"Freedom" Industries, Having Caused Massive Pollution, Declares Bankruptcy and Socializes Losses -- Daily Kos

Fri Jan 17, 2014 at 11:16 AM PST

"Freedom" to socialize the losses: chemical company declares bankruptcy

by Horace Boothroyd IIIFollow

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Freedom Industries, the company that fouled thousands of West Virginians' water with a chemical leak last week, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.

This company lacks the assets to clean up their own messes. So have filed for bankruptcy.
A real winner here.

To all this can be added the fact that Freedom Industries was cofounded by an individual named Carl Lemley Kennedy II. As the Charleston Gazette has reported, Kennedy filed for personal bankruptcy in 2005 after he was hit with federal charges of tax evasion and failure to remit employee withholding taxes. He is reported to have admitted to diverting more than $1 million that should have gone to the Internal Revenue Service.
 
Kennedy's involvement in Freedom Industries, the Gazette notes, does not seem to have been affected by the fact that he had once pleaded guilty to selling cocaine in connection with a scandal that involved the mayor of Charleston. The paper quotes the current mayor, who is said to have known Kennedy since the 1980s, as an "edgy guy."

Another remarkable aspect of the story reported by the Gazette is that Freedom Industries was struggling in 2009, and its Elk River facility was able to go on functioning only after the Army Corps of Engineers dredged that portion of the river using federal stimulus funds.

To summarize: a tax evader and drug dealer helped to establish a largely unregulated chemical company that benefitted from the federal stimulus but apparently did little in the way of preventive maintenance and set the stage for large-scale drinking water contamination.