-na-simmons23-story

:{:{Aug 23, 2008 - :(style="color:#777777;"):}:The American Issues Project is airing the commercial in :{Ohio:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: and Michigan, ... that ran ads questioning the Vietnam record of :{Kerry:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}**:, a decorated veteran. Simmons was :{Swift Boat's:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: second-largest donor, giving $3 million.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

==

https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2018/09/23/secret-cash-helped-those-who-rewrote-state-law-block-lead-claims/1405053002

no lnx

Secret cash helped those who rewrote Wisconsin law to block claims of lead-poisoned kids

ONE ADVOCATE CALLS WISCONSIN THE ‘DARKEST OF DARK MONEY STATES’ AS MILLIONS FLOW INTO RACES FOR GOVERNOR, LEGISLATURE AND STATE SUPREME COURT

Pawan Naidu

Published 3:51 p.m. CT Sept. 23, 2018

At age 2, Yasmine Clark was lead-poisoned so severely that she had to be hospitalized for emergency chelation treatment to cleanse her blood of life-threatening levels of the heavy metal.

At age 5, Yasmine was again diagnosed with lead poisoning. She suffered significant brain damage. Her IQ declined. She developed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

So, in 2006, at age 5, Yasmine became a plaintiff in a Milwaukee County lawsuit filed against multiple paint companies, including National Lead, now called NL Industries, which had made lead paint like that found in the rental homes where she was raised in Milwaukee.

She was among about 170 Wisconsin children named as plaintiffs in lawsuits against the paint companies. The suits sought compensation for medical expenses and other damages for what their attorneys said were severe and permanent injuries from ingesting lead-tainted paint chips.

While these children had compelling personal stories, NL Industries had something even more powerful on its side: Republican politicians facing recall elections in 2011 and 2012 who secretly benefitted from $750,000 contributed by NL’s owner, Harold Simmons, to an “independent” political group.

At the request of NL’s lobbyist, Republicans inserted a handful of words into the 2013-15 state budget that sought to halt such lead-paint lawsuits, including the one filed by Yasmine, according to a memo obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning watchdog organization that exposes corruption in government.

The politicians’ effort — ultimately blocked by judges — demonstrates the power of secret contributions to reshape state law while the public is kept in the dark.

Contributions up, citizens alarmed

The flow of cash to outside groups seeking to influence Wisconsin elections has widened since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision held that corporations could not be barred from making so-called independent expenditures. The court declared that corporations have the same First Amendment free speech rights as do people.

George Penn, a volunteer withSouth Central Wisconsin United to Amend, presents to the group at the Sequoya Library in Madison on April 10. The nonpartisan citizens group meets twice a month to discuss ways to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision that loosened restrictions on campaign contributions.

(Photo: Coburn Dukehart, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism)

In 2015, the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out a state-led John Doe investigation into coordination betweenGov. Scott Walker’s campaign, Club for Growthand other “issue ad” groups by overturning a state law that prohibited such coordination. The four conservative members of the court who ordered an end to the investigation had themselves been beneficiaries of an estimated $8 million in outside spending by the same political groups under scrutiny in the Walker investigation.

Later that year, the Wisconsin Legislature passed a law that allows corporations to donate to political parties and legislative campaign committees.The law overturned a corporate contribution ban that had been in place since 1905. Republicans said the change gave corporations parity with labor unions, which could contribute to political parties and which traditionally supported Democrats.

The loosening of Wisconsin’s rules comes as a large majority of the American public is concerned about the influence of money in politics. A nationwide poll released in June by the bipartisan Democracy Project found that 77% of respondents agreed that “the laws enacted by our national government these days mostly reflect what powerful special interests and their lobbyists want.”

Activists, alarmed by the rise of corporate influence on politicians and the electoral process, are fighting back.

United to Amend, a nonpartisan national campaign active in Wisconsin, aims to get local and state governments to endorse changing the U.S. Constitution to counteract the effects of Citizens United. And several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota, have or are working toward measures on the November ballot that seek to further regulate campaign spending.

Four powerful words

The Guardian news organization, citing leaked documents from the Wisconsin John Doe investigation, found that lead executive Simmons had made donations totaling $750,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth between April 2011 and January 2012. The spending was used to beat back recall elections against Walker and Republican senators sparked by passage of the controversial Act 10 collective bargaining law.

Lead poisoning of children has largely been tied to contact with old, peeling paint. Here, a Milwaukee rental home is investigated for lead in a 2015 inspection. Language was inserted into the 2013-15 state budget at the request of a paint industry lobbyist whose client had secretly given $750,000 to a group seeking to help Gov. Scott Walker and Senate Republicans recalled in 2011 and 2012. The budget language sought to block lawsuits filed on behalf of lead-poisoned children, but that move ultimately failed.Photo taken Nov. 23, 2015.

In 2013, four words were inserted into an omnibus budget motion passed in the early morning hours by the Republican-run Joint Finance Committee.

Those words, “whenever filed or accused,” effectively halted the claims of Yasmine and the other 170 or so lead-poisoned children by retroactively exempting NL Industries and the other lead-paint manufacturers from liability.

In the memo obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, documented the request by NL lobbyist Eric Petersen to insert the language into the budget.

Milwaukee attorney Peter Earle represents plaintiffs

Milwaukee attorney Peter Earle represents plaintiffs suing paint companies for lead poisoning. Four words inserted into the 2013-15 state budget at the request of a paint industry lobbyist sought to block the plaintiffs from pursuing claims against the industry, but two judges ruled the move could not block the lawsuits, allowing them to proceed.

(Photo: Kevin Harnack, Wisconsin Law Journal)

Attorney Peter Earle, who represented Yasmine in the lead-paint case, said the language inserted into the 2013-15 budget was “obscure and last-minute,” and added “without notice, sponsors or a public hearing.”

“It was done because of greed,” the Milwaukee attorney said. “Politicians chose the interests of their donors and corporate special interest groups over the rights of innocent children.”

The secretive budget move was short-lived, however. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Hansher found that Yasmine had the right to bring her lawsuit, a decision that was upheld on appeal.

“The sole inquiry before the court is whether it is constitutional for the Legislature to deprive innocent and injured plaintiffs of their vested right to pursue claims against manufacturers and sellers of white lead carbonate,” Hansher wrote. “In this Court's view, it is not.”

In 2017, Hansher granted a motion filed by Earle to dismiss the case with the option of re-filing it at a later time. Earle said he cannot discuss the reasons for the dismissal.

‘Darkest of dark money states’

Wisconsin and Florida are the only two states in the nation that have legalized coordination between candidates and outside special interest groups that engage in “issue advocacy,” according to Daniel Weiner, senior counsel at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice,which aims to reform, revitalize and defend democracy and justice.

Contributions to “issue ads,” which often support or oppose candidates without using words including “vote for” or “vote against,” are not required to be reported to the Wisconsin Ethics Commission.

David Buerger, staff counsel at the ethics commission, said the state now bans coordination only involving “express advocacy” — communication that specifically calls for the election or defeat of a candidate.

In a 2015 move that further obscures the influence of money on politics, Wisconsin’s Legislature on a party-line vote eliminated the requirement that candidates list the employers of their donors, removing a key detail behind publicly reported campaign contributions.

In the same bill, lawmakers legalized unlimited contributions to political parties and legislative campaign committees,except for corporations and groups such as labor unions, which can contribute up to $12,000 a year.

Madison attorney Mike Wittenwyler is a campaign finance

Madison attorney Mike Wittenwyler is a campaign finance law specialist. Polls show most Americans are concerned about loosening restrictions on campaign contributions, but Wittenwyler agrees with court decisions that have found spending on elections to be a free-speech right. "I want to live in a society where everyone is allowed to speak without any government oppression of what you're going to hear." Wittenwyler appears here on Wisconsin Public Television explaining coordination in campaign finance law in 2014.

(Photo: Wisconsin Public Television)

Mike Wittenwyler, a Madison attorney who specializes in campaign finance issues and who has represented outside political groups, said the law changes were “long overdue.” The last major rewrite was in the 1970s, he said, prior to several key court decisions that clarified the limits and rights of donors and candidates.

A Marquette Law School poll found that most citizens of Wisconsin disagreed with the Legislature’s 2015 decision to remove contribution limits on state political parties. In a poll, 61% of respondents said they opposed unlimited contributions, while 13% supported them. Another 25% said they had not heard enough on the issue.

Taken together, these changes have made Wisconsin the “darkest of dark money states,” said Jay Heck, executive director of the Common Cause in Wisconsin, which promotes clean, open and responsive state government.

Matt Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, another good government group, offers a similar assessment. “Wisconsin,” he said, “is open for bribery.”

Matt Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin

Matt Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, speaks at Maps Madness: Voters vs. Politicians, a rally organized by the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition on March 7, 2018. Rothschild has called the secretive process used by Republicans in the Legislature in 2011 a “grotesque” deprivation of people’s “First Amendment rights to speak and be heard.”

(Photo: Cameron Smith, Wisconsin Center for Investigati)

Weiner said secret campaign contributions can come from interests on the left or the right, especially in state elections.

“On the state level, we see a lot more ‘Company X wants a mining concession,’ or something like that,” Weiner said. “And they put a lot of dark money in to basically influence legislative officials to get what they want.”

That is not just an idle example. Documents briefly unsealed during the John Doe investigation show that Gogebic Taconite secretly donated $700,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth during the recalls in 2011 and 2012. The next year, in 2013, Walker signed the bill loosening mining restrictions — a bill that Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald acknowledged in a video was written by the company seeking to build a controversial mine in northern Wisconsin. After several years, the company abandoned the project as not feasible.

People vs. Citizens United

Some advocates for stricter campaign finance laws feel that the only way to blunt such corporate influence over the political system is with a constitutional amendment to override the Citizens United decision.

Wisconsin United to Amend is mobilizing people to sign a petition and to convince city councils and town and village boards to vote on resolutions calling for this constitutional amendment.

The campaign’s messages are: “Money is not speech” and “Corporations are not people.” Currently, more than 130 local governments in Wisconsin and 19 state legislatures have passed the resolution.

“More and more people are understanding … these politicians cannot fix it, because they are bought by those who don’t want to fix it,” said George Penn, a representative from South Central Wisconsin United to Amend.

Many on the left see the Citizens United decision as a stab at the heart of democracy. Wittenwyler takes the opposite view. He believes the decision expands free speech rights.

“Everyone should be able to speak and you shouldn’t make arbitrary decisions based on how an entity may or may not be established,” Wittenwyler said. “I want to live in a society where everyone is allowed to speak without any government oppression of what you’re going to hear.”

Voter John Tyler, speaking outside his Lake Mills polling station during the Aug. 14 primary election, said corporations have too much influence in our democracy.

“How is the regular person supposed to stand up and be counted compared to corporations that give millions of dollars and influence policy and have the legislatures just do what they wanted?” Tyler asked.

Eric Blumreich, a Green Bay resident who participated in Wisconsin Public Radio’s Beyond the Ballot series, agreed. But he believes voters still have some leverage.

“The 2016 presidential election was decided by razor-thin victories for (President) Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania,” Blumreich said in an email. “In my opinion, this indicates that your vote counts in Wisconsin and that vote is perhaps the best indicator … when it comes to political power and having a voice.”

Dee J. Hall contributed to this story, which was produced as part of an investigative reporting class in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication under the direction Hall, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s managing editor.

==

==

BRIBERY

Schimel and the John Doe judge appear to be ignoring a number of other legal issues as well.

The Guardian documents revealed for the first time a new set of potential legal violations that were not addressed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision that summarily ended the John Doe II investigation. These include:

1. Governor Scott Walker’s solicitation of corporate checks to fund the campaign being run by his top advisor, R.J. Johnson acting on behalf of Wisconsin Club for Growth. As Democratic lawmakers explained, Wisconsin statute 11.38 (1)(a)(1) has banned corporations from making contributions to candidates “directly or indirectly” from their corporate treasuries since 1905. There are stiff penalties on both sides of the transaction, including huge fines for firms and forfeiture of office for politicians. The documents indicate that Walker secretly solicited large corporate checks for Wisconsin Club for Growth, including two $1 million checks from Menards Inc. “I got a million dollars from John Menard today,” boasted Walker in one 2011 email. Menard sent another corporate check in 2012 when the Walker recall loomed.
2. Evidence that Keith Gilkes, Scott Walker’s campaign manager, held weekly meetings with the Republican Governor’s Association, registered in the state as “independent expenditure” group, which had sworn an oath not to coordinate with Walker. On October 14, 2011 an RGA staffer wrote to Gilkes “Josh mentioned he would like to make this a recurring call on Fridays at 2:30 pm (EST). Does that work for you?” Gilkes replies: “This works on my end for a weekly call… Shoot me the phone number and dial-in when you have it.” Josh is likely Josh Robinson, RGA’s political director who later boasted of “overseeing the largest IE [Independent Expenditure] campaign defending Scott Walker during the 2012 recalls” in his bio. RGA spent $9.5 million in the recall election pounding Walker’s opponent and lauding Walker. Many contend these ads were not “issue ads” but were the functional equivalent of express advocacy and prohibited even under the 2015 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling shutting down the John Doe. (Moreover, Marquette Law Professor Ed Fallone points out that U.S. Supreme Court decision this week upholding a lower court ruling also makes clear that the Wisconsin Supreme Court plainly got it wrong when it ruled that so-called “issue ads” are exempt from regulation.)
3. Potential pay-to-play criminal and ethics violations related toTexas billionaire Harold Simmons’ $750,000 contribution in personal and corporate checks (from his holding company CONTRAN Corporation) to Wisconsin Club for Growth and the coordinated campaign. These checks were followed by specific changes to Wisconsin law proposed by Simmons’ lobbyist, Eric Peterson, that were intended to retroactively nullify lawsuits brought by Wisconsin children poisoned by lead who were suing Simmons’ lead company called NL Industries, (formerly National Lead). Peterson’s verbatim language nullifying the lawsuits was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Walker. The new law was quickly struck down as plainly unconstitutional by both state and federal courts.

