May 2001 - VOLUME 22 - NUMBER 5
T H E B U S H Y E A R S B E G I N
A Regulatory Accident in the Making
By Charlie Cray
Environmentalists say that a Bush administration decision to delay a
proposal to expand public access to information about the risks and consequences
of chemical plant accidents may be the first of many attempts to roll
back hard-fought right-to-know laws. Under the Clean Air Act of 1990, 15,000 chemical-using and manufacturing
companies are required to disclose to workers and the public what could
go wrong in a worst-case chemical fire or spill. The scenarios
are part of larger risk management plans required of plant managers to
reduce on-site hazards. The chemical industry says it has been a leader in disclosing information
to the public, and the public should not fear the Bush administration
move. One of the reasons that we supported the 1990 amendment to the
Clean Air Act that created the risk management program is that it is standard
operating procedure in our industry, which is why we are one of the safest
of all manufacturing industries in the country, says Jeff Van of
the American Chemistry Council (ACC, formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers
Association). But the Washington, D.C.-based Working Group on Community Right-to-Know
says the chemical industry has worked since the early 1990s to weaken
the definition of worst-case scenario and restrict disclosure
of chemical hazard information, invoking the potential for terrorist use
of such information as a pretext to restrict the publics right-to-know.
Paul Orum of the Working Group says that all of the provisions of the
1999 Chemical Safety Information, Site Security and Fuels Regulatory Relief
Act that the industry sought for the purpose of restricting the publics
right to know have been implemented, while none of the provisions that
would reduce actual hazards such as a commitment by the Justice
Department to assess the vulnerability of chemical facilities to terrorist
activity have yet been enacted. The Bush Environmental Protection Agency justified the suspension of
the Clinton rule on citizen access to risk management plans on the grounds
that it wants to discuss related national security concerns
with the Justice Department before going forward. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has itself been criticized for failing
to complete an interim site-security study it was supposed to finish by
August 2000. This is just a smokescreen to shut down public information that
is embarrassing to an industry that continues to use obsolete chemicals
and processes that are inherently dangerous, says Rick Hind of Greenpeace. In March, Greenpeace activists demonstrated the weakness of plant security
at a Dow Chemical facility in Plaquemine, Louisiana by obtaining photos
from inside an unlocked pump house. Officials from Dow did not respond
to calls asking for comment. ACCs Van says the profiles of people within companies who
are responsible for plant security have increased in importance in the
last few years, in part because of the debate that took place in
Congress in 1999 over potential terrorist use of information posted on
the Internet. The bottom line is that we believe that all the data
should be made available and is available through the public reading rooms,
Van says. Greenpeace says that while there has never been a foreign terrorist attack
on a chemical facility in the United States, residents living near such
plants are continuously terrorized by facility noise and accidental releases
that drift off-site. Greenpeace and the Working Group on Right-to-Know released a survey of
accident data from 50 chemical plants in Louisianas notorious Cancer
Alley the portion of the Mississippi River between Baton
Rouge and New Orleans that hosts one of the densest concentrations of
chemical production facilities in the United States. Each of the 50 facilities in the survey stores enough hazardous chemicals
to potentially harm more than 10,000 people off-site. In the last eight
years, 32 of the 50 facilities reported accidents resulting in worker
injuries, evacuations or shelter-in-place emergency response
drills in which nearby residents are instructed to barricade themselves
in their homes, schools and places of business. Throughout the United States, 500 hazardous chemical accidents between
1987 and 1994 involved the release of over 100,000 pounds of one or more
hazardous chemicals. Environmental groups worry that the Bush delay of the new disclosure
regulations may be the first of a multi-layered frontal assault by the
new administration on right-to-know and pollution prevention laws. Both George W. Bush and Christie Whitman rolled back agency enforcement and public right-to-know provisions during their tenures as governor. In New Jersey, Whitman removed more than 1,000 hazardous industrial chemicals from the states right-to-know inspection list, once considered the toughest in the nation. As governor of Texas, Bush signed the states Audit Privilege Act (dubbed the polluters immunity law by critics), reducing government inspections and penalties for companies that conducted their own internal audits, which are treated as privileged and confidential information. |