Anyone Else Notice a Smell? (0.00 / 0)
There's no doubt that the result of secret negotiations between the Buy-Out group and two Washington DC-based traditional environmental groups produced a potential reality better than the one we had last week.

But there are some questions about how this all went down that need to be answered.

Were the citizens'groups fighting the Twin Oaks and Alcoa lignite plants, that are allowed to continue to be built under this agreement, informed about these negotations before they read about them online this weekend? Did they sign off on this agreement?

Of the total 17, these were the only new lignite plants being proposed. Like burning dirt. They make the the 8 others TXU gave up look like state-of-the-art facilities. They emit twice as much of everything.

Will ED and NRDC help pay for these citizens groups to continue to fight these plants?Are did they just walk away from these fights and leave the citizens hanging?

Was any other group or city who is a member of the very large anti-coal plant coalition in Texas allowed to participate? Dallas? Houston? Local groups living next to the plant sites?

Why did ED and NRDC feel they could do this without some sort of more public discussion in Texas about the pros and cons of the deal - including sanctioning taking such a huge utility completely private and then probably flipping it.

If you know anything about the history of ED or NRDC, you know they have a reputation for sometimes taking issues away from grassroots groups and striking deals with the offending polluter that are then trimuphed as historic compromises. I don't know if this is one of those or not, but people should be asking the right questions to determine how involved Texans were in this decision that greatly affects Texas.