Texas Environmental Attorney Paid $200,000 by Formosa Plastics

[Sequoia]

(This is old news, but I'm posting it because her book just came out and it is really very good and quite scary at times.)

A Texas environmental attorney was paid about $200,000 by Formosa Plastics over ten years while he was fighting on behalf of the environment and the public interest to get the petrochemical giant to stop polluting Lavaca Bay - which sits mid-way between Corpus Christi and Galveston on the Texas Gulf Coast, according to an article in the current issue of Corporate Crime Reporter.

Houston attorney James Blackburn is one of a handful of attorneys that Texas activists can turn to fight off big polluters.

In the early 1990s, shrimper Diane Wilson called Blackburn for help.

Wilson, a mother of five who lives in Seadrift, Texas on Lavaca Bay, was interested in putting a halt to the petrochemical pollution of her bay and her community. Throughout the 1990s, Wilson battled the multinational petrochemical company with lawsuits, press releases, hunger strikes, civil disobedience - she's been to jail 13 times - and an attempt to sink her own shrimp boat.

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http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0714-08.htm