City-Hired Scientist A Lobbyist Kelly Worked For Incinerator Industry, Clashed With Other States Over Health Risks
The scientist hired to study the health risks of Spokane’s trash incinerator is an industry lobbyist and consultant who clashed with Montana and Texas officials over the risks of burning hazardous waste in cement kilns.
Members of the Spokane advisory committee that chose Kathryn Kelly in 1990 to study the incinerator weren’t aware of her ties to the waste-burning industry, committee member Curt Messex said.
“We did know she’d done studies for other incinerators and the results had generally been favorable,” said Messex, a retired pilot.
“She was touted as a fairly big name in toxicology at that time,” said Jim Malm of the Washington Department of Ecology, another committee member.
Kelly, 39, has worked with a variety of clients from industry and government in the United States and abroad. The Montreal native has top academic credentials, including a public health doctorate from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Stanford.
A growing number of critics, however, accuse her of being a rubber stamp for the industry.
Kelly is “hired by the incinerator industry to promote the industry,” said chemistry professor Paul Connett of St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. He publishes Waste Not, a national journal critical of incineration.
Kelly’s work on the Spokane study has recently come under scrutiny because of her personal relationship with Phil Williams, the city’s former director of engineering and planning services, and the trash plant’s supervisor.
Williams was fired Nov. 7 for not heeding City Manager Bill Pupo’s orders to keep at “arms-length” from the state-mandated study until it’s finished. Pupo was concerned about conflict of interest and the study’s credibility.
“Appearance of fairness and conflict of interest are in the eye of the beholder,” Kelly said in a written response.
“It is not for me to say whether anyone should consider the (Spokane study) credible. My job is to present the data so that interested parties can make that decision for themselves.”
The study is now nearly two years overdue, and Ecology is asking the city for copies of all the backup data and Kelly’s final report before the state reimburses the city for the $300,000 it has spent on the project.
Because of her background as an industry lobbyist, Kelly never should have been hired, said Bonnie Mager of the Washington Environmental Council.
“Her lobbyist role clearly taints the study,” Mager said.
Spokane isn’t the first place the scientist’s work has been controversial.
Kelly was:
Accused of unprofessional conduct as a lobbyist in Montana for exaggerating the safety of cement kilns in her February 1993 testimony before the Montana Senate’s natural resources committee. The committee chairman’s formal complaint against her later was dropped.
Warned in two letters from the Texas Air Control Board to quit using a Texas air study to make conclusions in other states about cement kiln safety.
Criticized for her advice to a Texas cement kiln company to downplay the plant’s long-term cancer risks in a June 1991 newspaper ad.
Kelly has helped cement-industry clients seek permits nationwide to burn hazardous wastes as a replacement for coal.
In 1992, her former Seattle company published “All Fired Up,” a book that said properly operated cement kilns that burn hazardous waste aren’t a public health risk.
The industry burns wastes that are barred from landfills, such as organic solvents and used oil. Opponents argue the wastes often contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and other toxins, and the kilns sometimes burn poorly, ejecting dangerous pollutants.
Kelly’s clients have included “major cement companies pushing for permits to burn hazardous waste by calling it ‘fuel,”’ said Edward Kleppinger, a Washington, D.C., environmental consultant. He opposed many of the cement kiln projects that Kelly championed and wrote a critique of “All Fired Up.”
Kelly is involved in a cement kiln battle in Texas, where documents detailing her advice to Dallas-based Texas Industries Inc. (TXI) were obtained recently for a permit challenge by citizen activists.
The company wants to burn hundreds of tons of liquid hazardous waste in a Midlothian, Texas, cement kiln. The rural town of 5,000 is 25 miles south of Dallas.
In a July 1991 memo to Randy Jones of TXI’s cement division, Kelly reviewed air emissions downwind of the cement kiln.
While noncancerous toxins looked good, carcinogens were present at levels two to 20 times higher than current federal risk guidelines consider safe for burners and industrial furnaces, Kelly said.
“So I would suggest you not present risk data, at least not for carcinogens,” in a newspaper ad touting the plant’s safety, Kelly told Jones. Instead, it would be best to only use 30-minute air emissions data, she said.
Kelly said she gave that advice because the facility at the time had only collected short-term air samples.
“You can’t reliably estimate long-term carcinogenic risk with three, three-hour samples, and it would be misleading to the public to try and do so,” Kelly said.
But Texas activists think TXI was eager to downplay health risks to people in Midlothian.
“This is a devastating memo,” said Sue Pope of Midlothian. Her group, Downwinders at Risk, obtained it during legal discovery for the license challenge.
“TXI placed the ad based on her advice. It only mentions short-term exposure levels,” Pope said.
A TXI spokesman declined to discuss the specifics of the ad, or Kelly’s role in it.
“We are in the process of applying for our permit, and Kathryn Kelly is listed as one of our experts. We’d not use her if we didn’t have confidence in her,” said Harold Green, spokesman for TXI, the largest cement operator in Texas.
Green described the Midlothian activists as “gnats” trying to derail their permit. “They’re annoying but not threatening,” Green said.
In 1993, Kelly was embroiled in a similar controversy in Montana, where she was a registered lobbyist for Holnam Inc., a Michigan company seeking a permit to burn hazardous waste at its cement kiln at Three Forks, at the headwaters of the Missouri River.
After Kelly testified before the Montana Senate natural resources committee, committee Chairman Sen. Donald Bianchi, D-Belgrade, challenged her.
“She presented the data on the safety of these plants as black and white, when it was really shades of gray. She told our committee there was no way these plants could be harmful,” said Bianchi, a former state fisheries biologist who’s no longer in the Legislature.
Bianchi accused Kelly of violating Montana’s strict conduct laws for lobbyists. He cited an August 1992 letter to Kelly from JoAnn Wiersema of the Texas Air Control Board critical of Kelly’s misleading use of the board’s air quality study at three Midlothian cement plants.
Kelly was a member of the board’s cement kiln task force in the early 1990s, and referred to the Texas study while testifying in Montana.
Wiersema said Kelly took statements out of context, drew incorrect conclusions and made outright errors in her use of the Texas study.
“We do not feel comfortable with the tone of your review nor do we agree with the conclusions you have drawn,” Wiersema said.
Kelly defended her testimony in a Feb. 16, 1993, letter to Bianchi, saying Wiersema was critiquing a draft that later was updated.
But a week later, Bianchi received a second letter from Wiersema, indicating Kelly’s final paper continued to misrepresent the Texas study.
Bianchi filed a formal complaint against Kelly with Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices. He later dropped it. “I figured she was a one-shot deal, and wasn’t coming back” to Montana, Bianchi said.
Kelly said she “vigorously encouraged” the commission to pursue Bianchi’s charge, “as doing so would reinforce my testimony.”
The complaint was dropped when Bianchi couldn’t provide clear evidence that Kelly had lied to the Senate, said Montana state Commissioner of Political Practices Ed Argenbright.
“That would have been against the law. But professional opinions can differ,” Argenbright said.
“We were told Kelly lost business in other states” as a result of the Montana flap, Argenbright said. “There was a cloud over her.”
In Montana, “there was considerable effort to discredit me because of pressure to pass a bill to ban burning hazardous waste in cement kilns. Neither effort was ultimately successful,” Kelly said last week.
Holnam has abandoned its plans to burn hazardous waste in Montana, and Kelly said she’s no longer consulting for the company.
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