Chemical disasters will keep happening

On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern train carrying cancer-causing chemicals derailed near the small town of East Palestine in Ohio — resulting in a toxic explosion, large fire and an evacuation order. Hazardous waste pollution, like we’ve seen in thisdisaster, is devastating but not uncommon in America.

On average, every three days a hazardous incident occurs according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These incidents injure workers, first responders and pollute the environment. Fence-line communities situated near facilities that produce hazardous waste, are the most at-risk — and a majority are low-income, communities of color.

After years of public pressure, the EPA has recognized chemical safety as a pressing environmental justice issue – and is now working to finalize stringent regulations for facilities that use or store highly hazardous chemicals. The Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention Proposed Rule purports to better protect fenceline communities and reduce the frequency of chemical incidents. But concern is growing that the EPA’s proposed rule falls short of meeting these goals. Just before the disaster in Ohio, 49 members of both chambers of Congress sent a letter on Jan. 25 to the EPA warning that its proposed regulations aren’t sufficient to prevent chemical disasters in their districts.

As a former chair of the Obama administration’s Interagency Chemical Facility Safety and Security Working Group, which was established by executive order after a devastating chemical explosion leveled a city block in Texas, I share these concerns.

In 2017, I helped finalize improvements to the EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) rule that, I hoped, would make these communities safer. We required chemical manufacturing facilities to assess whether they could be using safer technologies and chemicals, mandated independent audits of facilities that had reported a single incident, and made it easier for community members to access information about hazardous facilities near them. But this progress was short lived — in 2019, the Trump administration gutted the accident prevention and information requirements we had finalized in one fell swoop. And chemical disasters kept happening.

I believe the EPA now has a critical window of opportunity to reinstate and further strengthen chemical safety regulations to prevent future disasters. The revisions to the Risk Management Program that it has proposed would take some positive first steps in this direction. But after all this time, we owe it to workers and fenceline communities to take even bolder action. There are four key additional requirements the EPA should include in this rule. 

First, as extreme weather becomes more frequent and intense due to climate change, hazardous facilities must be required to identify climate risks, and take concrete steps to prepare for them. A 2022 report by the Government Accountability Office found that one-third of hazardous facilities in the United States are located in the path of natural hazards like hurricanes, floods and wildfires — and warned that facilities are not adequately prepared to withstand them. The EPA must designate high-risk areas for chemical plant failures particularly susceptible to natural disasters and require these facilities to develop plans to protect themselves and adjacent communities.   

According to EPA records, over 3,000 facilities have reported chemical releases associated with power loss between 2004 and 2020. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of facilities that identify power loss as a threat to their operations have failed to install backup power systems voluntarily. The EPA must not only require facilities to assess climate change risk, as proposed, but implement plans to protect against it.

Second, the EPA should require all hazardous facilities covered by the RMP rule to conduct a Safer Technologies and Alternatives Assessment (STAA), a process by which facilities consider and document whether there are safer processes and chemicals they could be using that would reduce hazards. As currently drafted, the EPA’s proposed rule would only require 140 facilities to do this, exempting 95 percent of hazardous facilities. The chemical industry’s own safety professionals, represented by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and Center for Chemical Process Safety, recommend these assessments as critical to the protection of chemical plants and their adjacent communities. 

Third, workers and communities at chemical facilities must be recognized as key partners in preventing chemical incidents. Workers have the best knowledge of the operations of a chemical plant and should be able to anonymously report unsafe practices at the chemical plants where they work without fear of retaliation. 

And finally, the EPA must make non-classified information about hazardous facilities accessible to everyone. Communities, scientists and scholars need more information to help prevent chemical incidents. The EPA should provide technical assistance grants to enable communities at the frontlines to decipher information available to them.

This EPA cannot claim to advance environmental justice if it ignores the informed recommendations of fenceline community members and workers who have long advocated for chemical disaster prevention. The Biden administration has made a lot of promises to fenceline communities, it’s not too late to keep them.

Mathy Vathanaraj Stanislaus is vice provost, the inaugural executive director of the Environmental Collaboratory at Drexel University, and a former senior Obama administration official, who served as U.S. Senate-confirmed Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator from 2009 to 2017.