==

Obama camp blasts National Review writer as "slimy character assassin"

By BEN SMITH 08/27/2008 09:41 PM EDT

Barack Obama's campaign hasn't advertised this a great deal this week, but the campaign's "Action Wire" has been waging large-scale campaigns against critics. That includes tens of thousands of e-mails to television stations running Harold Simmons' Bill Ayers ad, and to their advertisers — including a list of major automobile and telecommunications companies.

==

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/09/13144/top-ten-emails-john-doe-document-leak

...

5. RJ Johnson talks to Keith Gilkes, Walker campaign manager, and Gov. Walker about why they need to keep activities of the 3rd party groups under their command. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT1, p.2)

6. Fundraiser Kate Donor explains the strategy of locking down commitments from a host of supposedly "independent" groups like the Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity to Keith Gilkes, RJ Johnson and Gov. Walker. (Fundraising-Coordination, p.14)

7. Keith Gilkes forwards "oppo" opposition research on controversial potential donors, including Harold Simmons, Dallas-based CEO of a lead pigment company, to Gov. Walker. After this exchange, some checks from these givers are sent to Wisconsin Club for Growth where they will remain secret and not be publicly disclosed as a campaign contribution to Walker. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT1, p.61)

8. Harold Simmons, NL Industries/CONTRAN, scheduled contact with Walker plus his personal and corporate checks. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT2, p.127; Corporate-Checks-Sanitized, p.5-6)

9. Affidavit of Wisconsin Club for Growth director Eric O'Keefe who explains its all about "liberty and fiscal responsibility" not winning elections. (WICFG-Quash-Aff)

10. Jay Rosser, a representative of T. Boone Pickens, email to RJ Johnson and Kate Doner. Interestingly, declines to give: "we recognize the opportunity to give anonymously, but frankly that is just not our style." (Fundraising-Coordination, p.4) It is likely that not all the people mentioned in these documents gave secretly to Walker.

==

In the ongoing scrum that is the GOP presidential money primary, every wealthy donor locked up adds both to a potential candidate’s perceived viability and his credibility with more donors. FEC filings from late last month have already yielded positive signals for several of the senators who may be angling for the nomination, but the latest batch are even more promising for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Rubio, who may have the steepest hill to climb with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush entering the fray — the two have the same natural base of funders among mainstream Floridian Republicans — reported fourth-quarter 2014 donations to his senatorial campaign from several key names in the world of presidential fundraising. Most prominently, on Dec. 17 he received $5,000 from Annette Simmons, the widow of Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons. Together the couple was the second largest overall donor of traceable money in the 2012 election, contributing more than $27 million to conservative causes. At least $20.5 million of thatwas given to the Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads super PAC and $2.3 million of it went to the Mitt Romney-backing Restore Our Future super PAC. Simmons was also an early backer of a super PAC supporting Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 run and the super PAC that kept former Sen. Rick Santorum’s improbable fight going well into the 2012 spring primaries.

If Annette Simmons, who reportedly was left more than $600 million upon her husband’s death, is as inclined to invest in politics as her late husband was, early financial support from her could be just the spark a candidate like Rubio needs to battle through the first primaries. While Simmons may have donated to other potential presidential candidates in recent weeks — filings for any GOP presidential hopeful who is not a senator won’t be available until later this month — it’s notable that she did not make a similar donation to Ted Cruz, her home state senator and one of Rubio’s rivals, even though 12 of the 14 congressional candidates she contributed to in the last cycle were Texans, plus Rubio, Speaker of the House Rep.John Boehner (R-Texas) and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).  Also, the $5,000 check to Rubio was largest donation Simmons made to any politician in that cycle.

Besides Simmons, Rubio also received a big donation, listed at $10,400, from Dian Graves Stai (that’s double the maximum allowed, and at least some of it appears to have been refunded). Stai is not quite on at the donor level of Harold Simmons, but in 2014 she donated $250,000 to Freedom Partners Action Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the network of donors assembled by the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. A recent gathering of the group included a panel that featured Rubio, Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), seen as an early opportunity for the network’s large donors to size up potential candidates. Stai also donated $50,000 to Kentuckians for Strong Leadership, a super PAC with Rove connections that backed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in his re-election bid.

Another potentially symbolic donor to appear on Rubio’s filing was Scott Sperling, a Boston investment banker who in 2012 publicly discussed his decision to stop supporting Barack Obama and start supporting Mitt Romney. Sperling donated $5,200 to Rubio’s campaign in 2014, the only of the three senators vying for the nomination. In 2012, Sperling donated the maximum to Romney’s campaign and $25,000 to Restore Our Future. In 2008, he also donated to Romney’s campaign, but donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign as well. Sperling could not be reached for comment on his donation to Rubio.

===

rip:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The deaths this year of three major Texas Republican donors, including a billionaire who died over the weekend, could signal a generational change for party kingmakers in the nation's largest GOP stronghold.

Harold Simmons, whose business interests ranged from energy to nuclear waste dumps, helped transform Texas from a Democrat-controlled state in the 1970s to a Republican stronghold by the turn of the century. Simmons' death Saturday came after Republicans lost home builder Bob Perry in April and businessman Leo Linbeck Jr. in June. For decades, all three helped bankroll political campaigns both in Texas and nationwide.

All three men were considered conservative renegades when they got involved in politics. However, as the state grew more conservative, they became part of the GOP mainstream.

The loss comes as Texas Republicans already were facing a turning point. Gov. Rick Perry, one of the donors' biggest recipients, isn't seeking re-election next year, and a new breed of GOP candidates such as tea party-backed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has emerged in the state.

"It leaves a huge question mark for Republican candidates and political organizations that have relied on major contributions from those two or three individuals for the last decade," said Matt Mackowiak, a prominent Republican political consultant. "Their generosity made a huge difference in a lot of races over a long period of time, but it was their potential to always contribute more that probably prevented a lot of races from ever taking place at all by scaring off potential competitors.

The three men contributed to Republican candidates and organizations across the country, but their influence was greatest in Texas, which has no limit on personal campaign contributions.

Simmons, who had an estimated net worth of $10 billion, gave at least $12.6 million to candidates in Texas races since 2000, according to the Texas Ethics Commission. The Center for Public Integrity named him the second-largest donor to national political action committees for 2011-2012, giving away $31 million to conservative groups.

Houston tycoon Bob Perry, no relation to the Texas governor, made his fortune building tract homes across the state and made at least $75 million in political contributions in his lifetime, not counting confidential gifts to super PACs, which can campaign independently for candidates. He gave $4.4 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign, which sought to discredit Democrat John Kerry's war record when he challenged President George W. Bush in 2004. Simmons also gave the group $3 million.

Linbeck, whose family also made its fortune in construction, helped create two of the state's most influential conservative organizations, Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Americans for Fair Taxation. TLR spent millions on candidates who supported limits on lawsuits against businesses and AFT campaigns to replace the national income tax with a national sales tax.

The full extent of their donations may never be known, since many were made privately.

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said there is a generational change taking place in the Republican Party that coincides with the growing fight between grass-roots tea party conservatives like Cruz, and the more pragmatic business wing of the party, represented by Texas House Speaker Joe Straus.

"We associate these guys with an era of Republican politics in this state that is in transition and possibly becoming something different," he said. "These were the guys who were the bedrock donors for the business wing of the Republican Party, and as politics has gotten more polarized, the party has a more ideological bent to it. These were guys in big business who were motivated by classical business interests."

An example of this pragmatism came in 2011, when Texas legislators debated a law that would have required local police to question the immigration status of the people they encounter. Bob Perry, whose industry relies on immigrants, opposed the measure, and Republican leaders made sure it expired without a vote.

So-called establishment candidates will suffer the most from losing these critical donors, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, an expert on Texas campaign finance. He said Perry and Simmons dwarfed all other Republican donors in Texas.

"The absence of someone like Perry or Simmons hamstrings (establishment candidates) in many respects, and their ability to use their financial advantage against tea party and movement conservatives," he said. "There is no one left now that has the gravitas to single-handedly decide whether a candidate runs or not, or is viable or not."

But Corbin Casteel, another Republican campaign consultant, said a new generation will step in to make up for the lost donations.

"While there may be a giving gap now, or in the short run, there is more out there," he said. "In West Texas (oil fields) there are a lot of new, wealthy conservatives who are just beginning to get involved in the political movement, we're looking at a whole new generation of major Republican donors coming onto the scene.

===

contran holdings, see, really

---

ifg Wealth: Harold Simmons is a buyout investor who, through his publicly traded holding company, Valhi, 

controls five companies: NL Industries (titanium dioxide); Titanium Metals Corporation, the world’s largest 

producer of titanium; Valhi, a multinational company with operations in the chemicals, component products, 

waste management, and titanium metals industries; CompX International, a manufacturer of ergonomic 

products; and Kronos Worldwide, a leading producer and marketer of titanium dioxide. The value of Valhi’s 

shares increased 250% between the summer of 2010 and the summer of 2011.98 

Power Networks: Simmons is a right-wing activist and a major funder of conservative causes. He backed the 

Swift Boat attacks that derailed John Kerry’s presidential campaign, allowing George W. Bush to be re-elected 

and accelerate and consolidate his policy approach of enshrining fossil fuels and avoiding any commitments 

on climate. He has been one of Texas Governor Rick Perry’s long-time supporters with Texas State 

disclosure records, listing Simmons as Perry’s biggest backer with $600,000 in contributions.99 

Environment: NL Industries has major problems with lead pollution spilling from its lead smelters. An EPA 

study in 2010 indicated that 16 percent of children in Venice, Illinois, and two cities in Wisconsin—Granite 

City and Madison—were experiencing dangerously high lead levels in their blood due to pollution from an 

abandoned NL Industries-Taracorp lead smelter and battery recycling plant.100 Pollution from the NL 

Industry/Taracorp plant was found to have contaminated 100 square blocks in all three cities, exposing 

around 1,600 households to dangerous levels of lead. The facility and surrounding neighborhoods are now 

listed as Superfund Sites.101

==

bbb:

h simmons woth 10b$ rove & gop  National Lead and waste control spec; 50m to rove 1/2 1%, ROI cd be 2B$ 48

simmons invented hostile LBO of dutch boy, but now refused to pay 1/2 bill/yr to clean schools etc; used plundered $ from co to buy other co's.

oglalla 8 states

===

Simmons, 80, is a Texas businessman long active in funding campaigns. In 2008, he helped finance ads against Barack Obama; in 2004, he gave $2 million to the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, which attacked Democrat John Kerry. In January, Forbes listed his net worth at $8.7 billion.

More: Lots Of GOP Money Flowing From The Texas Two

Contributions

• Make Us Great Again (Perry) $500,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Sept. 23, 2011
• American Crossroads (GOP) $1,000,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Oct. 21, 2011
• Make Us Great Again (Perry) $500,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Oct. 24, 2011
• American Crossroads (GOP) $1,000,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Oct. 26, 2011
• American Crossroads (GOP) $5,000,000 Donor: Harold C. Simmons | Date: Nov. 29, 2011
• Winning Our Future (Gingrich) $500,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: Dec. 15, 2011
• American Crossroads (GOP) $5,000,000 Donor: Harold C. Simmons | Date: Jan. 13, 2012
• Restore Our Future (Romney) $100,000 Donor: Harold C. Simmons | Date: Jan. 13, 2012
• Winning Our Future (Gingrich) $500,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: Jan. 24, 2012
• Red White and Blue Fund (Santorum) $1,000,000 Donor: Annette Simmons | Date: Feb. 15, 2012
• Winning Our Future (Gingrich) $100,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: Feb. 15, 2012
• Restore Our Future (Romney) $100,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: Feb. 28, 2012
• Restore Our Future (Romney) $100,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: March 9, 2012
• Red White and Blue Fund (Santorum) $200,000 Donor: Annette Simmons | Date: March 19, 2012
• Restore Our Future (Romney) $500,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: March 19, 2012
• American Crossroads (GOP) $1,000,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: April 25, 2012

---

Simmons' personal financial support extends well beyond Perry: He also gave $500,000 to Winning Our Future, a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, and most notably, Simmons is the top donor to both Restore Our Future (a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney) and American Crossroads.  Simmons' donations to the latter two groups further solidify an already established trend of overlap between the two groups, who share not only top funders like Bob Perry and Simmons, but top officials like Carl Forti.

