FPP: It’s Not About Saving Money

To the Editor:

I want to share a few moments from my career that shaped how I think about industrial oversight — moments that come back to me as LCRA seeks to reduce wastewater sampling at the Fayette Power Plant.

Yearsago,whenFordBroncos were rolling over after tire failures, I was managing a business that sold nylon tire cord. Polyester was cheaper and taking our market share. We knew nylon “cap plies” could help prevent those failures. So did our only competitor. Together we hired a lobbyist — for what felt like a surprisingly small amount of money — and before long Congress passed the TREAD Act, which nudged manufacturers toward our solution. As a relatively young person at the time, I was astounded by how little money it took to influence government policy.

Years earlier, as a plant engineer at an acrylonitrile facility during a maintenance outage, we discovered that a chemical sewer line had collapsed long ago, leaving a cavern where hazardous chemicals, including hydrogen cyanide, had been leaking straight into the soil. In a meeting where we were discussing the issue, the environmental manager literally covered his ears and said “la, la, la…” as he walked out of the room — a performance of plausible deniability I will never forget. We replaced the pipe, buried the evidence, poured new concrete, and restarted this profitable plant on schedule. I also remember wrestling with ethical questions about my role — so much so that I still recall my mother asking, “Is that the kind of company you want to work for?”

Even earlier, working night shift at a natural gas plant, a relief valve opened and released a white cloud of flammable hydrocarbons across a county road. Another operator and I watched in horror as a car drove straight through it. When the car passed through without incident, I asked the lead operator why it didn’t erupt into flames, and he calmly replied, “Lack of oxygen.” That’s when I learned the old saying: what happens on the graveyard shift stays on the graveyard shift.

I share these stories because LCRA’s request to reduce wastewater sampling — tests that cost only $200–$400 each — is not about saving money. For a plant that sells over $500,000 of electricity per day, the real savings come from not discovering a problem. Less sampling means fewer questions, fewer obligations, and more deniability if contamination reaches the watershed.And if something happens during a gap in sampling, well… what happens on the graveyard shift stays on the graveyard shift.

And if you’re wondering why regulators and local politicians aren’t calling for public meetings, remember my first lesson: it doesn’t take much money to shape policy.

If a spill occurs, the cleanup costs will be passed along in electricity rates — and the politicians will maintain plausible deniability because, after all, “there was never a public meeting where anyone expressed any concern.”

Ian Julian La Grange