This is an opinion column.

I’m feeling like Fred G. Sanford right now.

This is the big one. I’m coming Elizabeth.

Shocked. Toxic shocked, even.

Because a Jefferson County grand jury took up where the feds left off. Because the quest to hold the powerful to account continues one more time in the saga surrounding polluted north Birmingham. Because Trey Glenn, the head of the EPA for the Southeast region and a shill for polluters from way back, was just charged with crimes for his role in the toxic north Birmingham bribery scandal.

And Scott Phillips, a former member of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission who took a contract from Balch & Bingham to help discourage cleanup of north Birmingham and prevent EPA expansion into Tarrant, was charged on the same day for related crimes.

Great googly moogly!

Can this be happening? Really? Charges against powerful Alabamians who admittedly worked to protect the interests of powerful friends while demeaning low-income residents who must live and die with their choices?

I never dreamed they’d face the music in Alabama. I thought for sure judgment would come for Phillips and Glenn only at the Pearly Gates, where St. Peter would decide whether to send them toward a brownfield down below.

But Jefferson County, with the help of the Alabama Ethics Commission, stepped in.

Phillips and Glenn were charged last week -- the charges were made public today -- with a range of ethics charges. Phillips was charged with multiple violations of the Ethics Act, and Glenn was charged with multiple counts of conspiracy and/or complicity with Phillips to violate the Ethics Act. Prosecutors claim Phillips used his public position for personal gain, and Glenn helped him do it.

The two worked together in a company called Southeastern Engineering & Consulting, which would later become STRADA. They had a lucrative contract with Balch to fight the proposed expansion of a Superfund site into Tarrant, a move that could cost a company like Drummond Co. millions of dollars.

Exhibits and testimony in the trial of Drummond Co. VP David Roberson and Balch & Bingham lawyer Joel Gilbert – both were convicted of bribing former Rep. Oliver Robinson to help thwart cleanup – showed Phillips and Glenn stooped to devious levels to achieve that goal.

Their company came up with strategies to sully the reputations of those who were really worried about toxic exposure in the area. They wrote plans to “hijack” community organizations and take them over for polluters.

You hear that Elizabeth!

And Phillips – as an environmental regulator – introduced Robinson to his own board president, announced Robinson at his commission meeting and helped carry out the plan that resulted in Robinson selling out his office. Without ever revealing he was on the payroll for Balch, which was on the payroll for Drummond.

Phillips later apparently even used his regulatory position to help carry out the plan to discredit environmentalists. When one was scheduled to speak before his commission, he took the PowerPoint presentation she sent in advance and leaked it to Gilbert, who wrote of ways to challenge her and sent them back to the commission.

The charges focus on the fact that Phillips was an environmental regulator at the time, a member of the AEMC, which regulates the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

That makes him a public official. And that makes the crimes serious – the same sort of charges for which former House Speaker Mike Hubbard was convicted. Hubbard was convicted of a dozen charges and sentenced to four years in prison, though he has yet to serve any time.

It shouldn’t be shocking, really, to see powerful and connected people held accountable. It should be the expected result, that oh-my-word admissions in court turn into real consequences.

We’re just not used to it. Yet.

John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for Reckon by AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.