Nixon pressures agencies for quick Taum Sauk report

Published Friday, June 2, 2006

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Attorney General Jay Nixon is pressing two state agencies to estimate the total cost of damages from the Taum Sauk reservoir collapse, fueling speculation that he is in settlement talks with Ameren Corp. just more than a month after he said he would file criminal charges or a lawsuit against the utility.

Senior officials at the Missouri Department of Conservation and the state Department of Natural Resources say Nixon asked them in mid-May to quickly estimate financial damages from the reservoir collapse, which devastated the Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park and injured the park superintendent’s family of five.

Nixon’s request was a surprise. In March, Nixon’s office, the DNR and the MDC agreed to hire an outside consulting firm to estimate the cost of damages from the accident. The state paid roughly $80,000 for the contract, and all three agreed to the firm’s deadline of delivering an estimate by August, DNR Director Doyle Childers said.

Nixon changed course this month, sending a memo to DNR that asked for a damages estimate "as quickly as possible," Childers said.

"I don’t know why the attorney general’s office would want a quick response on it unless they were looking at a settlement," Childers said.

Yesterday, Nixon dismissed Child-ers’ statement, suggesting the Republican appointee might be trying to score political points because Nixon is running as a Democrat for governor in 2008.

"We’re trying to put this thing together, and these guys want to play politics. I’m not going there," Nixon said. Asking for the damages estimate is part of a complicated case against Ameren, Nixon said. He declined to comment on the timing of either a settlement or other legal action.

Ameren spokeswoman Susan Gallagher has said previously the company was not in official settlement talks with Nixon. When asked if there were unofficial settlement talks, Gallagher wrote in an e-mail that nothing has changed.

Nixon’s request could indicate a deal is under consideration because estimating damages is necessary to reach a settlement but is not needed to file litigation or press criminal charges, said John Mollenkamp, a former assistant attorney general in Nixon’s office and current vice chairman of the Missouri Bar Association’s Civil Practice and Procedure Committee.

Mollenkamp said it is also possible that Nixon is just being thorough, gathering information that could come in handy during later phases of a court trial.

Childers said he is worried that Nixon’s push for a speedy cost estimate could undermine the purpose of hiring the outside consultant, Industrial Economics Inc. of Cambridge, Mass.

"I don’t think there’s any way they could deliver us a really solid number two months before they were supposed to," he said. "We don’t want to take a chance on leaving out some major cost or something that taxpayers would have to pick up later."

Estimating damages from the Taum Sauk collapse is not simple math. More than 1 billion gallons of water was released from the reservoir in the breach on Dec. 14, destroying thousands of acres of forest along with the state park and filling the once-clear Black River with debris and silt that still remains.

Financial costs also could extend to local business owners who fear that tourists will stay away from the area this summer because of the damage.

Federal investigators said Ameren for months delayed critical repairs that might have prevented the collapse. In late April, Nixon said Ameren put profits ahead of safety at Taum Sauk and that he would soon take the matter to court.