---

2/1/12

Harold Simmons, long one of the GOP's most prolific donors, cemented his place on the speed-dial of fundraisers for conservative causes on Tuesday as several super PACs reported huge hauls from the Texas billionaire in their 2011 year-end campaign finance reports.

Simmons and his holding company, Contran Corp., gave $8.5 million to three super PACs, two of which support candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, in the last quarter of the year, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

For starters, Contran made two $500,000 donations to the super PAC that was championing Texas Gov. Rick Perry's White House ambitions, Make Us Great Again. One of those came in late September and one in late October. Those gifts made Contran, and thus Simmons, the single greatest donor to Make Us Great Again, providing the group with 18 percent of its funds.

Perry dropped out of the race Jan. 19, but Simmons didn't wait 'til then to switch horses. On Dec. 15, he personally contributed $500,000 to Winning Our Future, the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC.

In January, Winning Our Future was instrumental in helping to keep the former House speaker's presidential bid from stalling by running slashing attack ads against frontrunner Mitt Romney at a time when the Gingrich campaign was short on funds.

Still, Simmons made his biggest donations by far to a super PAC that hasn't gone to bat for a presidential candidate -- yet. Between late October and late November, Simmons gave $5 million to American Crossroads, started with help from GOP uber-operative Karl Rove, and Contran gave another $2 million.

That's a staggering 60 percent of the $11.7 million raised by American Crossroads in the last three months of 2011, according to the Center's research. American Crossroads raised nearly $18 million overall in 2011, after raising $28 million during its inaugural year in 2010.

Simmons couldn't have used Contran's corporate treasury to fund groups running ads that expressly support or oppose a candidate, nor could he have given six-figure sums of money to such organizations, before the Supreme Court's 2010 *Citizens United* *v. Federal Election Commission* decision laid the groundwork for what are now known as super PACs.

That Simmons would divide his money among more than one candidate is no surprise. In 2007, he gave the maximum individual contribution of $2,300 to Republican presidential candidates Romney, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani -- all within a month. Simmons has been a Gingrich supporter in the past, as well, supplying the Georgian's GOPAC organization with major support, so it's not surprising that Winning Our Future would find a way to his checkbook.

Simmons has also never been shy to lend a hand to controversial political forays. During the 2004 election cycle, his Contran Corp. turned over $3 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's Vietnam war record.

But Simmons has a lot more to give away, if he so chooses. *Forbes* described him in December as "The U.S. Billionaire Whose Stock Increased the Most in 2011." The publication said the octogenarian's net worth "hit the $9.6 billion range" last year largely due to a surge in the value of Valhi, a specialty chemicals company Simmons controls through Contran.

Philanthropic giving, though, will likely consume more of the assets of Simmons and his wife, Annette, than political activity: Last March, they pledged to donate half their fortune to charity, a la Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Center for Responsive Politics senior fellow Bob Biersack contributed to this report.

---

 A company called Southwest Louisiana Land LLC donated $1 million to American Crossroads in June. It turns out Southwest, which doesn't have much of a public footprint, is owned by Dallas billionaire investor Harold Simmons -- no stranger to conservative causes. Since the 1980s, he has ponied up for everthing from Oliver North's defense fund, to Newt Gingrich's PAC, to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, to the American Issues Project, a group that ran ads attempting to tie Obama to Bill Ayers in 2008 (Simmons was the sole funder of the Ayers effort, giving nearly $3 million.) Simmons is worth $4.5 billion.

---

From SourceWatch

Jump to: navigation, search

Harold Clark Simmons (born 1931, Golden, Texas)^[1] is an American businessman whose banking expertise helped him develop the acquisition concept known as the leveraged buyout (LBO) to acquire various corporations. He is the owner of Contran Corporation and of Valhi, Inc., (a NYSE traded company about 90% controlled by Contran).^[2] As of 2007 he has an estimated net worth of around $7.4 billion dollars.^[3]

Simmons is a billionaire and long time Republican donor who helped finance Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.^[4]

Education

Simmons has BA (1951) and MA (1952) degrees in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Career

After graduating from college in 1952, Simmons first worked for the U.S. government, then for a Dallas-based bank. In 1960, using $5,000 of his savings, he borrowed money to buy a small drugstore. In 1973 he sold the 100 drugstore chain, worth more than $50 million to Eckerd Corporation, and launched a career as an investor. ^[5]

In 1997 Simmons made a $5 million investment in T. Boone Pickens, Jr. first fund BP Capital Energy Commodity Fund, by 2005 this had grown to $150 million.^[6]

Political activism

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Simmons made a $4 million donation to the controversial group Swift Vets and POWs for Truth. He also donated $100,000 to George W. Bush's January 2005 inaugural ball.^[7]

In 2008 Simmons was listed as the sole donor to the "American Issues Project," an independent political group which attempted to show that 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama was closely tied to sixties era radical William Ayers. The group's advertisements were rejected by some news outlets, because they appeared to be in violation of campaign finance laws and because of concerns about potentially libelous statements about Ayers.^[8]

Philanthropy

Simmons donated money to help fund the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment at the University of Texas. He has previously given to UT athletic programs and the McCombs School of Business. By 2005, total donations from his family and foundation to the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas exceeded $70 million.^[5] In 2008 the Harold Simmons Foundation made a donation of $5 million to the Dallas Zoo, the largest single private contribution in the zoo's 120 year history.^[9]

References

1. ↑ Richard Kimble, "Philantropist Harold Simmons Establishes Lectyre Series Featuring Senator Zell Miller"
2. ↑ "Conflicts of Interest and Special Committees Revisited: Has Kahn V. Tremont Corp. Permanently Changed the Landscape, or Merely Slyghtly Altered It?", FindLaw.com
3. ↑ "The 400 Richest Americans (2007)", Forbes.com
4. ↑ Michael Luo G.O.P. Allies Drive Ad Spending Disparity, New York Times, September 13, 2010
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} "Simmons donates $15 million for cancer research", Andrew County News, January 5, 2005
6. ↑ "Raider to trader - Rising oil prices bring gushing profits to T. Boone Pickens", www.projo.com
7. ↑ "Bush inaugural ball in big donors' court - Top-tier contributions to revelry viewed by some as an investment", krem.com
8. ↑ "Anti-Obama Ayers Ad Funded By One Billionaire McCain Supporter", Huffington Post, August 22, 2008
9. ↑ "Dallas Zoo receives largest private gift in its 120-year history", Pegasus News, September 3, 2008

Further reading

• John J. Nance – Golden Boy: The Harold Simmons Story, ISBN 1571687475

External links

• Forbes 400 list, Forbes magazine
• Zoominfo
• SEC info
• Contran Corporation
• Valhi, Inc

Wikipedia also has an article on Harold Simmons. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Harold_Simmons"

Category: Republican Party (US)

2/12 update superpac:

Harold Simmons, long one of the GOP's most prolific donors, cemented his place on the speed-dial of fundraisers for conservative causes on Tuesday as several super PACs reported huge hauls from the Texas billionaire in their 2011 year-end campaign finance reports.

Simmons and his holding company, Contran Corp., gave $8.5 million to three super PACs, two of which support candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, in the last quarter of the year, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

For starters, Contran made two $500,000 donations to the super PAC that was championing Texas Gov. Rick Perry's White House ambitions, Make Us Great Again. One of those came in late September and one in late October. Those gifts made Contran, and thus Simmons, the single greatest donor to Make Us Great Again, providing the group with 18 percent of its funds.

Perry dropped out of the race Jan. 19, but Simmons didn't wait 'til then to switch horses. On Dec. 15, he personally contributed $500,000 to Winning Our Future, the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC.

In January, Winning Our Future was instrumental in helping to keep the former House speaker's presidential bid from stalling by running slashing attack ads against frontrunner Mitt Romney at a time when the Gingrich campaign was short on funds.

Still, Simmons made his biggest donations by far to a super PAC that hasn't gone to bat for a presidential candidate -- yet. Between late October and late November, Simmons gave $5 million to American Crossroads, started with help from GOP uber-operative Karl Rove, and Contran gave another $2 million.

That's a staggering 60 percent of the $11.7 million raised by American Crossroads in the last three months of 2011, according to the Center's research. American Crossroads raised nearly $18 million overall in 2011, after raising $28 million during its inaugural year in 2010.

Simmons couldn't have used Contran's corporate treasury to fund groups running ads that expressly support or oppose a candidate, nor could he have given six-figure sums of money to such organizations, before the Supreme Court's 2010 *Citizens United* *v. Federal Election Commission* decision laid the groundwork for what are now known as super PACs.

That Simmons would divide his money among more than one candidate is no surprise. In 2007, he gave the maximum individual contribution of $2,300 to Republican presidential candidates Romney, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani -- all within a month. Simmons has been a Gingrich supporter in the past, as well, supplying the Georgian's GOPAC organization with major support, so it's not surprising that Winning Our Future would find a way to his checkbook.

Simmons has also never been shy to lend a hand controversial political forays. During the 2004 election cycle, his Contran Corp. turned over $3 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's Vietnam war record.

But Simmons has a lot more to give away, if he so chooses. *Forbes* described him in December as "The U.S. Billionaire Whose Stock Increased the Most in 2011." The publication said the octogenarian's net worth "hit the $9.6 billion range" last year largely due to a surge in the value of Valhli, a specialty chemicals company Simmons controls through Contran.

Philanthropic giving, though, will likely consume more of the assets of Simmons and his wife, Annette, than political activity: Last March, they pledged to donate half their fortune to charity, a la Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Center for Responsive Politics

===

Billionaire behind Swift Boat ads funded anti-Obama spot

The TV ad focuses on the candidate's ties to a former radical.

CAMPAIGN '08

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/23/nation/na-simmons23

August 23, 2008|Dan Morain | Times Staff Writer

Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who helped pay for the devastating attacks on the military record of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry in 2004, has paid for a television ad that assails Barack Obama over his ties to a founder of a violent radical group.

Simmons, who is also a major fundraiser for John McCain, donated $2.87 million that a newly formed nonprofit group, the American Issues Project, has used for the ad, a report filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission shows.

The 60-second ad opens with Obama giving a speech, then asks how much voters know about him.

From there, it focuses on his relationship with William Ayers, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor who more than three decades ago was deeply involved with the Weather Underground, which claimed responsibility for numerous bombings.

The American Issues Project is airing the commercial in Ohio and Michigan, where Obama and McCain are locked in tight contests.

Obama's campaign responded to the ad by sending a letter to the Justice Department charging that the backers are violating criminal law and urging an investigation. Obama's attorneys also are calling on television stations not to air the spot.

The national Fox News Network has declined to air it, but several Fox affiliates in Ohio and Michigan are showing it.

"It's on tons of stations in Michigan and Ohio," said Christian Pinkston, a Washington consultant overseeing the effort.

"It is a battleground-state strategy."

Pinkston and Simmons were both involved with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that ran ads questioning the Vietnam record of Kerry, a decorated veteran. Simmons was Swift Boat's second-largest donor, giving $3 million.

Simmons has donated at least $4.5 million to federal campaigns in the past decade, Federal Election Commission records show.

Simmons was No. 43 on the 2007 Forbes list of richest Americans, with a net worth estimated at $7.4 billion. Known as a corporate raider, Simmons has been nicknamed "the Ice Man." He acquired his wealth by investing in drugstores, steel, garbage collection and other entities. He could not be reached for comment.

On its website, McCain's campaign discloses that Simmons has raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the Republican candidate.

===

By George M. Walsh

The Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y. -- General Electric Co. said Thursday that it will go ahead with the next phase of PCB dredging in the Hudson River under terms laid out last week by federal environmental regulators.

The Environmental Protection Agency had said the Fairfield, Conn.-based company must remove more PCB-tainted sediment from the Hudson River and will have to take better samples of the river bottom when it resumes dredging.

"We engaged in intensive and constructive discussions with EPA, and the Agency's decision reflects our discussions and many of our proposals," Ann Klee, GE's vice president of Corporate Environmental Programs said in a statement.

The EPA announced new standards for the work after a review of the first round of dredging in 2009. The goal is to remove as much tainted sludge as possible from a 40-mile stretch of the river north of Albany, one of the nation's largest Superfund sites.

