Perry’s Texas Friends Find Donations Dovetail With Contracts
Perry’s Texas Friends Find Donations Dovetail With Contracts
By Alison Fitzgerald - Aug 30, 2011 9:00 PM PT
Simmons’ expansion into radioactive waste storage began in Texas in 2003, when his company urged state lawmakers to pass legislation allowing a private company to build and run a low- level disposal site that would be owned by the state, according to McDonald. Perry signed it into law on June 20, 2003.
When Texas billionaire Harold Simmons wanted to build a radioactive waste dump, one data point that would loom large in the permitting process wasn’t required on the application: He is a major donor to Governor Rick Perry.
‘Everybody was aware that this was an important item for the people that were seeking the license as well as for the governor’s office,’ said Larry Soward, a Perry-appointed, Republican member of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality at the time of Simmons’s permit application.
Simmons, who has donated more than $1.2 million to Perry’s campaigns, was granted the permit over the objections of some TCEQ staffers concerned the site threatened the Ogallala Aquifer, a water source for much of the plains.