Hannah Chang of Earth Justice has a must read story on a corporate polluter that is taking advantage of the catastrophe in Puerto Rico to pressure the GOP congress “to amend the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), a law Congress passed to address Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, in ways that would benefit its ailing incinerator project”. The dirty incinerator, which is incredibly referred to as “renewable energy”, has faced fierce opposition on the island for years. The article is a stark reminder of “disaster capitalism” that Naomi Klein has warned us about since 2007 when the Shock Doctrine was published.
Energy Answers, Inc., has been trying unsuccessfully for a decade to construct a solid waste incinerator in Arecibo, Puerto Rico—a venture that Earthjustice has partnered with local communities to defeat. Recently released documents show that the company is seeking to capitalize on post-hurricane recovery efforts by urging the federal government to finance its incinerator despite the company’s failure to obtain necessary local permits and federal approvals.
The proposed incinerator would emit lead and other pollutants in an area already in violation of national air standards for lead. It would introduce waste and toxic ash into a floodplain and suck 2.1 million gallons of water each day from a coastal wetland critical to protecting the island from storm surges. It would also produce dirty energy for an already outdated, carbon-intensive electric grid.
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, Energy Answers had no prospect of financing this terrible idea of a project. As the company itself acknowledged, a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS)—which the company had approached for such assistance—“remains one of the few, if not only, potential sources of debt available to this Project under the current economic conditions.” In May, RUS had notified the company that the agency would not consider any loan to the project, in light of the massive debt Puerto Rico already owed the federal government.
Then, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.
Energy Answers has since been hard at work lobbying members of Congress to include certain provisions in recovery relief bills and to amend the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), a law Congress passed to address Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, in ways that would benefit its ailing incinerator project.
For instance, the company is urging Congress to direct federal money to “critical infrastructure projects” and to waive federal environmental review requirements for such projects.
Naomi Klein, in a January 2017 piece with The Intercept, notes that with Mike Pence in office, disaster capitalism has a friend indeed.
A sampling:
All this is dangerous enough. What’s even worse is the way the Trump administration can be counted on to exploit these shocks politically and economically.
Speculation is unnecessary. All that’s required is a little knowledge of recent history. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” a history of the ways in which crises have been systematically exploited over the last half century to further a radical pro-corporate agenda. The book begins and ends with the response to Hurricane Katrina, because it stands as such a harrowing blueprint for disaster capitalism.
That’s relevant because of the central, if little-recalled role played by the man who is now the U.S. vice president, Mike Pence. At the time Katrina hit New Orleans, Pence was chairman of the powerful and highly ideological Republican Study Committee. On September 13, 2005 — just 14 days after the levees were breached and with parts of New Orleans still underwater — the RSC convened a fateful meeting at the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Under Pence’s leadership, the group came up with a list of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices” — 32 policies in all, each one straight out of the disaster capitalism playbook.
Fox Business lets the cat out of the bag.
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