Alabama Superfund cleanup bribery scheme

The cleanup of a heavily contaminated area in north Birmingham became the center of a corruption case when investigators began looking at why opposition to the federal Superfund program had suddenly appeared. At the center of the investigation was former Alabama state representative Oliver Robinson, who later admitted that he had accepted money while working against the environmental cleanup.

Robinson testified that the payments came through what was presented as a consulting arrangement. Prosecutors alleged that two attorneys from a prominent Alabama law firm and a coal company executive had paid him in an effort to influence his opposition to the cleanup, with the apparent goal of avoiding the costs associated with environmental remediation.

What made Robinson's testimony particularly striking was how he described his own role. After pleading guilty to bribery and tax evasion, he told jurors that he felt he had "sold out" the people who had elected him to the Alabama Statehouse. The case therefore went beyond a dispute over environmental policy, raising the question of whether private financial interests had helped turn an elected representative against a federal cleanup intended to address contamination affecting his own community.