In the wake of last week’s tragedy, the regulatory framework that governs fertilizer plants is getting increased attention. Terrence Henry describes the outcome of a 2006 investigation of the West facility by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ):
The Commission doesn’t generally pay a visit to facilities like the one in West unless someone complains. “Historically, fertilizer plants have not been given the level of attention of scrutiny that other industrial or petrochemical facilities have received,” Craft says. The plant was also regulated by other state and federal agencies, a gallimaufry of acronyms like PHMSA, OSHA, DSHS, and others, but there appears to have been little communication and coordination among them. …
In its report to the EPA in 2011, West Fertilizer said its worst-case scenario was a release of one of its storage tanks of anhydrous ammonia “as a gas over 10 minutes.” It said nothing of fire risk. It also said nothing of ammonium nitrate at the site. But according to records from the Texas Department of State Health Services obtained by StateImpact Texas, the plant had as much as 270 tons of ammonium nitrate at the site in 2012. To put that in perspective, the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 and injured hundreds, used 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate mixed with other chemicals and diesel fuel, or about 2.4 tons.
Bill Buzenberg places some of the blame on the Chemical Safety Board:
Each year there are some 200 serious industrial accidents like the fertilizer plant explosion that are deemed to be of “high consequence.” Yet the Chemical Safety Board — modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board — is able to investigate only a handful, and then often takes years more to issue a report.
Tim Murphy worries that a House bill proposed in February will take away one potential avenue for regulation:
[The fertilizer industry] introduced a bill to formally prohibit the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate security and safety at chemical production and storage sites, by mandating that any such inspections be carried out by the Department of Homeland Security instead. Their bill also left it up to manufacturers to determine whether or not to make improvements to the safety of their workplace. … “Dividing safety and security has been a game that the chemical industry has tried to play for many years,” [chemical safety consultant Paul] Orum says. “That’s the point of the Pompeo bill—divide safety from security. But they’re not separable.”
(Photo: Search-and-rescue workers comb through what remains of a 50-unit apartment building the day after an explosion at the West Fertilizer Company destroyed the building on April 18, 2013 in West, Texas. According to West Mayor Tommy Muska, around 14 people, including 10 first responders, were killed and more than 150 people were injured when the fertilizer company caught fire and exploded, leaving damaged buildings for blocks in every direction. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Dish 