"The decision sets us on a clear path to a cleanup of PCB-contaminated sediment that is based on the best science and will remove huge quantities of this dangerous chemical from the river," EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck said in a statement Thursday.

Environmental groups said the new standards will ultimately mean a cleaner river but criticized the EPA for allowing GE to leave and cap PCBs in up to 11 percent of the total project area, not counting rocky or other hard-to-reach areas.

The sediment is transported by rail through North Texas on its way to the Andrews County disposal site in West Texas. Environmentalists and others worry that the shipments, which could continue for as many as six years, may spill and create environmental problems.

The disposal site is operated by Waste Control Specialists, which is owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/12/23/2725892/general-electric-agrees-to-epas.html#ixzz1AZ9lhWes

===

Billionaire Feels Sting of Line Item Veto

By ALLEN R. MYERSON

Pres Clinton's use of line item veto dashes plan by Texas billionaire, Harold C Simmons, to preserve capital gains tax break while renegotiating sale of beet-sugar refining company, formed as joint venture with Snake River Sugar Co; Simmons has given more than $1 million to Republican campaigns and causes since early 1980's; photo

---

Simmons, 80, is a Texas businessman long active in funding campaigns. In 2008, he helped finance ads against Barack Obama; in 2004, he gave $2 million to the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, which attacked Democrat John Kerry. In January, Forbes listed his net worth at $8.7 billion.

More: Lots Of GOP Money Flowing From The Texas Two

Contributions

• Make Us Great Again (Perry) $500,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Sept. 23, 2011
• American Crossroads (GOP) $1,000,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Oct. 21, 2011
• Make Us Great Again (Perry) $500,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Oct. 24, 2011
• American Crossroads (GOP) $1,000,000 Donor: Contran Corporation | Date: Oct. 26, 2011
• American Crossroads (GOP) $5,000,000 Donor: Harold C. Simmons | Date: Nov. 29, 2011
• Winning Our Future (Gingrich) $500,000 Donor: Harold Simmons | Date: Dec. 15, 2011

-----

Waste Control Specialists

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.

The neutrality of this article is disputed. (January 2011)

This article may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. (January 2011)

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Waste Control Specialists| Type | Private |

Waste Control Specialists is a treatment, storage, & disposal facility for radioactive, hazardous, and mixed wastes. The company, owned by Harold Simmons, is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The company waslicensed for disposal of low level radioactive waste in 2009, and held a grand opening event in November of 2011.

Waste Control Specialists LLC

Founded in 1989 as a landfill, Waste Control Specialists LLC (WCS) is a waste processing and disposal company that operates a fully permitted 1,338-acre treatment, storage and disposal facility near Andrews, Texas. It is located in an area known as "nuclear alley" which also includes the National Enrichment Facility and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

WCS is a subsidiary of Valhi, Inc., with corporate offices in Dallas, Texas. Valhi, Inc. is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker VHI.

WCS’ facility in western Andrews County is the only commercial facility in the United States licensed in more than 30 years to dispose of Class A, B and C low-level radioactive waste. It is also licensed for the treatment and storage of low-level radioactive waste – and has served as a temporary storage facility for U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects.^[1]

WCS met all operating guidelines established by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).^[2] TCEQ Executive Director (August 2004 to June 2008), Glenn Shankle, later became a lobbyist for WCS. State records indicate he earned as much as $149,999 per year from WCS.^[3]

The plant is located 5 miles east of Eunice, New Mexico, and 35 miles west of Andrews.

After WCS drilled almost 600 wells to document the hydrogeology of the site, the state of Texas determined the WCS facility does not sit above or adjacent to any underground drinking water formations. The Texas Water Development Board changed maps that previously indicated the site lay above the Ogallala Aquifer.^[4]

The WCS facility also is the site of the disposal facility for the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, and most recently was the site of the successful storage and disposal of byproduct material from the DOE Fernald, Ohio cleanup site. ^[5] In 2011 a vote was held by the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission that will allow WCS to import waste from 36 other states across the US. ^[6]

Disposal of low-level radioactive waste will be in concrete containers buried 30 to 100 feet below the surface in lined cells in the red bed clay formations. Space between the containers will be grouted to prevent shifting and to preserve the integrity of the containers. As the cells are filled, they will be covered by more than 300 feet of liner material and red bed clay and the surface will be restored to its natural state.^[7]

Critics of the facility have claimed that millions in donations by Harold Simmons (Owner of WCS) to Texas Governor Rick Perry and other politicians were used to persuade support for the controversial project. The individuals that licensed the facility at TCEQ and the individuals that had aquifer maps redrawn to allow the facility were appointed by Governor Perry. Members of the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission which voted to expand the facility were also appointed by Governor Perry. ^[8] Critics also cite WCS' safety record after losing a 22-ton shipment in 2001 for almost a month.^[9] The company was fined in 2004 & 2005 for a string of incidents including an employee improperly releasing radioactive material by flushing it down a toilet. The company agreed to pay $161,000 in fines.^[10]

References

1. ^ "Waste Control Specialists". Archived from the original on 2010-08-19. "WCS is now the only facility in the United States licensed in the last 30 years, to dispose of Class A, B, and C low level radio active waste."
2. ^ "Radio Active Material License" (PDF). Archived from the original on January, 2010. Retrieved 2009-11-17. "Radio Active Materials License"
3. ^ "Texas Ethics Commission Archive".
4. ^ "How Does Your Water Glow?".
5. ^ Fischer, Timothy. "US EPA Feild Production Center". Archived from the original on January, 2010. Retrieved 2010-08-19."WCS is now the only facility in the United States licensed in the last 30 years, to dispose of Class A, B, and C low level radio active waste."
6. ^ "Senate Approves Bringing In More Radioactive Waste".
7. ^ "Waste Control Specialists". Archived from the original on 2010-08-19. "WCS is now the only facility in the United States licensed in the last 30 years, to dispose of Class A, B, and C low level radio active waste."
8. ^ "Perry Donor's Radioactive Waste Site Deal Scrutinized".
9. ^ "Coming Soon To A Highway Near You".
10. ^ "Good to Glow".

---

Tue Sep 06, 2011 at 11:01 AM PDT

Perry accepts $1 mill bribe to turn TX into a nuke waste dump

by Old RedneckFollow

Here's the short version:  Over at her blog, Malia Litman lays out the details of:

-- how Rick Perry allowed a nuclear waste dump to be set up in West Texas near the New Mexico border; and,

-- how the guy whose company will operate the dump donated around $1,000,000 to Perry's campaigns; and,

-- how the corporation running the waste dump has NO LIABILITY if anything goes wrong; and,

-- how things already are going wrong.

Read the full story here, highlights below the fold.

This needs to go viral.

Here are quotes -- lots of quotes -- from Malia Litman's blog piece on Perry's nuke waste dump.

Since Rick Perry announced his decision to run for President, the internet has been filled with multiple examples of corruption and unethical behavior of Mr. Perry. One of the more memorable examples of corruption in the Rick Perry administration is the nuclear waste dump which has been approved by appointees of Perry to the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission.  Here are the undisputed facts:

1. The Commission has approved a landfill south of Austin, and right at the border between Texas and New Mexico,  which will receive nuclear waste from 36 states.
2. Waste Control Specialists LLC is the company who is building the landfill and will receive millions of dollars in revenue from accepting the nuclear waste.
3. Harold Simmons is a billionaire, and the owner of Waste Control Specialists, LLC.

4. An LLC is a limited liability company, which means in the absence of fraud a court will not find the owners of the company liable. Thus, even if the owners and operators of a LLC are negligent, there may be no legal way to hold them accountable for the damage or harm they cause.

5. Harold Simmons has donated over $1,000,000 to Rick Perry’s campaigns.

I skipped over all the good stuff about how Perry packed the Texas state commission that gave the okay to the nuke waste dump -- go to Litman's blog for the whole story.

And now, for the best part:

8. The implications for Texas get even worse. The nuclear disposal site has earned six violations since 2004. Just last year the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a Notice of Violation to Waste Control Specialists for storage of a concrete canister filled with the hottest low-level radioactivity material beyond the 365 days allowed under a waste processing license.   Two years ago environmental commissioners signed off on an agreement for two violations and fined the company about $151,000. The site mismanaged hazardous waste near a rail-car unloading area and personnel failed to get authorization before letting radioactive material – including Plutonium 239 and Radium 226 – be released into the septic system inside a laboratory.

In a routine check at the site near Andrews, close to the New Mexico border, state inspectors also found cracks up to an inch wide on a 10-acre asphalt pad near where the canisters of radioactive material sit.

It seems the only thing the Waste Control Specialists LLC specializes in is increasing its wealth, ensuring the election of Rick Perry, and endangering the people of Texas and New Mexico.

And the Texas miracle continues.

Tags

• Harold Simmons
• nuclear waste dump
• rick perry
• Texas

Harold Simmons Is Dallas' Most Evil Genius

How will the Texas billionaire make his next billion? By burying hazardous waste in West Texas.

By by Laray Polk

D Magazine FEB 2010

The windows of the new Winspear Opera House have a name: the Annette and Harold Simmons Signature Glass Façade. Ascending 60 feet, it was designed to create a seamless flow from the exterior park to the interior lobby. It is ironic that a monument to transparency would be made possible by a $5 million gift from a man like Harold Simmons, who, despite his enormous wealth, has managed to conduct his affairs in relative obscurity.

Simmons, 78, rarely grants interviews. He declined to answer questions for this story. The best intel on him comes from two places: an authorized (and thus sanitized) 2003 biography titled Golden Boy: the Harold Simmons Storyand a very public, very ugly lawsuit brought against him by two of his daughters in 1997.

Simmons was born in rural Golden, Texas, where he grew up in a shack without plumbing or electricity. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UT Austin, where he earned a master’s in economics. In 1961, he bought a drugstore across the street from SMU with $5,000 of his own money and a $95,000 loan. Twelve years later, he owned 100 stores that he sold to the Eckerd chain for $50 million.

After that first big payday, Simmons went on to amass a vast fortune by acquiring and selling a variety of companies, including Amalgamated Sugar, Lockheed Corporation, McDermott International, Muse Air, and many others. Simmons is often called a “corporate raider,” though he bristles at the term. In a video produced in 1990 during his effort to take over Lockheed Corporation, he said, “A corporate raider is destructive. That’s not my record at all. I’m a builder.”

Today, through his holding company, Contran Corporation, Simmons controls a thicket of private and public companies. The largest subsidiary is called Valhi. Based in Dallas, the publicly traded Valhi, about 95 percent of which is owned by Contran, conducts operations in metals (Titanium Metals Corporation), chemicals (NL Industries and Kronos Worldwide), waste management (Waste Control Specialists), and precision ball bearing slides and locking systems (CompX International). In 2008, the revenues of the companies under the Contran umbrella eclipsed $4.3 billion. As an officer of many of the companies, Simmons took home about $10 million. Forbespegs his worth at $3.7 billion. That’s down about $3.2 billion from the previous year, though it still puts him at No. 80 on the magazine’s list of richest Americans.

Simmons has been generous with his wealth. He has given away more than $300 million, including a $20 million endowment at SMU and $50 million to establish a cancer center at UT Southwestern Medical Center. But he has used his money in other ways that have drawn decidedly less favorable press.

His NL Industries has been the subject of continuous litigation. The most recent case involves plaintiffs who managed the company that cleaned up NL Industries’ environmental liabilities. They were also minority shareholders. In 2009, a Dallas County jury found NL Industries liable for not honoring contractual agreements and manipulating stock values. The plaintiffs were awarded $178.7 million in damages.

On a more personal level, before he sold out to Eckerd, Simmons and his second wife put their money in a trust for their daughters (he has four, two of which were born to his first wife). Simmons took the unusual step of naming himself the sole trustee, giving himself broad powers to spend and invest the money as he pleased. His wealth grew in those trusts without much attention until 1991, when the IRS began raising difficult questions. As the New York Timesput it: “Why were his homes, his jet, even the jewelry his wife wore, accounted for as corporate purchases or expenses? How could he say that all his holdings formed one huge tax-exempt trust when he treated them as properties he still owned, managed, and enjoyed?”

The Timesstory arose in 1997, after two of his daughters sued Simmons over the way he was managing their trusts. Simmons had tried to restructure the trusts, a process that forced him to, in effect, file suit against his daughters and their children. His third daughter, Andrea Swanson, had just returned home from the hospital with her first baby, who’d been born three months prematurely. Simmons asked his daughter to drop the court papers into the baby’s crib.

The family squabble brought to light that Simmons had broken campaign donation laws. Swanson told the Timesthat her father gave her $1,000 for each blank political donation form she signed. Simmons said he gave the money not as a quid pro quo but as a way to show affection. In 1993, he was hit with a $19,800 fine for violating contribution limits. Five years later, he settled the lawsuit brought by his two daughters by paying them each $50 million. He no longer talks to them.

