DO NOT MESS WITH TEXAS HAS CREATED A
VERY MESSY TEXAS: FROM FERTILIZER PLANT EXPLOSIONS
TO DEADLY CHEMICAL RELEASES TO WIDESPREAD POLLUTION AND NUISANCE – HAVING A JOB
IN TEXAS HAS ITS PRICE
The lax regulatory attitude in Texas has created a real
mess. The “DO NOT MESS WITH TEXAS”
approach of the state government has created a very messy Texas. From deadly fertilizer plant explosions, to
lack of state fire codes to deadly chemical release to widespread pollution and
air emissions and public and private nuisances.
Who can forget the safety violations at BP's Texas City, Texas,
refinery that resulted in a massive explosion — with 15 deaths and 170 people
injured – in March of 2005. Who can
forget the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf in 2010? It was Texas-based engineers and drillers who
were responsible for the disaster. And
so on, and so on.
Recent US Supreme Court decisions have ruled that Texas is a
polluter state and must limit its emissions going towards the downwind states,
such New York. Having a job and living
in the great state of Texas has a price.
We reported awhile back about the West Texas deadly fertilizer
explosions and the Athens Texas almost deadly fertilizer fires. Texas has no state fire code – can you
believe that? With all these chemical and oil companies? Well, we do.
This is Messy Texas, after all.
LACK
OF PROTECTION FOR COMMUNITIES AT RISK FROM AMMONIUM NITRATE STORAGE FACILITIES. LACK OF REGULATION AT ALL LEVELS OF
GOVERNMENT.
On April 17, 2013,
an explosion and fire in the West Fertilizer facility in West, Texas, resulted
in at least 14 fatalities, 226 injuries, and widespread community damage. Large quantities of ammonium nitrate (AN)
fertilizer exploded after being heated by a fire at the storage and
distribution facility. The U.S. Chemical
Safety Board (CSB) stated few months ago that the fire and explosion was
preventable. It should never have
occurred. It resulted from the failure
of a company to take the necessary steps to avert a preventable fire and
explosion and from the inability of federal, state and local regulatory
agencies to identify a serious hazard and correct it.
We also reported the recent “death by lethal inhalation” on the
death of workers at a DuPont plant – one of the workers tried to save his
brother – we are wiping the tears from this one. The press reports all kinds of violations at
that plant and elsewhere. We know that
DuPont has great scientists who hold record number of patents. But their safety record is atrocious. That is why they do not built anymore plants
in the United States- instead they took their deadly enterprises to the rest of
world. Bon Voyage and do not let the
door slam you on your way out. Here is
the article that provides update on the methyl mercaptan deadly incident.
DuPont Tragedy One of Many Toxic Gas Releases
A Saturday morning tragedy introduced Texans to an invisible
killer.
Methyl mercaptan, a foul-smelling gas, overwhelmed five workers
at the DuPont chemical plant in La Porte on Nov. 15, killing four – including
two brothers – and sending another to the hospital.
Such rapid deaths from toxic chemical exposure are rare,
experts say.
But dozens of times in the past two years, a Texas Tribune
analysis shows, plants across Texas have reported accidentally releasing gases
that can be deadly in relatively small amounts.
Thousands – and even millions – of pounds of toxic chemicals
beyond what permits allow have spewed from facilities. While companies
considered many of those events “close calls” that prompted evacuations at
worst, some triggered deadly explosions that, in turn, caused even more gas to
be released.
“The bounty that we get from all this business has got kind of
a dark side,” said Rock Owens, an environmental attorney for Harris County,
home to the Houston Ship Channel, whose oil refineries make up 12 percent of
the nation’s refining capacity. “We have a very high concentration of dangerous
industry here, and I don’t think the state has the resources to address it.”
The Tribune analyzed an Texas Commission on Environmental
Quality inventory of chemical releases higher than what the law allows. The
data relies on industry reporting.
Since 2009, Texas chemical manufacturers
have reported at least 19 other unauthorized releases of methyl mercaptan,
the analysis found. Methyl mercaptan can cause nausea, vomiting and fluid
buildup in the lungs. Its rotten-egg smell wafted over La Porte for at least 24
hours, but county health experts said the leak posed little risk to the
community because even trace amounts carry the smell.
DuPont’s was the only methyl mercaptan release that killed or
injured workers in the past five years, according to state and federal data.
The gas, however, is among hundreds of dangerous chemicals plants spew across
Texas.
"There are a lot of compounds where you wouldn't
necessarily have four or five people die, but that doesn't mean that those
releases aren't harmful," said Elena Craft, a health scientist who
specializes in air pollution at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy
group. "We need to limit these massive amounts of release. I mean, they're
highly toxic compounds."
Industry officials say Texas plants have grown safer in recent
decades as companies pour millions of dollars into training and protective
gear. They say the toxic releases need context. After all, Texas is huge – and so are its
chemical manufacturers.
“Our industry takes every process safety incident very
seriously,” Hector Rivero, president and CEO of the Texas Chemical Council,
said in a page-long statement that offered “deepest sympathies,” to those
affected by the DuPont leak. He also
said the industry’s record is improving on several safety measures, but did not
provide a source for the data.
