[Vision2020] A Failure to Police Chemical Plants

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

------------------------------
June 1, 2013
A Failure to Police Chemical Plants By THE EDITORIAL
BOARD<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.html>

The deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., in April has
highlighted glaring shortcomings in federal and state regulation of
facilities that produce, store and use toxic chemicals.

The casualties in Texas — 14 killed and nearly 200 injured — were shocking,
but the fact is that chemical disasters imperil millions of Americans who
live and work close to industrial plants in dense cities and sprawling
suburbs. Last November, the Congressional Research Service identified 2,560
facilities<http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/557127/crs-rmp-update-11-16-12.pdf>that
could each put more than 10,000 people at risk in the event of an
accident. Last year, 1,270 people
died<http://www.rtknet.org/db/erns/incidents>in more
than 30,000 <http://www.nrc.uscg.mil/incident_type_2000up.html> chemical
spills and accidents. The Texas catastrophe showed that federal regulators
have been far too lax in their oversight of ammonium nitrate, the
fertilizer at the center of this explosion. The West Fertilizer Company
stored 540,000 pounds of the stuff at its plant in 2012
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/us/texas-chemical-depots-fall-under-a-jumble-of-regulations.html?ref=us>(it
is unclear how much it had in April). In spite of the potential risks
posed by the fertilizer, plants are allowed to keep it near residential
areas. Plants with large quantities are required to tell the Department of
Homeland Security how they keep the material secure, but the West plant did
not bother to do so.

More broadly, the explosion is a reminder that the Obama administration has
failed to uphold a
promise<http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/332454/obama-2008-camp-platform-excerpt-on-chem-security.pdf>the
president made as a candidate in 2008 to require the industry to
switch
to safer chemicals and processes wherever feasible. The Environmental
Protection Agency could compel plants to switch their materials and methods
by invoking the general duty clause of the Clean Air Act, which calls on
them to prevent accidental release of dangerous chemicals and to minimize
the consequences of such releases.

Many environmental groups and Christine Todd Whitman, an E.P.A.
administrator during George W. Bush’s first term, have lobbied for such a
change. But the agency has not required the switch to safer technology,
under pressure from the industry, which argues that such a mandate would be
costly and cumbersome.

The health risk is particularly great for the poor and racial minorities,
who are more likely to live in communities near facilities using hazardous
materials. Much of this is the result of racial politics that put dangerous
plants in segregated and poor neighborhoods where land is cheap.
Restrictive zoning laws and subtler forms of discrimination can also make
it hard for the poor and members of minority groups to move to nicer
neighborhoods. A
study<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908425/>published
in the American Journal of Sociology in 2010 found that black and
Hispanic families tended to live in areas with more industrial pollution
than whites — even with similar levels of education and income.

For example, more than 40,000 people live in a three-mile radius around a Citgo
oil refinery<http://www.rtknet.org/db/rmp/rmp.php?database=rmp&reptype=f&detail=-1&datype=T&facility_id=100000139566>in
Corpus Christi, Tex., which uses a host of flammable and toxic
chemicals, including butane and hydrogen fluoride. This population has an
estimated per capita income of $12,700, and nearly 90 percent of those
people are Hispanic or black, according to an analysis of E.P.A. and census
data by an alliance of environmental groups known as the Coalition to
Prevent Chemical
Disasters<http://louisvillecharter.org/ChemicalSecurityandEJ.shtml>.
By contrast, the State of Texas has an average per capita income of about
$25,500, and about 50 percent of its population is Hispanic or black.

Similar disparities<https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/557250/danger-in-our-backyards-the-threat-of-chemical.pdf>exist
around the country in places like Detroit and northern New Jersey,
and they have persisted for decades in spite of the increased awareness of
environmental injustice since the 1980s, when several important
studies<http://www.nrdc.org/ej/history/hej2.asp>documented the problem
in detail.

In 2009, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would have
required the riskiest plants to switch to safer technology, but the Senate
did not adopt the legislation. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey
introduced
a similar bill<http://www.lautenberg.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=339339&&>in
January, but it is unlikely to advance given the partisan gridlock in
Washington.

Some chemical companies have voluntarily adopted safer materials and
methods. In 2009, Clorox
said<http://investors.thecloroxcompany.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=420583>it
would switch its seven bleach plants from lethal chlorine gas to a
safer
process that uses “high-strength bleach” as a raw material. Such efforts
are welcome, but policy makers cannot wait for the industry to move to
safer technologies on its own. It is critical for the E.P.A. to take action
under the power it already has.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20130602/bf7dc619/attachment-0001.html>