Which brings us back to the engine that has driven Simmons to this point. In his Forbeslisting, after mentioning how much money he lost in the last year, it says this: “Planning to make it back with Valhi’s recently approved low-level radioactive waste disposal license.”

Exploring the implications of that one sentence will reveal Harold Simmons’ real genius. In short, it appears that the “King of Superfund Sites,” as he’s known in some circles, has figured out a way to clean up a radioactive mess one of his companies made in Ohio by—according to some experts—creating another radioactive mess in West Texas. The best part: he’s gotten the folks in West Texas to support the plan and the federal government to pay for it.

Simmons has been generous with his wealth. He has given away more than $300 million, including a $20 million endowment at SMU and $50 million to establish a cancer center at UT Southwestern Medical Center. But he has used his money in other ways that have drawn decidedly less favorable press.

Cadillac Heights is a small enclave south of downtown Dallas, situated close to the Trinity River. About 200 small frame houses, most built in the 1940s, are hemmed in on three sides by various metal industries, a meat rendering plant, and a water treatment facility. Pit bulls roam freely on crowned narrow streets that are thinly paved. From street to yard, there are dirt ravines and no concrete curbs and few walkable sidewalks. The neighborhood floods frequently, evidenced by water lines on the bases of homes and debris clinging to fences.

For years, two lead smelters operated in Cadillac Heights, poisoning the people who lived there. One, Dixie Metals, remained in operation until 1990. It’s now a mounded landfill with a chain-link perimeter fence in the middle of a residential area. The other smelter closed in 1978, but remnants of it remain standing. It belonged to a company now controlled by Harold Simmons, NL Industries.

Peter Johnson, longtime community activist, remembers Cadillac Heights’ recent past: “It was a community that was poisoned; the earth had been polluted. And it stunk. Most of those people were sick with cancer and kidney problems. The children had birth defects. They were poor people. The city didn’t pay attention to their problems. Lead was a part of that community for a long time.”

In smelters of the recent past, lead was reclaimed mostly from used vehicle batteries. The lead was melted down in furnaces to arrive at reusable product. The process also produced metallic refuse called slag.  The slag and casing debris from the batteries would often be dumped in landfills both on- and off-site. It was also mixed with soil and used for ground cover in areas close to the smelter. In Cadillac Heights, casing debris was used as pavement for driveways.  

In February 1997, the state of Texas announced it would fund a cleanup of Cadillac Heights with the possibility of suing NL Industries and Dixie Metals to recover costs. The state entered into negotiations with the companies, and by April, both had agreed to pay for the removal and replacement of lead-contaminated soil from the yards of 57 houses. 

But of the neighborhood’s 230 properties, 62 tested for high levels of contamination. The state spent $180,000 to clean up the five properties that the companies claimed did not warrant their attention. The cleanup did not include particulate matter inside homes or contaminated soil in common areas such as alleys and ditches. And what lead remained in Cadillac Heights has no doubt been dispersed by the periodic flooding to which the neighborhood is subjected.

In Lopez, et al. v. The City of Dallas, counsel for the plaintiffs provided ample evidence that the city had continued a policy of discrimination by failing to provide flood protection to Cadillac Heights residents. Despite the significance of the U.S. District Court’s ruling in 2006, the construction of a levee has yet to materialize. According to a city spokesperson, “If funds become available, construction will start in 2012.” The city of Dallas presently buys houses piecemeal from the remaining Cadillac Heights residents, the money coming from the 2006 bond election. Once Cadillac Heights is cleared of people and houses, the property will become home to the Dallas Police Academy.

Community activist Luis Sepulveda knows about lead contamination. He was a driving force in getting the EPA to designate part of West Dallas a Superfund cleanup site. To his mind, the prospect of rebuilding in Cadillac Heights causes concern for future occupants. “I’m not sure they’re [Police Academy] aware of what property that is being bought,” he says. “There is so much buried there. It will contaminate the water eventually. What if they [the officers in training] get sick? What if they have respiratory problems?”

Why would Harold Simmons become involved with an operation like NL Industries? He bought the company in 1986, long after the dangers of lead were known and the lawsuits had begun working their way through the court system. The answer, it seems, is that Simmons doesn’t mind a mess if there’s money to be made.

NL Industries’ history is lengthy and layered. In more than a century of continuous business, NL Industries’ operations have involved magnesium, titanium, and zinc; lead pigment and lead-based paint; lead smelters; lubricants and drilling equipment for oil fields; municipal and industrial waste disposal; the enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons; and the production of projectile weapons using depleted uranium.

NL Industries sloughed off lead operations in 1974, a prescient move that predated the federal ban on lead-containing paint by four years. As litigation against the lead industry largely failed in the recovery of compensation, and titanium dioxide began replacing lead as a paint enhancer, NL Industries landed on its feet. Its subsidiary, Kronos, is currently one of the largest manufacturers of titanium dioxide pigments in the world.

But NL Industries has left a legacy of contaminated sites across the country. According to the company’s annual report from 1994, NL Industries and its subsidiaries, which included Kronos, had “been named as a defendant, potentially responsible party, or both … in approximately 80 governmental and private actions,” with many sites and facilities on the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List or similar state lists. 

While NL Industries’ operations in Cadillac Heights were never designated as a Superfund, another of its operations in Ohio was.

Then one day she got a call from her congressman. He said that three off-site wells had been contaminated, but the Department of Energy was telling everyone they were fine and below dangerous limits.

In early 1985, Lisa Crawford, a full-time working mother, lived directly across the street from an NL Industries operation in Fernald, Ohio, a rural area 15 miles to the northwest of Cincinnati. When she and her husband and 2-year-old son moved into the house six years earlier, they were looking for a quiet country community “away from the blacktop and cement,” as she puts it. The checkered water towers and signage at the facility had given her few reasons to question its operations. A large sign at the entrance of the 1,050-acre site featured an image of a little Dutch boy next to the words “National Lead of Ohio.” Dutch Boy paint was a product line of NL Industries.

Then one day she got a call from her congressman. He said that three off-site wells had been contaminated, but the Department of Energy was telling everyone they were fine and below dangerous limits. A year earlier, in 1984, an accidental uranium release from the NL Industries facility had received media attention. The accident, along with the call from the congressman, led the Crawfords and other residents to worry about the facility they knew relatively little about. 

Beginning in 1951, NL Industries contracted with the Atomic Energy Commission (then its successor, the DOE) to produce high-purity uranium. The facility made uranium products that were fed to other facilities within the nuclear weapons complex.

NL Industries performed similar work in New York. The facility in Colonie operated as a munitions plant beginning in 1958. In 1984, the New York State Supreme Court closed the facility because of excessive airborne releases of radioactive material. Cleaning up the site took two decades and cost $190 million.

In Fernald, Ohio, the story unfolded in a similar fashion. In 1985, after the accidental uranium release and the contaminated wells, NL Industries’ contract to operate the facility was canceled, and the facility was thrust into a struggle between the EPA and DOE over which agency had authority over operations. The EPA wanted an immediate cleanup of the site; the DOE, however, wanted the facility to remain operational. In 1986, the year Harold Simmons bought NL Industries, a congressional amendment to law required DOE to remediate the Fernald site under a Federal Facilities Compliance Agreement with the EPA. Cleanup didn’t start  until 1991, and remediation wasn’t declared complete until 2006—at a total cost of $4.4 billion dollars.

NL Industries’ facilities at both Fernald and Colonie were provided substantial protection by having contracted with the DOE. In 1989, the DOE agreed to pay $78 million to settle claims with the residents who lived near the Fernald facility; the jury had recommended $136 million. The settlement is viewed as significant on two counts: first, it was an admission by the government that a weapons production facility may have harmed nearby residents. Second, the suit had been brought against the contractor, but the government paid, absolving NL Industries of liability.

Crawford, one of the plaintiffs in the case, had initiated contact with the Ohio EPA and Ohio Department of Health soon after the phone call from her congressman. Both agencies provided testing but gave her conflicting advice about whether she should drink from her well. Crawford immediately knew what to do.

“We stopped drinking the water then and there,” she says. But her worries went beyond what she drank. “Every time you have to put your child in a bathtub full of water, you wonder,” she says. “And every time you wash a load of clothes, you wonder. And every time you do a load of dishes in the kitchen sink, you wonder.”

Further testing at Fernald would prove that wells in proximity to the NL Industries facility were not the only water sources in Ohio subject to uranium contamination. In 2008, the DOE settled a lawsuit with the Ohio EPA for $13.75 million for radioactive contamination of groundwater, including the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer. Ohio officials estimate that radioactive contamination of the groundwater may persist for 100 years.

Fernald, Cadillac Heights, Colonie—NL Industries has, over the years, created quite a mess. As noted, much of that mess was made before Harold Simmons bought the company. But he clearly learned from its history.

In 1995, he bought a company called Waste Control Specialists (WCS), a hazardous waste disposal company. It is now on the lucrative end of Superfund cleanups. In 2009, for instance, WCS buried 390,000 tons of sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, dredged from the Hudson River in Upstate New York. The waste is a result of General Electric Company’s 30-year discharge of PCBs into the water system.

Also last year, WCS buried 3,776 canisters of uranium byproduct waste generated by the NL Industries facility across the street from Lisa Crawford’s house in Fernald, Ohio.

One Simmons company made the waste. The other buries it. And it all comes to West Texas.

Ohio officials estimate that radioactive contamination of the groundwater may persist for 100 years.

Andrews County, in West Texas, is mostly flat and thoroughly punctured withoil and gas wells.For many people, the land offers a hardscrabble life broken into two rotating shifts, crews of six to eight men in F-350 duallys headed out to oil fields or coming back from them. They drive fast, as if by echolocation. Between shifts, the roughnecks spend their time in the cafes of the city of Andrews and at impromptu barbecues and card games held on sidewalks, outside doorways of dusty motels. 

Waste Control Specialists is located 31 miles west of Andrews, on the Texas-New Mexico border. The facility sits on a 1,338-acre site, where it is licensed to service a wide variety of projects, from toxic and hazardous waste resulting from Superfund sites to various classes of radioactive waste from DOE cleanups. 

How Simmons was able to obtain licenses from the state of Texas to dispose of nearly the full gamut of radioactive waste is more a story of politics and money than one of sound science. Critics have pointed out that the nation’s largest aquifer underlies the site and is in an earthquake hazard zone. As Simmons told the Dallas Business Journalin a rare interview in 2006: “It took us six years to get legislation on this passed in Austin, but now we’ve got it all passed. We first had to change the law to where a private company can own a license [to handle radioactive waste], and we did that. Then we got another law passed that said they can only issue one license. Of course, we were the only ones that applied.” 

Legislative changes and licensing have been one half of the equation. The other half has been the company’s successful assimilation into the region with little skepticism from residents and local media. Andrews County has one major population center of approximately 10,000 residents, the city of Andrews, and no interstate. WCS promises 60 permanent positions after the construction phase and a facility whose “operating costs will boost the region’s economic activity by about $75 million a year.” 

Reports in local media have misled residents about the nature of the waste being disposed of. In October 2009, WCS sponsored a tour of its facilities exclusively for local media outlets. At the time, the disposal of the canisters from Fernald was almost complete. Reports of the tour described the canisters from the Fernald site as a product of the WWII war effort. The Odessa Americanreported that the waste is a “byproduct from ore … used in the Manhattan Project during World War II.” And the Fort Stockton Pioneersaid, “According to WCS, the Fernald Project is the disposal of 3,776 canisters—20,000 pounds each—containing uranium production waste from the World War II Manhattan Project.” 

But that’s not true. Jane Powell, DOE Legacy Management site manager of the Fernald Preserve, says, “The waste in the canisters was not produced as a part of the Manhattan Project; the [NL Industries Fernald facility] did not begin operating until 1951. The content of the canisters is the result of Belgian Congo ore that was processed on-site. The ore was very high in radium and radon gas.” The ore Powell refers to primarily came from one mine, located in what is now known as the Republic of Congo. Ore from the region has an unusually high concentration of uranium: 35 to 60 percent, compared to about 1 percent or less found in most American-mined ore.

So for whatever reason, the local press around Andrews has reported inaccuracies about material WCS is actually burying. The sort of work NL Industries did in Fernald produced highly radioactive residues, also known as decay-chain products or radionuclides.

Two events facilitated WCS’ ability to dispose of waste from Fernald. First, in 2004, Congress reclassified those residues as “byproduct material.” The legislative downgrade of the highly radioactive waste made it possible for a private entity with the proper licensing to dispose of it, an activity formerly off limits to sites not overseen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And then, in 2008, WCS received its byproduct material disposal license from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

A year later, the TCEQ issued WCS yet another license, this one for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW). The license allows WCS to “receive, possess, use, store, dispose, and transfer” three classes of LLRW. Materials covered by this new license include radioactive waste from research, industrial, and medical facilities; fission products from nuclear reactors; and nuclear weapons-related waste generated by federal facilities. The license stops short of the “hottest” waste, such as spent reactor fuel. 