Alex Cuclis, a researcher in Houston who used to work for
Shell, agreed. "I think most petrochem workers, myself included, felt
that we were much more likely to be killed in an accident driving to work than
from a plant explosion," Cuclis said. "I think the stats support that
pretty well."
Still, critics worry safety culture at plants can shrivel after
just a few months of smooth operations and “near misses.” The results, they
say, can mirror what happened at DuPont.
“You’ll have a company who will have a good run, but then
something like this will happen," said Robert Morse, a Houston lawyer who
has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in industrial accident cases.
“It’s been my experience that DuPont probably runs a better shop than most
companies, but they clearly dropped the ball here.”
Texas’ hands-off regulatory philosophy doesn’t help, Morse and
others say.
“The penalty structure here for an event like this – depending
on how many violations you can carve out of a horrible incident like this –
would range from $50 per day per violation to $25,000 per day per
violation," Owens said. “If you’re a major company, that’s not even as
significant as a parking ticket is to deal with for a normal household.”
In the past two years, several industrial plants reported
dozens of unauthorized releases of hydrogen cyanide, a chemical that
interferes with organs’ oxygen use and is deadly
in high concentrations. And in at least 10 instances, plants released 65 pounds
or more of the gas.
That was enough to
send six workers to the hospital after an industrial plant leak on Texas' Gulf
Coast last February. In that case, Alvin-based Ascend Performance Materials, a
producer of carpet and textile fibers, reported a venting issue that released 65
pounds of hydrogen cyanide. That prompted a “shelter in place order,” and the
hospitalizations, according to a federal incident
report. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Ascend
$37,000, which the company is appealing.
Not all information on TCEQ enforcement is readily available,
but agency records show that Ascend paid the
agency a $6,120 for leaking 178 pounds of hydrogen cyanide in 2011 — three
years before six workers were hospitalized. The company told regulators it had
replaced some electrical equipment and started a maintenance inspection
program.
In 2012, Invista, an Orange County fiber producer, released at
least 14 pounds of hydrogen cyanide from a leaky valve. That prompted an
evacuation and sent one person to the hospital, federal reports show.
About a year later, workers fled the plant after another such
leak. A few months after that, regulators fined
the company $5,251 for the 2012 incident and asked for an additional $5,000
that would go toward a state energy efficiency program.
When it comes to leaks of toxic chemicals like volatile organic
compounds — which can cause cancer due to long-term exposure or cause
dizziness, throat and eye irritation, or other impacts upon short-term exposure
— hospitalizations are less likely. But they have happened in at least a few
instances, federal data show.
In May, loose bolts on a gasoline pump suction strainer at a
BASF chemical manufacturing plant in Port Arthur released a
number of different volatile organic compounds, or toxic chemicals that also
contribute to ozone pollution, the company reported. A federal incident report
shows that one
person went to the hospital. Acute short-term exposure to one of
the compounds, toluene,
can affect the central nervous system. The plant also released benzene, a known
carcinogen and occupational hazard.
Those weren’t the first such releases at the plant. In the two
years prior to that incident, BASF reported unauthorized emissions of benzene
and other volatile organic compounds at least five other times. That included one release of
more than 1,500 pounds of benzene in August 2013 after pressure gauges rupture
and caused a leak. It appears that
the TCEQ fined the company for such emissions around that time, but specific
records were not immediately available.
In one of the larger events reported in recent years, Shell
Oil's Deer Park refinery released close
to 40,000 pounds of benzene in January 2013. Along with other volatile organic
compounds, the substance vented out of an improperly operated valve for 15 days
before a plant worker noticed. It paid the
TCEQ $200,000 for that and other related emissions violations, along with
contributing money to a Houston-area air-monitoring project.
Repeated events like that one impact public health, Craft said.
"You've got folks that are getting routine exposure to
benzene, and after some certain number of years there's a chance they're going
to end up with cancer," she said. "It all adds up.”
For their part, Texas regulators say they swiftly respond to
chemical leaks – within their power.
“In emergency response events, TCEQ’s role is to rapidly
provide personnel, expertise, and equipment, as necessary, to assess the extent
of public exposure to hazardous materials, such as monitoring offsite air
quality,” Terry Clawson, a TCEQ spokesman, said in an email.
Clawson added that this past year, the agency found that 98
percent of all facilities that emit air pollutants that it inspected were in
compliance.
Supreme Court's Air Pollution Ruling Goes Against Texas
The state of Texas, which has fought the federal government
over several environmental regulations, lost a major battle Tuesday, as U.S.
Supreme Court justices ruled
in a 6-2 vote to reinstate a regulation that aims to limit the effects of air
pollution across state boundaries.
Texas was one of a number of states, joined by industry and
labor groups, that had sued the Environmental Protection Agency over the Cross-State
Pollution Rule in 2011.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling means that Texas and 26 other
"upwind" states in the South, Midwest and Appalachia will have to
reduce some of their emissions that contribute to air pollution in East Coast
states like New York. Coal plants are among those likely be the most affected,
particularly as they are already dealing with new limits on
their carbon dioxide emissions.
