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From Wikipedia:
In March 1999, Koch Petroleum Group, a Koch Industries subsidiary,
plead guilty to charges that it had negligently dumped hundreds
of thousands of gallons of aviation fuel into wetlands near
the Mississippi River from its refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota,
and that it had also illegally dumped a million gallons of
high-ammonia wastewater onto the ground and into the Mississippi
River. Koch Petroleum paid the Dakota County Park System a
$6 million fine and $2 million in remediation costs, and was
ordered to serve three years of probation.
In 1999, a federal
jury found that Koch Industries had stolen oil from government
and American Indian lands, had lied about its purchases more
than 24,000 times, and was fined $553,504.
In January 2000,
Koch Industries subsidiary, Koch Pipeline, agreed to a $35
million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the
State of Texas. This settlement, including a $30 million civil
fine, was incurred for the firm's three hundred oil spills
in Texas and five other states going back to 1990. The spills
resulted in more than three million gallons of crude oil leaking
into ponds, lakes, streams and coastal waters.
In 2001, the company
reached two settlements with the government. In April, the
company reached a $20 million settlement in exchange for admitting
to covering up environmental violations at its refinery in
Corpus Christi, Texas. That May, Koch Industries paid $25
million to the federal government to settle a federal lawsuit
that found the company had improperly taken more oil than
it had paid for from federal and Indian land.
In June 2003, the
US Commerce Department fined Koch Industries subsidiary Flint
Hill Resources a $200,000 civil penalty. The fine settled
charges that the company exported crude petroleum from the
US to Canada without proper US government authorization. The
Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said
from July 1997 to March 1999, Koch Petroleum (later called
Flint Hill Resources) committed 40 violations of Export Administration
Regulations.
In 2006, Koch Industries’
subsidiary Flint Hill Resources was fined nearly $16,000 by
the EPA for 10 separate violations of the Clean Air Act at
its Alaska oil refinery facilities, and required to spend
another $60,000 on safety equipment needed to help prevent
future violations.
In 2007, Koch Nitrogen's
plant in Enid, Oklahoma, was listed as the third highest company
releasing toxic chemicals in Oklahoma, according to the EPA,
ranking behind Perma-Fix Environmental Services in Tulsa and
Weyerhaeuser Co. in Valliant.[42] The facility produces about
10% of the US national production of anhydrous ammonia, as
well as urea and UAN.
In 2009, Koch subsidiary
Invista agreed to pay a $1.7 million civil penalty and spend
up to $500 million to correct self-reported environmental
violations at its facilities in seven states. Prior to the
settlement, the company had disclosed to the EPA more than
680 violations after auditing 12 facilities acquired from
DuPont in 2004.
In 2010, Koch Industries
was ranked 10th on the list of top US corporate air polluters,
the “Toxic 100 Air Polluters,” by the Political Economic Research
Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Koch's Sterling
butane pipeline had a leak in Lively, Texas, on August 24,
1996. Two teenagers on the way to report the leak drove into
the unseen butane cloud, and were killed when the gas exploded
and burned. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded
that severe external pipeline corrosion was the cause of the
failure, and recommended to Koch to improve corrosion evaluation
procedures. Although Koch distributed pamphlets about safety
around the pipelines, they failed to maintain an up-to-date
mailing list. Only 5 out of 45 residences in the area of the
accident had received pamphlets. The families of the dead
had not.
Is it any wonder they
scream for "less government"?
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