Since the beginning of Waste Control Specialists’ bid to obtain licensing for the disposal of radioactive waste, the central question has been whether the site sits atop an enormous water deposit like the one in Ohio that NL Industries polluted. Some experts have suggested that the hydrogeology of the Andrews site is sufficiently complex to halt development for further study. Others have recommended that the site is “irredeemably unsuitable” for the disposal of radioactive waste.

In 1999, the University of Texas’ Bureau of Economic Geology produced a report that reviewed hydrogeological data in Andrews County. It was prepared by Dr. Alan Dutton, who unambiguously called for further study: “Most of Andrews County is underlain by the High Plains Aquifer [Ogallala]… and the presence of this aquifer should be expected to pose a great deal of questions from regulators and the public for licensing a low-level radioactive waste repository. … WCS consultants indicate that saturated groundwater conditions do not occur at the WCS site. Additional scientific data would be needed to confirm or refute this conclusion and address site-suitability requirements for licensing.”

The controversy surrounding the presence or absence of the Ogallala Aquifer at the WCS site is ongoing because there is no means for establishing consensus between state and federal agencies that deal with mapping. So far, the TCEQ and WCS have been able to dominate the discussion on the boundaries of the Ogallala and other hydrogeological features of the site.

In 2009, Lubbock’s NewsChannel 11 interviewed David Barry, EPA spokesperson for Region 6. When asked about the boundaries, he replied, “Yes, the facility [WCS]does sit above the Ogallala Aquifer. It sits on the southern end of the aquifer.” But strangely, in a phone interview a few months later with D Magazine, Barry seemed to reverse his opinion, saying, “It is the agency’s position that the WCS site is not above the aquifer. A portion of the site sits on top of the Ogallala Formation, a non-water-bearing part of the Ogallala.” 

WCS’ position statement on the aquifer (posted at savetheogallalaaquifertruths.com) claims: “In the last 18 years, WCS … [has] spent tens of millions of dollars to verify the subsurface properties of western Andrews County and, as a result, have further delineated the boundaries of the Ogallala Aquifer. As a result of the data developed from these efforts, the Texas Water Development Board [TWDB] remapped the Ogallala Aquifer in late 2006 to definitively show that the boundary does not extend to WCS’ property. The current State of Texas aquifer maps show a more accurate depiction of the proper location of the aquifer.”

In other words, WCS says its data convinced the TWDB to redraw the boundaries of the Ogallala. But the TWDB denies that it used WCS’ data. “The TWDB technical staff initiated the change,” says Leslie Anderson, the board’s spokesperson. “The impetus for the change was work on a groundwater model that included the Pecos Valley Aquifer. Our revisions were not based on WCS’ data. The change was based on our modeling work, past TWDB boundaries, and the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] boundary.” Anderson adds that the changes reflect “the boundary between two aquifers. When we changed the boundary for the Pecos Valley Aquifer, it also affected the boundary for the Ogallala Aquifer.”

So it’s not the Ogallala that underlies the WCS site; it’s the Pecos Valley Aquifer. The revised hydrology maps, in fact, show this.

When D Magazineasked WCS about the presence of the Pecos Valley Aquifer under its site, spokesperson Chuck McDonald first replied, “I don’t understand the question. There is no aquifer beneath the site.” He then offered to review the maps and call back. Later, McDonald explained: “The area where WCS is located is part of the Pecos Valley system. However, that does not mean that there is potable water at the site. The nearest water underneath the site is a brine formation, the Dockum, and it’s separated by 500 feet of red-bed clay.” McDonald added, “Those regions designated [on TWDB maps] as aquifers doesn’t mean they have water underneath. … If you drill a hole [at WCS], there is no water there.” 

McDonald was then asked if the Dockum, a minor aquifer, is hydraulically connected to other aquifers. He responded, “I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. … Keep in mind, the site has been one of the most characterized sites there has been. A great deal is known. That is why we are where we are.”

Andrews County, according to the TWDB revised maps, is underlain by four aquifers. In addition to the Dockum, there are three major aquifers: Ogallala (or High Plains), Pecos Valley (or Cenozoic Pecos Alluvium), and Edwards-Trinity Plateau. The TWDB and USGS websites both state that the Edwards-Trinity Plateau Aquifer is hydraulically connected to four major aquifers, including the Ogallala, and several minor aquifers, including the Dockum.

To recap: first the boundary dispute involved one aquifer under the site. Then the revised maps showed it was another aquifer. Then WCS said no, it was actually a third, and it was briney. But both the state board in charge of aquifers and the USGS say there is interchange among the aquifers. If there is hydraulic communication between aquifers in Andrews County, then disputes over the boundaries of the Ogallala Aquifer at the WCS site are beside the point. 

WCS spokesman McDonald disagrees. He says the matter has been settled. “The TCEQ oversight has been intense. Every step of the program has been well documented and thorough. It has been extremely closely scrutinized for years and years,” he says. “We must accept that the state has done its job.”

But there are questions, too, about how the state did that job.

To obtain final approval for both licenses, WCS endured a five-year review process. A TCEQ team comprising scientists, engineers, and a technical writer reviewed permit applications. Many times, the team required WCS to produce more data or resolve inconsistencies in previous answers. 

But then as now, the final decision to grant a license rests with three TCEQ commissioners who are appointed by the governor.And Simmons has been a major campaign contributor to Governor Rick Perry. Registered donations put the amount at $620,000. (It should be noted that Simmons gives generously to many Republican causes and candidates. In the 2004 election cycle, he gave $3 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which helped defeat John Kerry by calling into question his service record in Vietnam.) During WCS’ application process,three members of the eight-member review team quit: engineer Encarnación “Chon” Serna Jr., geologist Patricia Bobeck, and technical writer and team spokesperson Glenn Lewis.

Lewis, the only one of the three who would speak on record, says professional advisories regarding the unsuitability of the site were ignored by upper management in the rush to grant licenses. The team’s concerns largely centered on the proximity of the WCS site to two aquifers and the high possibility of radioactive waste leaking into groundwater. “Issues about the unsuitability of the site were never limited to concern about the Ogallala,” Lewis says. “They were first and foremost about any groundwater present at the site. Any groundwater at the site is unacceptable. Water to a radionuclide is like the Autobahn. It’s a very fast path.” 

In 2008, the TCEQ commissioners voted 2 to 1 to grant WCS a byproducts materials license. Commissioners Buddy Garcia and Bryan Shaw voted in favor, and Larry Soward voted against. Soward said at the time that a hearing should be allowed to fully air arguments regarding the safety of the site. In 2009, the commissioners voted 2 to 0 on the LLRW license, expanding WCS’ customer base. Commissioners Garcia and Shaw voted to approve the license. Soward abstained. Less than a year later, Soward stepped down from his post.

TCEQ executive director Glenn Shankle, who served as the liaison between the review team and the commissioners, left his position shortly after the issuance of the byproduct material license in May 2008. Records obtained by theTexas Observerreveal that Shankle had several meetings with WCS officials, attorneys, and lobbyists during his tenure. He was visited at his office at least once by Kent Hance, a WCS investor and chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. Six months after leaving TCEQ, Shankle became a lobbyist for WCS.

If things go as planned, Simmons’ nuclear waste dump in West Texas will exist on a scale that is hard to imagine.

There is one more element of Harold Simmons’ business plan, a flourish that shows his real genius: he might actually get the citizens of Andrews County to loan him money to develop his waste disposal site. In a May 2009 bond election, Waste Control Specialists won the right to borrow $75 million from the county. The election was decided by just three votes (642 for, 639 against). The argument made by WCS was that credit markets had dried up, and the money was needed to keep construction on pace. With the county getting 5 percent of WCS’ revenue (and the state another 5 percent), WCS estimates that the county this year will receive $3 million to $4 million. The bonds are in limbo right now only because two sisters, Melodye and Peggy Pryor, have filed suit in El Paso contesting the election.

Finally, it appears Harold Simmons may benefit from a bit of good luck. Despite giving $2.8 million to the American Issues Project in the 2008 election cycle to fund attack ads linking Barack Obama to William Ayers and the Weather Underground, Simmons will likely benefit from Obama’s initiatives. To date, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has allocated the largest direct federal contracts to the DOE. The DOE will use $6 billion in federal stimulus money to clean up sites within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Radioactive materials retrieved from those cleanups will need off-site locations with the proper licensing for permanent disposal.

If things go as planned, Simmons’ nuclear waste dump in West Texas will exist on a scale that is hard to imagine. Waste Control Specialists is currently licensed by the state of Texas to accept up to 57 million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste from federal sources. Waste Control Specialists has the space to expand its facility to more than 20 square miles.  

Research support for this story was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

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How will the Texas billionaire make his next billion? By burying hazardous waste in West Texas.

By by Laray Polk

D Magazine FEB 2010

The windows of the new Winspear Opera House have a name: the Annette and Harold Simmons Signature Glass Façade. Ascending 60 feet, it was designed to create a seamless flow from the exterior park to the interior lobby. It is ironic that a monument to transparency would be made possible by a $5 million gift from a man like Harold Simmons, who, despite his enormous wealth, has managed to conduct his affairs in relative obscurity.

Simmons, 78, rarely grants interviews. He declined to answer questions for this story. The best intel on him comes from two places: an authorized (and thus sanitized) 2003 biography titled Golden Boy: the Harold Simmons Storyand a very public, very ugly lawsuit brought against him by two of his daughters in 1997.

Simmons was born in rural Golden, Texas, where he grew up in a shack without plumbing or electricity. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UT Austin, where he earned a master’s in economics. In 1961, he bought a drugstore across the street from SMU with $5,000 of his own money and a $95,000 loan. Twelve years later, he owned 100 stores that he sold to the Eckerd chain for $50 million.

After that first big payday, Simmons went on to amass a vast fortune by acquiring and selling a variety of companies, including Amalgamated Sugar, Lockheed Corporation, McDermott International, Muse Air, and many others. Simmons is often called a “corporate raider,” though he bristles at the term. In a video produced in 1990 during his effort to take over Lockheed Corporation, he said, “A corporate raider is destructive. That’s not my record at all. I’m a builder.”

Today, through his holding company, Contran Corporation, Simmons controls a thicket of private and public companies. The largest subsidiary is called Valhi. Based in Dallas, the publicly traded Valhi, about 95 percent of which is owned by Contran, conducts operations in metals (Titanium Metals Corporation), chemicals (NL Industries and Kronos Worldwide), waste management (Waste Control Specialists), and precision ball bearing slides and locking systems (CompX International). In 2008, the revenues of the companies under the Contran umbrella eclipsed $4.3 billion. As an officer of many of the companies, Simmons took home about $10 million. Forbespegs his worth at $3.7 billion. That’s down about $3.2 billion from the previous year, though it still puts him at No. 80 on the magazine’s list of richest Americans.

Simmons has been generous with his wealth. He has given away more than $300 million, including a $20 million endowment at SMU and $50 million to establish a cancer center at UT Southwestern Medical Center. But he has used his money in other ways that have drawn decidedly less favorable press.

His NL Industries has been the subject of continuous litigation. The most recent case involves plaintiffs who managed the company that cleaned up NL Industries’ environmental liabilities. They were also minority shareholders. In 2009, a Dallas County jury found NL Industries liable for not honoring contractual agreements and manipulating stock values. The plaintiffs were awarded $178.7 million in damages.

On a more personal level, before he sold out to Eckerd, Simmons and his second wife put their money in a trust for their daughters (he has four, two of which were born to his first wife). Simmons took the unusual step of naming himself the sole trustee, giving himself broad powers to spend and invest the money as he pleased. His wealth grew in those trusts without much attention until 1991, when the IRS began raising difficult questions. As the New York Timesput it: “Why were his homes, his jet, even the jewelry his wife wore, accounted for as corporate purchases or expenses? How could he say that all his holdings formed one huge tax-exempt trust when he treated them as properties he still owned, managed, and enjoyed?”

The Timesstory arose in 1997, after two of his daughters sued Simmons over the way he was managing their trusts. Simmons had tried to restructure the trusts, a process that forced him to, in effect, file suit against his daughters and their children. His third daughter, Andrea Swanson, had just returned home from the hospital with her first baby, who’d been born three months prematurely. Simmons asked his daughter to drop the court papers into the baby’s crib.

The family squabble brought to light that Simmons had broken campaign donation laws. Swanson told the Timesthat her father gave her $1,000 for each blank political donation form she signed. Simmons said he gave the money not as a quid pro quo but as a way to show affection. In 1993, he was hit with a $19,800 fine for violating contribution limits. Five years later, he settled the lawsuit brought by his two daughters by paying them each $50 million. He no longer talks to them.

