February 22, 2018
By Mark Hand –
A disgraced banker who Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt hired to advise him on the nation’s toxic waste cleanup program holds as much as $75,000 in financial stakes in several fossil fuel companies, including a company responsible for contaminating a bayou in southwestern Louisiana and a stretch of river in Oregon.
Albert Kelly — who was banned from the banking industry for life for violating federal banking laws — has holdings in Phillips 66, according to a financial disclosure report.
The EPA deemed Phillips 66 responsible for contaminating Bayou Verdine in 2010, which is located in the Calcasieu estuary in Lake Charles, Louisiana. And more recently, in 2016 Phillips 66 was among a group of companies forced to pay to clean up the Portland Harbor Superfund site — a process which is expected to take 30 years.
Kelly had never worked in the environmental field or developed environmental policy prior to being named last April as an adviser to Pruitt and head of the EPA’s Superfund Task Force. His home city of Bristow, Oklahoma, though, has a Superfund site and several other contaminated sites.