Texas plant disaster reveals fragmented system of oversight
Safety groups call for closing loopholes
While investigators in West, Texas, sift through the rubble of a fertilizer plant that exploded last week, killing 15 people, safety advocates are calling for stricter government oversight of potentially hazardous sites like that one.
The operator of the plant, West Fertilizer Co., did file an emergency response plan update in 2011 with the EPA listing anhydrous ammonia on site, but did not indicate there was a risk of fire or explosion at the plant. The company did not report the large quantity of ammonium nitrate (the substance used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995) to the Department of Homeland Security, as it was required to do by law.
“You’d like to think something like this could never happen, that there’d be tight oversight by some agency, but that’s not how it looks,” said Peg Seminario, director of Safety and Health for the AFL-CIO. “In reality, the regulation and oversight systems are often fragmented, so a small but potentially hazardous facility like this one in Texas can get what appears to be little scrutiny. There’s a lot we don’t know yet about what happened, but we do know there are gaps in the regulation and oversight systems. The president should provide leadership in coordinating the investigation and response from federal and state agencies.”
The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS) pointed out that per the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (which were passed in response to earlier tragedies), West Fertilizer Co. was supposed to have developed a risk management plan that it shared with local responders. It did not. Most of those killed in the blast were local firemen and volunteers who rushed to the facility to fight the fire that preceded the explosion.