Which brings us back to the engine that has driven Simmons to this point. In his Forbeslisting, after mentioning how much money he lost in the last year, it says this: “Planning to make it back with Valhi’s recently approved low-level radioactive waste disposal license.”

Exploring the implications of that one sentence will reveal Harold Simmons’ real genius. In short, it appears that the “King of Superfund Sites,” as he’s known in some circles, has figured out a way to clean up a radioactive mess one of his companies made in Ohio by—according to some experts—creating another radioactive mess in West Texas. The best part: he’s gotten the folks in West Texas to support the plan and the federal government to pay for it.

Simmons has been generous with his wealth. He has given away more than $300 million, including a $20 million endowment at SMU and $50 million to establish a cancer center at UT Southwestern Medical Center. But he has used his money in other ways that have drawn decidedly less favorable press.

Cadillac Heights is a small enclave south of downtown Dallas, situated close to the Trinity River. About 200 small frame houses, most built in the 1940s, are hemmed in on three sides by various metal industries, a meat rendering plant, and a water treatment facility. Pit bulls roam freely on crowned narrow streets that are thinly paved. From street to yard, there are dirt ravines and no concrete curbs and few walkable sidewalks. The neighborhood floods frequently, evidenced by water lines on the bases of homes and debris clinging to fences.

For years, two lead smelters operated in Cadillac Heights, poisoning the people who lived there. One, Dixie Metals, remained in operation until 1990. It’s now a mounded landfill with a chain-link perimeter fence in the middle of a residential area. The other smelter closed in 1978, but remnants of it remain standing. It belonged to a company now controlled by Harold Simmons, NL Industries.

Peter Johnson, longtime community activist, remembers Cadillac Heights’ recent past: “It was a community that was poisoned; the earth had been polluted. And it stunk. Most of those people were sick with cancer and kidney problems. The children had birth defects. They were poor people. The city didn’t pay attention to their problems. Lead was a part of that community for a long time.”

In smelters of the recent past, lead was reclaimed mostly from used vehicle batteries. The lead was melted down in furnaces to arrive at reusable product. The process also produced metallic refuse called slag.  The slag and casing debris from the batteries would often be dumped in landfills both on- and off-site. It was also mixed with soil and used for ground cover in areas close to the smelter. In Cadillac Heights, casing debris was used as pavement for driveways.  

In February 1997, the state of Texas announced it would fund a cleanup of Cadillac Heights with the possibility of suing NL Industries and Dixie Metals to recover costs. The state entered into negotiations with the companies, and by April, both had agreed to pay for the removal and replacement of lead-contaminated soil from the yards of 57 houses. 

But of the neighborhood’s 230 properties, 62 tested for high levels of contamination. The state spent $180,000 to clean up the five properties that the companies claimed did not warrant their attention. The cleanup did not include particulate matter inside homes or contaminated soil in common areas such as alleys and ditches. And what lead remained in Cadillac Heights has no doubt been dispersed by the periodic flooding to which the neighborhood is subjected.

In Lopez, et al. v. The City of Dallas, counsel for the plaintiffs provided ample evidence that the city had continued a policy of discrimination by failing to provide flood protection to Cadillac Heights residents. Despite the significance of the U.S. District Court’s ruling in 2006, the construction of a levee has yet to materialize. According to a city spokesperson, “If funds become available, construction will start in 2012.” The city of Dallas presently buys houses piecemeal from the remaining Cadillac Heights residents, the money coming from the 2006 bond election. Once Cadillac Heights is cleared of people and houses, the property will become home to the Dallas Police Academy.

Community activist Luis Sepulveda knows about lead contamination. He was a driving force in getting the EPA to designate part of West Dallas a Superfund cleanup site. To his mind, the prospect of rebuilding in Cadillac Heights causes concern for future occupants. “I’m not sure they’re [Police Academy] aware of what property that is being bought,” he says. “There is so much buried there. It will contaminate the water eventually. What if they [the officers in training] get sick? What if they have respiratory problems?”

Why would Harold Simmons become involved with an operation like NL Industries? He bought the company in 1986, long after the dangers of lead were known and the lawsuits had begun working their way through the court system. The answer, it seems, is that Simmons doesn’t mind a mess if there’s money to be made.

NL Industries’ history is lengthy and layered. In more than a century of continuous business, NL Industries’ operations have involved magnesium, titanium, and zinc; lead pigment and lead-based paint; lead smelters; lubricants and drilling equipment for oil fields; municipal and industrial waste disposal; the enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons; and the production of projectile weapons using depleted uranium.

NL Industries sloughed off lead operations in 1974, a prescient move that predated the federal ban on lead-containing paint by four years. As litigation against the lead industry largely failed in the recovery of compensation, and titanium dioxide began replacing lead as a paint enhancer, NL Industries landed on its feet. Its subsidiary, Kronos, is currently one of the largest manufacturers of titanium dioxide pigments in the world.

But NL Industries has left a legacy of contaminated sites across the country. According to the company’s annual report from 1994, NL Industries and its subsidiaries, which included Kronos, had “been named as a defendant, potentially responsible party, or both … in approximately 80 governmental and private actions,” with many sites and facilities on the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List or similar state lists. 

While NL Industries’ operations in Cadillac Heights were never designated as a Superfund, another of its operations in Ohio was.

Then one day she got a call from her congressman. He said that three off-site wells had been contaminated, but the Department of Energy was telling everyone they were fine and below dangerous limits.

In early 1985, Lisa Crawford, a full-time working mother, lived directly across the street from an NL Industries operation in Fernald, Ohio, a rural area 15 miles to the northwest of Cincinnati. When she and her husband and 2-year-old son moved into the house six years earlier, they were looking for a quiet country community “away from the blacktop and cement,” as she puts it. The checkered water towers and signage at the facility had given her few reasons to question its operations. A large sign at the entrance of the 1,050-acre site featured an image of a little Dutch boy next to the words “National Lead of Ohio.” Dutch Boy paint was a product line of NL Industries.

Then one day she got a call from her congressman. He said that three off-site wells had been contaminated, but the Department of Energy was telling everyone they were fine and below dangerous limits. A year earlier, in 1984, an accidental uranium release from the NL Industries facility had received media attention. The accident, along with the call from the congressman, led the Crawfords and other residents to worry about the facility they knew relatively little about. 

Beginning in 1951, NL Industries contracted with the Atomic Energy Commission (then its successor, the DOE) to produce high-purity uranium. The facility made uranium products that were fed to other facilities within the nuclear weapons complex.

NL Industries performed similar work in New York. The facility in Colonie operated as a munitions plant beginning in 1958. In 1984, the New York State Supreme Court closed the facility because of excessive airborne releases of radioactive material. Cleaning up the site took two decades and cost $190 million.

In Fernald, Ohio, the story unfolded in a similar fashion. In 1985, after the accidental uranium release and the contaminated wells, NL Industries’ contract to operate the facility was canceled, and the facility was thrust into a struggle between the EPA and DOE over which agency had authority over operations. The EPA wanted an immediate cleanup of the site; the DOE, however, wanted the facility to remain operational. In 1986, the year Harold Simmons bought NL Industries, a congressional amendment to law required DOE to remediate the Fernald site under a Federal Facilities Compliance Agreement with the EPA. Cleanup didn’t start  until 1991, and remediation wasn’t declared complete until 2006—at a total cost of $4.4 billion dollars.

NL Industries’ facilities at both Fernald and Colonie were provided substantial protection by having contracted with the DOE. In 1989, the DOE agreed to pay $78 million to settle claims with the residents who lived near the Fernald facility; the jury had recommended $136 million. The settlement is viewed as significant on two counts: first, it was an admission by the government that a weapons production facility may have harmed nearby residents. Second, the suit had been brought against the contractor, but the government paid, absolving NL Industries of liability.

Crawford, one of the plaintiffs in the case, had initiated contact with the Ohio EPA and Ohio Department of Health soon after the phone call from her congressman. Both agencies provided testing but gave her conflicting advice about whether she should drink from her well. Crawford immediately knew what to do.

“We stopped drinking the water then and there,” she says. But her worries went beyond what she drank. “Every time you have to put your child in a bathtub full of water, you wonder,” she says. “And every time you wash a load of clothes, you wonder. And every time you do a load of dishes in the kitchen sink, you wonder.”

Further testing at Fernald would prove that wells in proximity to the NL Industries facility were not the only water sources in Ohio subject to uranium contamination. In 2008, the DOE settled a lawsuit with the Ohio EPA for $13.75 million for radioactive contamination of groundwater, including the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer. Ohio officials estimate that radioactive contamination of the groundwater may persist for 100 years.

Fernald, Cadillac Heights, Colonie—NL Industries has, over the years, created quite a mess. As noted, much of that mess was made before Harold Simmons bought the company. But he clearly learned from its history.

In 1995, he bought a company called Waste Control Specialists (WCS), a hazardous waste disposal company. It is now on the lucrative end of Superfund cleanups. In 2009, for instance, WCS buried 390,000 tons of sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, dredged from the Hudson River in Upstate New York. The waste is a result of General Electric Company’s 30-year discharge of PCBs into the water system.

Also last year, WCS buried 3,776 canisters of uranium byproduct waste generated by the NL Industries facility across the street from Lisa Crawford’s house in Fernald, Ohio.

One Simmons company made the waste. The other buries it. And it all comes to West Texas.

Ohio officials estimate that radioactive contamination of the groundwater may persist for 100 years.

Andrews County, in West Texas, is mostly flat and thoroughly punctured with oil and gas wells. For many people, the land offers a hardscrabble life broken into two rotating shifts, crews of six to eight men in F-350 duallys headed out to oil fields or coming back from them. They drive fast, as if by echolocation. Between shifts, the roughnecks spend their time in the cafes of the city of Andrews and at impromptu barbecues and card games held on sidewalks, outside doorways of dusty motels. 

Waste Control Specialists is located 31 miles west of Andrews, on the Texas-New Mexico border. The facility sits on a 1,338-acre site, where it is licensed to service a wide variety of projects, from toxic and hazardous waste resulting from Superfund sites to various classes of radioactive waste from DOE cleanups. 

How Simmons was able to obtain licenses from the state of Texas to dispose of nearly the full gamut of radioactive waste is more a story of politics and money than one of sound science. Critics have pointed out that the nation’s largest aquifer underlies the site and is in an earthquake hazard zone. As Simmons told the Dallas Business Journalin a rare interview in 2006: “It took us six years to get legislation on this passed in Austin, but now we’ve got it all passed. We first had to change the law to where a private company can own a license [to handle radioactive waste], and we did that. Then we got another law passed that said they can only issue one license. Of course, we were the only ones that applied.” 

Legislative changes and licensing have been one half of the equation. The other half has been the company’s successful assimilation into the region with little skepticism from residents and local media. Andrews County has one major population center of approximately 10,000 residents, the city of Andrews, and no interstate. WCS promises 60 permanent positions after the construction phase and a facility whose “operating costs will boost the region’s economic activity by about $75 million a year.” 

Reports in local media have misled residents about the nature of the waste being disposed of. In October 2009, WCS sponsored a tour of its facilities exclusively for local media outlets. At the time, the disposal of the canisters from Fernald was almost complete. Reports of the tour described the canisters from the Fernald site as a product of the WWII war effort. The Odessa Americanreported that the waste is a “byproduct from ore … used in the Manhattan Project during World War II.” And the Fort Stockton Pioneersaid, “According to WCS, the Fernald Project is the disposal of 3,776 canisters—20,000 pounds each—containing uranium production waste from the World War II Manhattan Project.” 

But that’s not true. Jane Powell, DOE Legacy Management site manager of the Fernald Preserve, says, “The waste in the canisters was not produced as a part of the Manhattan Project; the [NL Industries Fernald facility] did not begin operating until 1951. The content of the canisters is the result of Belgian Congo ore that was processed on-site. The ore was very high in radium and radon gas.” The ore Powell refers to primarily came from one mine, located in what is now known as the Republic of Congo. Ore from the region has an unusually high concentration of uranium: 35 to 60 percent, compared to about 1 percent or less found in most American-mined ore.

So for whatever reason, the local press around Andrews has reported inaccuracies about material WCS is actually burying. The sort of work NL Industries did in Fernald produced highly radioactive residues, also known as decay-chain products or radionuclides.

Two events facilitated WCS’ ability to dispose of waste from Fernald. First, in 2004, Congress reclassified those residues as “byproduct material.” The legislative downgrade of the highly radioactive waste made it possible for a private entity with the proper licensing to dispose of it, an activity formerly off limits to sites not overseen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And then, in 2008, WCS received its byproduct material disposal license from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

A year later, the TCEQ issued WCS yet another license, this one for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW). The license allows WCS to “receive, possess, use, store, dispose, and transfer” three classes of LLRW. Materials covered by this new license include radioactive waste from research, industrial, and medical facilities; fission products from nuclear reactors; and nuclear weapons-related waste generated by federal facilities. The license stops short of the “hottest” waste, such as spent reactor fuel. 

