Chemical facilities safetySecurity at U.S. chemical plants, and monitoring that security, still fall short

Security experts, citing a critical Senate report, are warning that the effort by industry and the government to secure U.S. chemical facilities against terrorist attacks has so far been lackluster at best.

As START (the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) reports, the Senate report, sponsored by former Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), who at the time was a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, found that after eight years and $595 million dollars spent on efforts to further chemical plant security, there had been only thirty-nine compliance inspections of the 4,011 national facilities at risk.

In any event, the current chemical facility security policies apply only to a fraction of the facilities which produce, store, or transport toxic materials around the country. The Senate report paints a picture of a security apparatus which is not reflective of the extent to which chemical infrastructure remains unprotected.

“The technical and organizational requirements to use a chemical facility as a weapon are much lower than those associated with the development or production of traditional chemical weapons and are well within the reach of the majority of terrorist groups,” notes START. “Although basic security measures such as fences and security guards might be effective in deterring casual criminality, they are unlikely to constitute a significant deterrent to determined terrorist attackers.”

Citing foiled chemical terrorism events such as the 1997 “Sour-Gas Plot,” in which a group of Ku Klux Klan members targeted a natural gas processing center in Texas, or a 1999 planned bomb attack on a propane facility in Elk Grove, California, START warns that these could only be the beginning of a broader range of attacks.

“Although both of these plots involved facilities that can be classed as petrochemical in nature, there is no reason to think that a potential perpetrator would limit itself to this particular type of facility,” START study says.

More recently, the 2013 West, Texas accidental ammonia explosion is an example of the size and scope that potential attacks on a chemical facility might have. The disaster claimed fifteen lives and injured over 160 people.

The reasons for the on-going security problems at U.S. chemical facilities include the short-sightedness of the chemical industry, and the fact that there are separate regulations for many of the smaller classes of businesses that manage toxic chemicals. Because of the confusion and differences between tiers of regulations, a full understanding of proper safety procedure can become tricky for regulators.

Secondly, Congress itself was slow to react to the threat these facilities posed post- 9/11. The chemical industry paid millions into the coffers of (mostly) Republican lawmakers who, in coordination with Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s political adviser, blocked any effort to pass a chemical facility security legislation. A chemical facility safety bill finally passed in 2007, but not before six years of stalling, thus wasting precious time which would have allowed for better coordination and inspection of facilities.

START also notes that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and particularly the Office of Infrastructure Protection, which is in charge of administering the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), are primary culprits in the slow and ineffective implementation of chemical facility safety regulations.

“After finally being given at least some authority to regulate chemical security in 2007, its performance in implementing the CFATS program has been dismal at best,” the START study writes. “Several official reports, of which the Coburn Report is merely the latest, have revealed a litany of missteps and mismanagement, including: flaws in the risk assessment methodology employed leading to inaccuracies and misclassifications of facilities; the implementing unit (the Infrastructure Security Compliance Division)’s poor training, oversight and morale; the imposition of onerous yet often superfluous reporting burdens (even relatively small facilities have had to submit up to 2,000 pages of forms); and an ostensibly adversarial attitude to regulated companies — not to mention the glacially slow implementation of the CFATS process noted above.”

The authors of the START study hope that H. R. 4007, which reformed and renewed CFATS and which became Public Law No: 113-254 on 18 December 2014, , will improve and accelerate the security work needed at U.S. chemical facilities.

“All parties should grab fast to the lifeline offered by H. R. 4007,” they write, “and use it as a foundation for the long-overdue task of genuinely and collaboratively securing the nation’s chemical infrastructure.”

— Read more in Chemical Insecurity: An Assessment of Efforts to Secure the Nation’s Chemical Facilities from Terrorist Threats, a Report by Senator Tom Coburn, Ranking Member, U.S. Senate, Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee