Darth Vader Comes to Raleigh
2010-10-19 - by
There’s a scene in the movie Erin Brockovich where Julia Roberts runs head on into the epitome of an oily corporate lawyer who represents Pacific Gas and Electric.
In real life the lawyer who represented PG&E was Rene Tatro, who’s known as ‘The Darth Vader of the environmental movement.’ Attorney Tatro is now participating in a strange trial in Raleigh.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is the state agency that (in theory) works to defend citizens from corporations like PG&E. But hardly anything in state government works like it’s supposed to and DENR’s an example.
About a year ago DENR gave Alcoa Corporation, the giant aluminum conglomerate, the green light to run four dams by its old smelter in Stanly County for another 50 years. What DENR ignored was, a few months earlier, the Stanly County Commissioners had decided it was past time Alcoa – which had been dumping toxic waste in Badin Lake for eighty years – cleaned up the mess around its smelter.
That, of course, led to a brouhaha and when DENR wouldn’t budge the County Commissioners sued the state saying the folks who were supposed to be protecting the environment were asleep at the switch.
When that happened Alcoa rushed out to Los Angeles and hired Mr. Tatro and sent him to Raleigh – so now, while technically representing Alcoa, for all practical purposes he’s representing DENR, trying the state’s case against Stanly county. Which, of course, is fine with the folks at DENR since like many state bureaucrats they’re happy to have someone else do their work for them.
As a result, today, in a Raleigh we have a trial no one ever dreamed of: Where the ‘Darth Vader of the Environmental Movement’ is representing the state department in charge of protecting the environment.
It could only happen in North Carolina State government.
Darth Vader Comes to Raleigh
2010-10-19/
There’s a scene in the movie Erin Brockovich where Julia Roberts runs head on into the epitome of an oily corporate lawyer who represents Pacific Gas and Electric.
In real life the lawyer who represented PG&E was Rene Tatro, who’s known as ‘The Darth Vader of the environmental movement.’ Attorney Tatro is now participating in a strange trial in Raleigh.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is the state agency that (in theory) works to defend citizens from corporations like PG&E. But hardly anything in state government works like it’s supposed to and DENR’s an example.
About a year ago DENR gave Alcoa Corporation, the giant aluminum conglomerate, the green light to run four dams by its old smelter in Stanly County for another 50 years. What DENR ignored was, a few months earlier, the Stanly County Commissioners had decided it was past time Alcoa – which had been dumping toxic waste in Badin Lake for eighty years – cleaned up the mess around its smelter.
That, of course, led to a brouhaha and when DENR wouldn’t budge the County Commissioners sued the state saying the folks who were supposed to be protecting the environment were asleep at the switch.
When that happened Alcoa rushed out to Los Angeles and hired Mr. Tatro and sent him to Raleigh – so now, while technically representing Alcoa, for all practical purposes he’s representing DENR, trying the state’s case against Stanly county. Which, of course, is fine with the folks at DENR since like many state bureaucrats they’re happy to have someone else do their work for them.
As a result, today, in a Raleigh we have a trial no one ever dreamed of: Where the ‘Darth Vader of the Environmental Movement’ is representing the state department in charge of protecting the environment.
It could only happen in North Carolina State government.