http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Christine_Todd_Whitman
Christine Todd Whitman (Christie) was elected as Governor of New Jersey in November 1993 and was appointed by George W. Bush as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January 2001. She resigned from the EPA on May 21, 2003. Since 2004, she has headed Whitman Strategy Group, a lobbying / consulting firm with offices in New Jersey and Washington DC. [1] Since at least 2006, she has consulted for the Nuclear Energy Institute, promoting nuclear power as the co-chair of the industry-funded "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition." [2] In January 2008, she was named a co-chair of the Aspen Institute's Health Stewardship Project. [1]
Whitman co-founded the Republican Leadership Council, which works to get centrist Republicans elected. Her daugher, Kate Whitman, is the group's executive director. In November 2007, Kate Whitman announced she would seek the Republican nomination for New Jersey's 7th district Congressional seat. [3]
Contents [hide]
1 Lobbying / consulting work
1.1 Nuclear power
1.2 Water policy
1.3 Whitman's "personal legacy"
1.4 Other
2 Background
3 N.J. voter suppression allegations
4 N.J. environmental record
5 Cheney Energy Task Force
6 EPA record
7 Misleading New Yorkers post-9/11
8 Board positions and other affiliations
9 Statements on nuclear power
10 Appearances
11 Articles and resources
11.1 Related SourceWatch articles
11.2 References
11.3 External resources
11.4 External articles
<snip>
The Whitman firm's first client was FMC Corporation, "a chemical company negotiating with the EPA over the cleanup of arsenic-contaminated soil at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y." In a May 2005 interview, Whitman said she had not worked directly with FMC, but would likely advise them on "how to improve their image" and gain "access to the people they need to speak to." FMC "is responsible for 136 Superfund sites across the country ... and has been subject to 47 EPA enforcement actions." [5]
<snip>
In 2006, Whitman was named as the co-chair of and a paid spokesperson for the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear power group funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). [6]
<snip>
In a July 2009 talk in San Antonio, Texas, representing the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, Whitman promoted nuclear power and criticized environmentalists. "It's nice to be against everything, but you have got to be for something at some point," she said, according to the San Antonio Express-News. "If they would just stay quiet, that would be good." Whitman had been invited by the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, as part of their efforts "to persuade the community to support the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project outside Bay City." [3]
<snip>
According to ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten,
the EPA under Whitman's tenure engaged in secret negotiations with industry, while supposedly addressing drinking water issues related to a gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." In 2004, the EPA undertook a study on the issue and "the EPA, despite its scientific judgment that there was a potential risk to groundwater supplies, which their report clearly says, then went ahead and very surprisingly concluded that there was no risk to groundwater," Lustgarten said on Democracy Now! "[P]art of my reporting found that throughout that process the EPA was closer than seemed comfortable with the industry. I filed FOIA requests for some documents and found conversations between Halliburton employees and the EPA researchers, essentially asking for an agreement from Halliburton in exchange for more lax enforcement. The EPA, in these documents, appeared to offer that and agree to that. And it doesn’t appear, by any means, to have been either a thorough or a very objective study." [7]
<snip>
EPA record
Whitman championed "free market environmentalism"; voluntary initiatives promoted by conservative think tanks and industry lobbies as an alternative to regulatory measures. Some of these programs included Climate Leaders, Energy Star, SmartWay Transport, and the new Water Quality Trading Policy and Bush's Clear Skies Initiative.
"Under Administrator Whitman's leadership, the EPA ... also [undertook] aggressive efforts to fulfill its mission by cleaning up the Hudson River, protecting children from environmental health hazards such as asthma and sun exposure, and requiring cleaner burning diesel engines and lower-sulfur diesel fuel to reduce emissions from America's dirtiest mobile sources," her biographical note stated. [16]
Yet,
"EPA documents showed that the number of officially defined smoggy days had increased by 32 percent from 2001 to 2002. The completion of clean-ups at Superfund sites was down by close to half," writes Laura Flanders in "Bushwomen." Eric Schaeffer, the EPA's head of regulatory enforcement under Whitman, resigned under protest. He told Flanders that Whitman is "a Republican first and an environmentalist way down the list."
As Whitman was leaving the EPA, not only was "the Inspector General's report on the clean-up operation after 9/11" soon to be released (see next section), but new information was about to surface on pollution in Anniston, Alabama. According to Laura Flanders' book "Bushwomen":
Court documents revealed that a multi-million-dollar verdict against the chemical company found liable (Monsanto) was changed in Monsanto's favor just days after Whitman received a forty-five-minute "briefing" on the case. On the eve of Whitman's departure from the EPA, a former EPA attorney who had testified in the Anniston case came forward and said that inspectors general at the EPA and the Department of Justice had pressured her not to testify. Janet MacGillibray, formerly a Superfund attorney, said a high-ranking EPA official told her Anniston didn't make a list of national clean-up priorities because Monsanto didn't want it to.
<snip>
Misleading New Yorkers post-9/11
In February 2006, a federal judge found Whitman guilty of making "'misleading statements of safety' about the air quality near the World Trade Center in the days after the Sept. 11 attack." The judge further found that Whitman "may have put the public in danger," according to the New York Times (Julia Preston, "Public Misled on Air Quality After 9/11 Attack, Judge Says," February 3, 2006).
"The allegations in this case of Whitman's reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking," said Judge Deborah A. Batts. As early as September 13, 2001, the EPA put out press releases declaring "no significant levels" of asbestos dust, when agency officials knew there were significant hazardous emissions. Judge Batts' ruling allowed a 2004 class action lawsuit against Whitman and other EPA officials and the entire agency, which was filed on behalf of residents and schoolchildren from downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, to go forward.
Whitman's post-9/11 statements are further called into question by "the appearance of a conflict between Whitman's responsibility to the public and her own family's financial affairs," wrote Laura Flanders in her book "Bushwomen." "As the former Governor of New Jersey, Whitman owned bonds worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in the New York/New Jersey Port Authority -- the owner of the World Trade Center site and the major liable party in the affair. Her husband, John R. Whitman, formerly a Citigroup vice-president, manages hundreds of millions of dollars in the banking giant's assets, and Travelers Insurance, a Citigroup subsidiary, stood to lose multiple millions in Manhattan medical claims." Flanders gives the Whitmans' investment in Citigroup as being "up to $250,000 in stock," adding that "John Whitman received a six-figure bonus from Citigroup as recently as 2000."
In June 2007, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that "federal environmental officials misled Lower Manhattan residents about the extent of contamination in their condominiums and apartments after the collapse of the World Trade Center," the New York Times reported. In particular, "the Environmental Protection Agency did not accurately report the results of a residential cleanup program in 2002 and 2003." [18]
The preliminary GAO report was made public during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. Whitman was scheduled to testify at another Congressional hearing the following week, "about her handling of the disaster and the way she communicated the level of risk to the public." [19]
<snip>
= new reply since forum marked as read
