The real monkey business; it was Gary and Billy, not Gary and Donna - Gary Hart, Billy Broadhurst, Donna Rice

Washington Monthly, Feb, 1988 by Liz Galtney

The black smoke

While Hart portrays himself an impassioned environmentalist, his confidant, Broadhurst, is not exactly the president of the Sierra Club. In a state with some of the highest cancer rates in the nation, where the stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is dubbed the "chemical corridor," Broadhurst was known for taking on controversial cases on behalf of hazardous waste, oil, and gas interests.

Most infamous was his defense of Rollins Environmental Services, Inc., a Delaware-based toxic waste company wiht a plant in the town of Alsen, just north of Baton Rouge. In August 1985, the plant was shut down by Pat Norton, then head of Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality. For years, residents had complained to state officials about Rollins, and Norton, seeing the black smoke and smelling the noxious odors during a late night surprise visit to the plant, became convinced that they had cause for alarm.

The shutdown set off a skirmish within the state government as Governor Edwards sided with Rollins, a Broadhurst client, and stood his ground against his own environmental boss.

"I was called to the mansioin where the governor told me he didn't think I was on very good legal ground," said Norton, the environmental quality chief. "I felt like I was being threatened at that point because I was told by the governor...and the Rollins people that it was a stupid risk to try to close down the facility." For Norton, it seemed to be another Broadhurst problem. the day after she was appointed department secretary, she said, "Broadhurst called me and told me who the governor had picked for my staff since they weren't going to let me do it." Norton recalled, too, that, "Edwards never called to help out a neighborhood or a community....The only time he called me was to help out Bill Broadhurst, or somebody like that."

The Rollins plant reopened some three months later, under a court order won by Broadhurst's firm. In December, Edwards assigned John Koury, a gubernatorial appointee in the Department; of Environmental Quality, to be the state hearing officer in the case. Koury essentially acted as an administrative judge. He found the conglomerate guilty of two out of 44 potential environmental violations. He levied a $15,000 fine, which he waived when Rollins agreed to install an air conditioning system in a nearby community center. After Norton publicly criticized Edwards's handling of Rollings and other environmental issues, the governor fired her.

It was a triumph for Broadhurst. When reporters asked Edwards if Broadhurst had pushed Norton's firing, the governor said "no," but added, "Billy kidded me a few months agof that Pat Norton made him a rich lawyer."

Was there much to the charges against Rollins? Was Broadhurst just helping out a company that got a raw deal? Two months later, Attorney General Billy Guste, an elected official not beholden to Edwards, appealed the decision handed down by the governor's office. He won a settlement that added up to a bit more than a new air conditioner: a $1.25 million fine and an agreement that Rollins would spend $5 million on cleanup. It was the largest fine assessed a polluter in the history of Louisiana, says John Shepphard, an assistant attorney general. He says of Broadhurst's client: "Probably no other company -- and may I remind you that Louisiana is full of chemical plants -- probably no other company had been the source of more citizens'