I try not to have an opinion on a story until it’s published, but obviously that’s impossible. Everyone has their beliefs and opinions, and I’m a strong-willed, highly critical person. I can give a coal company like Kinder Morgan (or a power company like Santee Cooper) the benefit of the doubt in a story and the opportunity to present their side, but ultimately, I know that coal is dirty. We use it because it’s cheap. Yet even a “clean coal” plant like the one Santee Cooper is touting (you can read about it in City Paper tomorrow, “Ridin’ Green and Dirty”) is still coal. There’s still mercury being released into the air in a state where every coastal river has dangerously high mercury levels. There’s still CO2 floating off into the atmosphere, while South Carolina prepares to face rising sea levels caused by it. And even with scrubbers to minimize that, there are over 400 mountains that have had their tops blown off in Appalachia, poisoning hundreds of streams up river from us as the toxic coal sludge flows down into valleys. Check out this video on mountain top removal, produced in part by Woody Harrelson. It’ll piss you off.

If we get our coal from somewhere else, like Kinder Morgan does from South America, there’s issues like the coal pile on Shipyard Creek, and the dust that blows onto their neighbors. (By the way, Ken Bonerigo, the citizen who called out KM on YouTube has started a website called Kinder Morgan Watch. Check it out.) The company continues to have issues with pipeline breaks nationwide, and recently was found guilty in a lawsuit (six felony counts) over a break and fire in California that killed five people. They are now a criminal company.

So what’s a fully conscious journalist to do? Do we really owe the 2 percent of “there is no human-induced global warming” scientists an equal say as the vast majority who disagree, just because they’re funded to have a loud public voice by oil companies? Do corporations that are convicted of felonies deserve an equal voice to the hundreds of citizens upset and harmed by their actions? I have a responsibility to look at all sides, present it even if it makes someone look bad, and let the reader decide. A supposed Kinder Morgan rep left this comment on a follow-up story on our site.

ET1016, North Charleston 9/ 6/2007 - 5:15pm

While we appreciate the effort to inform the general public on matters concerning the environment and public issues, we would like to take this opportunity to respond the latest article published by the City Paper. We are concerned that public opinion is being formed by uninformed reporting. It appears that much of the reporting in the City Paper concerning Kinder Morgan is either personal opinion or one sided conversations with detractors. The facts concerning the latest article are:
• The “pipe break” in Burnaby, British Columbia occurred because a third-party contractor hit the company’s pipeline.
• As for the Portland incident, the article fails to mention the company has been working in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency to determine whether the company or the ship captain was at fault.
• In reference to City of San Diego lawsuit, Kinder Morgan inherited the remediation issue following an acquisition in 1998 and has made substantial progress on remediation efforts which have been praised by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
• The recent pipeline rupture in Texas is under investigation. We invite readers to go to www.kindermorgan.com and review the company’s safety performance which shows that Kinder Morgan has outperformed industry averages for the past 12 months.
• KMP is one of America’s Most Admired Companies (Fortune magazine 2007), ranking #1 in the Pipeline Industry which is based on criteria ranging from quality of management to social responsibility.
• Kinder Morgan Charleston facility is in full compliance with environmental safety policies. In the past year, the company has implemented numerous environmental safeguards and is investing roughly $500,000 to further reduce coal and cement dust emissions with new dust suppression technologies. Finally, Kinder Morgan is looking at future technologies which will allow for additional improvement.

We appreciate this opportunity to get the facts out to the public and remove the editorial comment that is currently being portrayed as fact. Kinder Morgan is a large company, but we are sensitive to the needs of the public and the communities that we work in. Our Charleston employees are committed to helping the community and are distressed to read many of the inaccuracies reported in the past. For these local employees, please attempt to provide more balanced reporting in the future. They care greatly about their company, the environment and community perception.

 

15 days later they were convicted of six felonies.

While working on the “Bullies and Bribes” story a few weeks ago, about the scandalous closed-door affairs governing Mt. Pleasant’s approval of new developments, I came across this quote from New Yorker journalist Janet Malcolm.

“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to know what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”

And it’s true. Even with the people who end up looking bad in a story, a journalist has to smile and seem to agree with everything they say. And then they say more, and look worse. It’s a bit dirty. But not as dirty as coal.