Oil Slick

How to choke off clean air with independent expenditures.

by Romesh Ratnesar and John Cook

#10 David H. Koch, 56, Wichita, Kan. Party: R and Libertarian. $339,000 total contributions.

View Koch’s itemized contributions.

When the Environmental Protection Agency announced last November it would update Clean Air Act standards to ban dust particle emissions that reportedly cause 40,000 premature deaths annually, big industries sharpened their knives. (Final EPA regulations are due by July.) Oil companies, automakers, and the nation’s largest manufacturers claim it will cost them billions to comply. Among them is David Koch, chairman of Koch Industries, whose oil subsidiary is being sued by the government for Clean Water Act violations, for a reported $55 million. Although Koch gave $339,000 to federal campaigns in 1995-96, it’s only one way he sought influence. He also gives through a tangled web of think tanks, PR agencies, and trade associations, all of which want Congress to gut the Clean Air Act.

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