Comprehensive planning, preventive behavior and detailed inspections are warranted
From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, October 22, 2022
Maya Nye felt the boom that changed her life from a mile away. Then a fire truck went down her one-way street announcing that a shelter-in-place order had taken effect and to shut all doors and windows. Nye, then 16, sheltered in place like she had been taught in school, but the duct tape she put up to cover the cracks around the door and windows didn’t work. The smell infiltrated her house.
An explosion at the Institute chemical plant then owned by former French chemical company Rhône-Poulenc killed one worker and injured two others who were in a unit for the insecticide methomyl.
It was Aug. 18, 1993 — nearly nine years after a leak of highly toxic methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed thousands of people and caused permanent disabilities or premature death for many thousands more.
“My life was forever changed,” recalled Nye, who became a chemical safety advocate and is now federal policy director for Coming Clean, a chemical industry-focused environmental health nonprofit. — Nye’s life changed, but the chemical danger in Institute didn’t.
Bayer CropScience bought the Institute plant in 2002, and it became the only facility in the nation that made and stored large quantities of methyl isocyanate, which can damage human organs by inhalation and skin contact in quantities as low as 0.4 parts per million.
Nye was sitting in her living room on Aug. 28, 2008, when she felt another boom. — A 4,500-gallon pressure vessel had exploded in a methomyl unit at the Institute plant. Two employees died, six volunteer firefighters and two contractors working at the facility were treated for potential toxic chemical exposure, and a shelter-in-place order lasting over three hours was issued for more than 40,000 residents, including students at West Virginia State University next to the facility.
Improper methomyl unit control system interlock changes were involved in the blast — just as they had been in the 1993 explosion, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board’s incident report.
Former Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted during a congressional hearing that the explosion propelled the 2.5-ton vessel in a northeasterly direction. Had the projectile been launched south and struck a methyl isocyanate tank onsite, Stupak observed, the incident might have rivaled the Bhopal disaster.
During the April 2009 hearing, the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee considered what Stupak, the subcommittee chairman, called Bayer CropScience’s “pattern of secrecy.”
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper testified to the subcommittee that a lack of timely information from Bayer CropScience “placed first responders unnecessarily in harm’s way and placed thousands of citizens at risk” following the explosion that shook homes throughout a 20-mile radius.
“Listen, we get more information on a car wreck than we got that night,” Carper told the subcommittee. “ … [A]nybody knowing what that plant has, knowing the damage to that vessel, would have ordered — at least prepared an evacuation at the very least. We didn’t do that.”
Bayer CropScience later invoked the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 to block the Chemical Safety Board from releasing company records to the public. The law requires companies to flag documents containing “sensitive security information” and notify recipients that documents must be controlled under Department of Homeland Security investigations.
But the Chemical Safety Board consulted with the U.S. Coast Guard and noted in its incident report that the Bayer claim was “without basis.” Then-Bayer CropScience president and CEO Bill Buckner admitted in testimony to House lawmakers that the company’s claim was partly motivated by “a desire to avoid making the controversial chemical MIC part of the public debate.”
Representing community advocate group People Concerned About MIC at a Chemical Safety Board meeting at West Virginia State University two days later, Nye said the group was tired. “We are tired — I think that’s an understatement — but we are tired of smoke and mirrors and cagey non-answers and our lives in your hands,” Nye told the Chemical Safety Board.
A historically Black community, Institute long has been what concerned citizens have called an environmentally unjust “sacrifice zone.” Chemical facilities like those operated by Union Carbide and Bayer CropScience, as well as sites like the nearby Dunbar treatment plant, have combined to expose Institute residents to elevated health and safety risks for generations. Union Carbide bought the Institute plant from Bayer CropScience in 2015.
The comparatively high frequency of chemical disasters in West Virginia has kept the board charged with investigating industrial chemical incidents busy over the years.
West Virginia has been the focus of more completed Chemical Safety Board investigations than any other state except Texas since 2006. The board has conducted seven investigations of incidents that killed 14 people in West Virginia since 2007.
But last month, Nye found herself again urging federal authorities not to leave key industry regulations in the hands of industry itself. “Voluntary measures don’t work,” Nye said.
Nye was speaking during a public hearing held by the Environmental Protection Agency to take public input on its proposed updates to a rule meant to protect communities vulnerable to chemical disaster. The updates aren’t protective enough, Nye and other chemical safety activists say.
The Risk Management Program rule governs some 12,000 facilities nationwide, from chemical makers and distributors to oil refineries and food and beverage manufacturers. The rule requires that facilities that use extremely hazardous substances develop a risk management plan which identifies the potential effects of a chemical accident, lists steps the facility is taking to prevent an accident and details emergency response procedures.
The EPA is still taking comment on the proposed updates to the rule. The public may comment on the proposed rule at www.regulations.gov (Docket ID No.: EPA-HQ-OLEM-2022-0174) until Oct. 31. The agency said it plans to issue a final rule by August 2023.
Chemical safety proponents say the updates don’t adequately guard against climate risks, are too lenient on facilities with histories of reported incidents before a third-party audit is mandated and require too few facilities to consider safer technology measures.
Those provisions loom especially large in the Kanawha Valley, where one wrong chemical reaction can trigger a catastrophe. “Many of my neighbors and mentors, they’re not here today,” Nye said as she choked up during last month’s EPA hearing. “ … [T]hey’ve either died or are sick or, to be painfully honest, are really tired of trying to convince the EPA and federal governments to protect them.”
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