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A clean energy company that once operated at Port Arthur's Oxbow plant claims it manipulated SO2 emissions to avoid spending on pollution controls.

Billionaire William Koch’s industrial plant in Port Arthur, Texas, is small compared to the three sprawling oil refineries that surround it – just 112 acres compared with the 10,000 acres occupied by Motiva, Valero and Total. But Koch’s Oxbow facility towers over its neighbors in one respect. It produces 10 times as much lung-damaging sulfur dioxide, SO2, as the three refineries combined. And it does so legally because of a quirk in the 1970 Clean Air Act.

The breadth of his bribe-taking was stunning and his high-life antics were gauche. The former Top Gun fighter ace at times appeared like an aging playboy stuck in the 1970s on his party-pad boat at the Capital Yacht Club, and he had a habit of giving signed photographs of his old self in a Navy flight suit to total strangers. Then-President Donald Trump’s 11th-hour pardon of the former congressman — announced early Wednesday morning along with more than 140 others — won’t change Cunningham’s history. He has admitted his crimes and already served the time. It’s also a “conditiona...