"This is a big decision," said David Spence, a
professor of business and law at the University of Texas at Austin who
specializes in federal environmental law. "It's one of many things that is
putting pressure on coal-fired power."
He added that the EPA, whose attempts to regulate cross-state
air pollution date back to the Clinton administration, has gained some clarity.
Nearly 15 years of legal challenges to such rules are now over; the only way
they could change now is if a presidential administration orders the EPA to go
in a different direction.
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokesman Terry
Clawson said the agency is disappointed with the ruling. But, he added, “we’re
encouraged that the court clearly acknowledged … the complexity of the
interstate transport problem.”
In their legal challenge of the rule, industry and labor groups
had argued that the EPA's consideration of cost-effectiveness in deciding how
states should limit their emissions was unfair. Texas added that the agency had
not given states enough time or guidance to follow the new regulations.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had agreed and ordered the
EPA to go back to the drawing board. But the Supreme Court reversed the court’s
decision and dismissed both complaints, calling the agency's use of
cost-effectiveness "permissible, workable, and equitable."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, added
that nothing in the Clean Air Act
requires the EPA to give the extra guidance or time that Texas had insisted was
necessary to follow the rules. “EPA is not obliged … to postpone its action
even a single day,” she wrote.
Environmental groups hailed the ruling as a victory for clean
air, noting that the EPA estimates the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule would
save 30,000 lives a year. But Texas and other states that challenged it,
including Louisiana and Alabama, said it would devastate their economies.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court’s swing vote on many issues, and
Chief Justice John Roberts, one of the court’s most conservative justices,
joined the court’s four more liberal justices in ruling in favor of the EPA.
Abbott has sued the EPA multiple times. A federal court
dismissed a lawsuit last year that challenged the agency for taking over Texas’
greenhouse gas permitting program. The state lost another lawsuit protesting
the EPA’s definition of greenhouse gases as a danger to public health and
welfare, and the Supreme Court declined to
hear an appeal.
The fate of another challenge by Texas and industry groups to
EPA regulations will soon be decided. The Supreme Court heard arguments in
February against the
agency’s greenhouse gas permitting rules and will issue a ruling in
the coming months.
High Court to Hear Texas' Challenge to Climate Change Rules
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Texas' challenge of
federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like
power plants and factories, the court announced Tuesday. But it declined to
hear the state's appeals of two other decisions, effectively upholding rules
that limit such emissions from vehicles and maintaining the Environmental
Protection Agency's assertion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and
welfare.
Federal judges had previously knocked down efforts by Texas and
several other states, along with powerful industry coalitions, to challenge the
EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Should the Supreme Court
justices determine otherwise after hearing oral arguments next year, there
could be severe implications for rules limiting emissions from big power plants
and other facilities. The EPA recently proposed rules to limit carbon dioxide
emissions from coal plants, prompting critics to accuse the agency of trying to
destroy the coal industry and economy while drawing praise from environmental
advocates.
At issue is whether the EPA can use the Clean Air Act, which
gives it the authority to regulate emissions of toxic air pollutants and to
limit emissions of greenhouse gases as well. In 2007, the court had ruled in
the landmark case Massachusetts v. EPA that the EPA could do so for motor
vehicles, which has led to stringent fuel-efficiency requirements for cars.
But Texas, joined by states like Mississippi, Alabama and South
Carolina, and industry coalitions including the American Petroleum Institute,
is arguing that the Clean Air Act was never meant to apply to anything other
than air pollutants, because greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane
"[do]
not deteriorate the quality of the air that people breathe."
Attorneys representing the groups added that "carbon
dioxide is virtually everywhere and in everything," and
called the EPA's proposed regulations of greenhouse gases
"absurd."
Of the nine petitions the group of states and industry leaders
had filed to the Supreme Court regarding its challenge of climate change rules,
the justices agreed to hear six, but only want to consider one question:
"Whether EPA permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas
emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the
Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouse gases."
In other words: Does the fact that the EPA can regulate
greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles also give it authority to do so
for facilities that don't move, like power plants and factories? More
specifically, can the EPA require those facilities to apply for special permits
that allow them to emit large amounts of greenhouse gases?
Attorney General Greg Abbott,
a Republican candidate for governor, applauded the news as a victory for Texas.
"The EPA's illegal regulations threaten Texas jobs and Texas
employers," he said in a statement, adding, "This is a runaway
federal agency, so we are pleased the Obama administration will have to defend
its lawless regulations before the U.S. Supreme Court."
Environmental advocates saw the court's decision as equally
supportive of their cause.
"The most important thing about today’s Supreme Court
ruling is that it reaffirms EPA’s authority and responsibility to act on the
overwhelming science showing that carbon pollution is driving dangerous climate
change," David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council
wrote on his blog.
David Spence, a professor of law and business at the University
of Texas at Austin, said it wasn't likely that the Supreme Court would forbid
the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources
altogether. But the justices could say it must do so based on different
standards, threatening the years of work that have gone into proposing the
current rules for limiting emissions from power plants and other facilities.
"The worst that could happen is they make EPA go back and
do things again," Spence said.
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