Chemical plant safetyBudget impasse halts enforcement of chemical plants safety standards
Security experts say that short of a direct nuclear attack on a U.S. city, the most dangerous, mass-casualty catastrophe the United States faces is a terrorist attack on, or an accident in, a chemical facility which would release toxic clouds over neighboring cities and towns. The federal government partial shutdown is making it impossible to enforce safety and security standards formulated to strengthen the ability of thousands of U.S. chemical facilities to withstand terrorist attacks.
Budget impasse blocks chemical plant safety inspections // Source: bigstockphoto.com
The federal government partial shutdown is making it impossible to enforce safety and security standards formulated to strengthen the ability of thousands of U.S. chemical facilities to withstand terrorist attacks. Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) describes the situation as “one unfortunate and dangerous consequence that has received little attention.” Security experts say that short of a direct nuclear attack on a U.S. city, the most dangerous, mass-casualty catastrophe the United States faces is a terrorist attack on, or an accident in, a chemical facility. Such an attack or accident would release toxic clouds to waft over neighboring towns and cities, as was the case in Bhopal, India
About midnight on 2 December 1984, an accident at the Union Carbide chemical plant near the city of Bhopal in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India released thirty tons ofmethyl isocyanate (MIC) into the air, and the toxic cloud enveloped the near-by city of Bhopal. Nearly 20,000 died: 3,787 died within seconds of the gas hitting the city; about 8,000 more died within two weeks from gas poisoning; and another 8,000 have died within the next twelve months from gas-related diseases.
An exhaustive 2006 Indian government report found that the accidental release caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 who required lengthy hospitalization and approximately 3,900 who suffered such severely disabling injuries that they had to spend the rest of their lives in assisted-living facilities.
The Huffington Post reports that the 2007 Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), monitored and enforced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was designed to upgrade, make uniform, and enforce security measures at thousands of facilities producing and storing toxic chemicals and volatile hazardous materials.
CFATS gave DHS the authority to shut down non-complying chemical facilities.
CATS was planned as a 3-year stop-gap measure, to put in place some uniform chemical facility security standards while lawmakers were working on a broader and more permanent legislation.
Rather than allow CFATS to expire, as planned, after three years and replace it with a broader measure, lawmakers chose to use the appropriation process repeatedly to extend CFATS.
This year, however, the appropriation process fell victim to disagreements between the White House, Senate, and Congress, and funding for CFATS ended on 4 October.
This worries Waxman, who, in a 10 October memo to his fellow Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote that “As a result of this expiration, there are currently no legally binding regulations in place to protect the nation’s chemical facilities from criminal and terrorist attacks.”
Waxman reported that DHS told his staff that the CFATS chemical safety regulations are “no longer in force” and DHS has “no authority” to require security measures at high-risk facilities.
In the memo, Waxman writes:
As of September, the CFATS program covered approximately 4,300 high-risk facilities nationwide. Under the regulations, those facilities were required to submit information about their chemical holdings to DHS, assess their vulnerabilities, and prepare a plan to address those vulnerabilities and secure those chemicals. Almost 3,400 facilities have submitted site security plans or alternative security plans, and more than 700 have received letters authorizing them to implement their plans. In mid-September, the CFATS program carried out its first compliance inspection, the final stage of the process that determines whether a facility is complying with the requirements laid out in their approved security plan.
Leading voices in the chemical industry share Waxman’s worry. In March 2013, William Allmond, vice president for government and public relations of the Society of Chemical Manufactures and Affiliates (SOCMA), testifying before the House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy on the progress of the CFATS program, told lawmakers that “Having no chemical security regulation at all would create a risky and tilted playing field in which most companies secured their facilities voluntarily, at significant cost, while a minority created risks for us all, and gained an unfair economic advantage, by not doing so.”
“This expiration of authority is serious,” Waxman noted in his memo, “because without the regulatory authority underlying this program, no private entity is required to do anything.”
