Nov 30, 2010 /EIN Presswire/– The Obama administration gave out approximately $2 billion in stimulus money to some of the country’s biggest polluters in the hopes of creating jobs, according to a recent investigation from the Center for Public Integrity.
The violating companies were also granted more than 179,000 exemptions from environmental oversight, freeing their practices from evaluation under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Officials did not take into account the companies’ pollution histories, saying that creating jobs was the main prerogative and that past environmental misdeeds should not disqualify companies from federal contracts.
The stimulus dollars are meant to fund projects relating to clean energy including an electrical-grid upgrade in Kansas, a wind farm project in Texas and clean biofuel project in Delaware.
The stimulus grants went to three dozen companies to the ire of environmentalists who feel these companies have done nothing to earn the government’s trust or dollars.
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