Since the beginning of Waste Control Specialists’ bid to obtain licensing for the disposal of radioactive waste, the central question has been whether the site sits atop an enormous water deposit like the one in Ohio that NL Industries polluted. Some experts have suggested that the hydrogeology of the Andrews site is sufficiently complex to halt development for further study. Others have recommended that the site is “irredeemably unsuitable” for the disposal of radioactive waste.

In 1999, the University of Texas’ Bureau of Economic Geology produced a report that reviewed hydrogeological data in Andrews County. It was prepared by Dr. Alan Dutton, who unambiguously called for further study: “Most of Andrews County is underlain by the High Plains Aquifer [Ogallala] … and the presence of this aquifer should be expected to pose a great deal of questions from regulators and the public for licensing a low-level radioactive waste repository. … WCS consultants indicate that saturated groundwater conditions do not occur at the WCS site. Additional scientific data would be needed to confirm or refute this conclusion and address site-suitability requirements for licensing.”

The controversy surrounding the presence or absence of the Ogallala Aquifer at the WCS site is ongoing because there is no means for establishing consensus between state and federal agencies that deal with mapping. So far, the TCEQ and WCS have been able to dominate the discussion on the boundaries of the Ogallala and other hydrogeological features of the site.

In 2009, Lubbock’s NewsChannel 11 interviewed David Barry, EPA spokesperson for Region 6. When asked about the boundaries, he replied, “Yes, the facility [WCS] does sit above the Ogallala Aquifer. It sits on the southern end of the aquifer.” But strangely, in a phone interview a few months later with D Magazine, Barry seemed to reverse his opinion, saying, “It is the agency’s position that the WCS site is not above the aquifer. A portion of the site sits on top of the Ogallala Formation, a non-water-bearing part of the Ogallala.” 

WCS’ position statement on the aquifer (posted at savetheogallalaaquifertruths.com) claims: “In the last 18 years, WCS … [has] spent tens of millions of dollars to verify the subsurface properties of western Andrews County and, as a result, have further delineated the boundaries of the Ogallala Aquifer. As a result of the data developed from these efforts, the Texas Water Development Board [TWDB] remapped the Ogallala Aquifer in late 2006 to definitively show that the boundary does not extend to WCS’ property. The current State of Texas aquifer maps show a more accurate depiction of the proper location of the aquifer.”

In other words, WCS says its data convinced the TWDB to redraw the boundaries of the Ogallala. But the TWDB denies that it used WCS’ data. “The TWDB technical staff initiated the change,” says Leslie Anderson, the board’s spokesperson. “The impetus for the change was work on a groundwater model that included the Pecos Valley Aquifer. Our revisions were not based on WCS’ data. The change was based on our modeling work, past TWDB boundaries, and the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] boundary.” Anderson adds that the changes reflect “the boundary between two aquifers. When we changed the boundary for the Pecos Valley Aquifer, it also affected the boundary for the Ogallala Aquifer.”

So it’s not the Ogallala that underlies the WCS site; it’s the Pecos Valley Aquifer. The revised hydrology maps, in fact, show this.

When D Magazineasked WCS about the presence of the Pecos Valley Aquifer under its site, spokesperson Chuck McDonald first replied, “I don’t understand the question. There is no aquifer beneath the site.” He then offered to review the maps and call back. Later, McDonald explained: “The area where WCS is located is part of the Pecos Valley system. However, that does not mean that there is potable water at the site. The nearest water underneath the site is a brine formation, the Dockum, and it’s separated by 500 feet of red-bed clay.” McDonald added, “Those regions designated [on TWDB maps] as aquifers doesn’t mean they have water underneath. … If you drill a hole [at WCS], there is no water there.” 

McDonald was then asked if the Dockum, a minor aquifer, is hydraulically connected to other aquifers. He responded, “I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. … Keep in mind, the site has been one of the most characterized sites there has been. A great deal is known. That is why we are where we are.”

Andrews County, according to the TWDB revised maps, is underlain by four aquifers. In addition to the Dockum, there are three major aquifers: Ogallala (or High Plains), Pecos Valley (or Cenozoic Pecos Alluvium), and Edwards-Trinity Plateau. The TWDB and USGS websites both state that the Edwards-Trinity Plateau Aquifer is hydraulically connected to four major aquifers, including the Ogallala, and several minor aquifers, including the Dockum.

To recap: first the boundary dispute involved one aquifer under the site. Then the revised maps showed it was another aquifer. Then WCS said no, it was actually a third, and it was briney. But both the state board in charge of aquifers and the USGS say there is interchange among the aquifers. If there is hydraulic communication between aquifers in Andrews County, then disputes over the boundaries of the Ogallala Aquifer at the WCS site are beside the point. 

WCS spokesman McDonald disagrees. He says the matter has been settled. “The TCEQ oversight has been intense. Every step of the program has been well documented and thorough. It has been extremely closely scrutinized for years and years,” he says. “We must accept that the state has done its job.”

But there are questions, too, about how the state did that job.

To obtain final approval for both licenses, WCS endured a five-year review process. A TCEQ team comprising scientists, engineers, and a technical writer reviewed permit applications. Many times, the team required WCS to produce more data or resolve inconsistencies in previous answers. 

But then as now, the final decision to grant a license rests with three TCEQ commissioners who are appointed by the governor. And Simmons has been a major campaign contributor to Governor Rick Perry. Registered donations put the amount at $620,000. (It should be noted that Simmons gives generously to many Republican causes and candidates. In the 2004 election cycle, he gave $3 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which helped defeat John Kerry by calling into question his service record in Vietnam.) During WCS’ application process, three members of the eight-member review team quit: engineer Encarnación “Chon” Serna Jr., geologist Patricia Bobeck, and technical writer and team spokesperson Glenn Lewis.

Lewis, the only one of the three who would speak on record, says professional advisories regarding the unsuitability of the site were ignored by upper management in the rush to grant licenses. The team’s concerns largely centered on the proximity of the WCS site to two aquifers and the high possibility of radioactive waste leaking into groundwater. “Issues about the unsuitability of the site were never limited to concern about the Ogallala,” Lewis says. “They were first and foremost about any groundwater present at the site. Any groundwater at the site is unacceptable. Water to a radionuclide is like the Autobahn. It’s a very fast path.” 

In 2008, the TCEQ commissioners voted 2 to 1 to grant WCS a byproducts materials license. Commissioners Buddy Garcia and Bryan Shaw voted in favor, and Larry Soward voted against. Soward said at the time that a hearing should be allowed to fully air arguments regarding the safety of the site. In 2009, the commissioners voted 2 to 0 on the LLRW license, expanding WCS’ customer base. Commissioners Garcia and Shaw voted to approve the license. Soward abstained. Less than a year later, Soward stepped down from his post.

TCEQ executive director Glenn Shankle, who served as the liaison between the review team and the commissioners, left his position shortly after the issuance of the byproduct material license in May 2008. Records obtained by the Texas Observerreveal that Shankle had several meetings with WCS officials, attorneys, and lobbyists during his tenure. He was visited at his office at least once by Kent Hance, a WCS investor and chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. Six months after leaving TCEQ, Shankle became a lobbyist for WCS.

If things go as planned, Simmons’ nuclear waste dump in West Texas will exist on a scale that is hard to imagine.

There is one more element of Harold Simmons’ business plan, a flourish that shows his real genius: he might actually get the citizens of Andrews County to loan him money to develop his waste disposal site. In a May 2009 bond election, Waste Control Specialists won the right to borrow $75 million from the county. The election was decided by just three votes (642 for, 639 against). The argument made by WCS was that credit markets had dried up, and the money was needed to keep construction on pace. With the county getting 5 percent of WCS’ revenue (and the state another 5 percent), WCS estimates that the county this year will receive $3 million to $4 million. The bonds are in limbo right now only because two sisters, Melodye and Peggy Pryor, have filed suit in El Paso contesting the election.

Finally, it appears Harold Simmons may benefit from a bit of good luck. Despite giving $2.8 million to the American Issues Project in the 2008 election cycle to fund attack ads linking Barack Obama to William Ayers and the Weather Underground, Simmons will likely benefit from Obama’s initiatives. To date, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has allocated the largest direct federal contracts to the DOE. The DOE will use $6 billion in federal stimulus money to clean up sites within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Radioactive materials retrieved from those cleanups will need off-site locations with the proper licensing for permanent disposal.

If things go as planned, Simmons’ nuclear waste dump in West Texas will exist on a scale that is hard to imagine. Waste Control Specialists is currently licensed by the state of Texas to accept up to 57 million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste from federal sources. Waste Control Specialists has the space to expand its facility to more than 20 square miles.  

Research support for this story was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

Find this article at:

http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/D_Magazine/2010/February/Harold_Simmons_Is_Dallas_Most_Evil_Genius.aspx

Even the Mafia was more circumspect’: Glenn Shankle goes from regulator to lobbyist

April 14, 2009

In January, six months after stepping down as the executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Glenn Shankle signed on as a lobbyist for Waste Control Specialists, the company recently licensed by TCEQ to build a massive radioactive waste dump in West Texas. His lobby contract is worth between $100,000 and $150,000, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.

Written byForrest Wilder, The Texas Observer

Glenn Shankle

The revolving door between government and the private sector is a time-worn tradition in Texas. But here’s a case that on its bare facts is particularly egregious.

In January, six months after stepping down as the executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Glenn Shankle signed on as a lobbyist for Waste Control Specialists, the company recently licensed by TCEQ to build a massive radioactive waste dump in West Texas. His lobby contract is worth between $100,000 and $150,000, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.

When Shankle left TCEQ in June 2008, the agency was readying, per Shankle’s orders, two licenses authorizing Waste Control to bury millions of cubic feet of radioactive waste. The four-year license review process had been one of the most time-consuming and contentious in agency history.

Shankle’s own technical staff, geologists and engineers had concluded definitively that the dump could not legally be permitted. An Aug. 14, 2007, memo drafted by two geologists and two engineers bluntly stated that the landfill’s proximity to two aquifers made it “highly likely” that radioactive waste would leak into the groundwater. The site, they wrote, “cannot be improved through special license conditions.” They recommended denying the license. With little explanation, Shankle overruled them. His only sop to the staff were license conditions requiring additional studies before construction.

Amazingly, Shankle said in a brief telephone interview yesterday—one of the few times he has ever spoken to the press—that he had never heard of any of this.

“I was not aware of that,” Shankle said of his own technical staff’s recommendations. If true, that’s stunning. According to the Houston Chronicle:

•     When WCS President Rodney Baltzer learned of the [August 14] memo, he immediately sought out meetings with the agency’s executive director, Glenn Shankle, who decided in December [2007] to begin drafting the license.*

In fact, records from TCEQ, previously discussed in the Observer, show that during the time period after the staff’s recommendation, Shankle was frequently meeting with Waste Control officials, attorneys and lobbyists. Waste Control is owned by Harold Simmons, the Dallas billionaire and major Republican donor who helped bankroll Swift Boat ads attacking John Kerry in 2004 and television ads in 2008 linking Barack Obama to Bill Ayers.

Baltzer left nine messages for Shankle and four for [Deputy Executive Director Dan] Eden between July 2007 and January 2008, according to phone logs that reflect only missed calls. Eden met with Waste Control officials at least five times during that period. Former Republican Congressman Kent Hance, a Waste Control investor and chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, paid a visit to Shankle’s office in early November.

Cliff Johnson, a principal in Textilis Strategies, an Austin-based firm that lobbies for Waste Control, visited with Shankle in September. Shankle also met with Giblin, Baltzer, and Mike Woodward, a Waste Control lobbyist and attorney with Hance’s law firm, during that period.

The outcome of this full-court press was the Shankle-ordered drafting of the coveted disposal licenses, permits that are worth untold millions to the company. In fact, without these licenses Waste Control is a losing venture. Last year, Waste Control lost $21.5 million, according to SEC filings for Valhi, Waste Control’s parent company. In other words, Shankle had done a very big favor for Waste Control.

The move so upset his staff that three of them quit in protest. One of them, Glenn Lewis, who coordinated one of the license review teams, reacted with disgust and anger when told yesterday that Shankle was lobbying for Waste Control.

“Even the Mafia was more circumspect than this,” Lewis said. “To find out now that Mr. Shankle—who was in constant communication with WCS throughout this ordeal—now is on retainer for [WCS] is shocking in that it is so brazen and such an insult to everybody who worked on that application. It just shows that any objective appraisal by the TCEQ was from its inception a fantasy and that big money and a lot of political power won once again. … They should have just issued the license the day after it was received and saved everybody a lot of trouble.”

When it was suggested to Shankle that there was at least the appearance of a quid pro quo, he responded: “The freedom of the press can go so far. You’re making some very serious allegations.” Then he hung up.