Polluter Capture
What is Polluter Capture?
Polluter capture is one form of Corporate Capture.
The Center for Constitutional Rights says corporate capture occurs when “private industry uses its political influence to take control of the decision-making apparatus of the state, such as regulatory agencies, law enforcement entities, and legislatures.”
One example of polluter capture is where corporate interests work with lawmakers to write legislation that weakens government oversight and keeps fines low for violations. It bakes polluter bias into state rules and laws. It creates an illusion: Everything is OK because polluters are following the law. The real problem is that state laws lack teeth to deter bad behavior.
Signs of Polluter Capture
Agencies:
Give polluters more access to decision makers than to those concerned about environmental damage
Give polluters too much influence writing environmental impact statements for their projects.
Ignore a polluting company’s poor environmental track record when considering new permits
Fail to provide strong oversight and respond aggressively when polluters violate their permits.
Allow polluters to “externalize” costs, meaning they don’t pay the true costs of all the pollution they create.
Lack fines and other sanctions to deter destructive behavior.
Do not aggressively push more stringent laws, sanctions, and lawsuits to protect the environment.
Give polluters the benefit of the doubt when environmental damage is difficult to assess (instead of erring on the side of caution).
Lack transparency on their permit and enforcement decisions
Impacts on the public:
Excess lung-damaging fine particle air pollution.
Exposure to cancer-causing chemicals.
Water pollution that kills wild rice and fouls drinking water.
Unfunded clean-up costs get shifted onto future generations.
No path to “No”
Minnesota regulators seem to think their primary job is to help companies get their permits approved.
Agencies rarely if ever say “no”. That puts the burden on organizations or Tribal governments to take a state agency to court to reverse an ill-considered permit.
The problem is structural. If a polluter submits a flawed permit application, the agency doesn’t reject it. Instead, the agency is required to identify the application’s shortcomings and give the company a chance to fix it.
This system gives companies a perverse incentive to turn in weak applications. They know they will get a chance to revise their proposals, until they meet the bare minimum environmental standards.