Residential areas are at risk when toxic & explosive chemicals are present
From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, 10/22/22
Losing power ~ One of Maya Nye’s former fellow People Concerned About MIC members, lifelong Institute resident Sue Davis, tired of that effort long ago. Davis, 79, also tired of heart and lung ailments she attributes to the Institute plant. Davis recalled metallic particles emitted from the plant causing tiny white spots on her skin and arsenic revealed in sampling she had done to figure out what chemicals were being shed upon her during Rhône-Poulenc’s plant ownership.
Now Davis is staying with family in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Winnetka over 2,300 miles away. She settled there amid the COVID-19 pandemic and doesn’t plan to live in Institute again. “I feel freer and safer out here,” Davis said.
Davis knows the EPA is aiming to strengthen chemical industry regulations with its Risk Management Program rule updates, but isn’t convinced it will matter. “It’s always a game with those agencies,” Davis said. “The chemical plant wins out over us all the time.”
In its Risk Management Program rule proposal, the EPA notes concerns about industry undermining safety instead of striving for it. The EPA said it’s “concerned” that some owners and operators use the threat of extreme weather events to justify disabling equipment designed to detect chemical releases of substances regulated by the program. The agency expressed concern that air monitoring and control equipment is often removed from service before natural disasters to evade monitoring requirements, and may not become operational until after the threat has passed.
The Risk Management Program rule separates processes into three program levels with corresponding requirements that reflect the processes’ potential for public impacts. Program 1 processes wouldn’t impact the public in a worst-case release, while facilities with Program 3 processes have the most requirements.
The EPA also found that just 63% and 44% of facilities with Program 2 and Program 3 processes, respectively, have installed backup power at their facilities despite identifying that the loss of cooling, heating and electricity is a major potential hazard to their operations. Six out of every 10 Risk Management Program-covered facilities had Program 3 processes as of December 2020, according to the federal Government Accountability Office.
The EPA’s proposed rule allows facilities to determine whether power loss is a hazard to their process. It would require risk management plans for Program 2 and Program 3 processes to include declined power loss, natural hazard and siting hazard evaluation recommendations and the company’s justifications for them.
“Why does the revised rule still rely on RMP facilities to make these kinds of voluntary improvements?” Coming Clean communications manager Deidre Nelms asked during the EPA’s public hearing on the rule updates.
Managing climate risk ~ The proposed Risk Management Program rule mentions the word ‘climate’ over two dozen times. The proposal’s release in August came six months after a Government Accountability Office report found that the EPA doesn’t consistently assess how facilities manage risks from climate change and natural hazards. (The Government Accountability Office is a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress scrutinizing how taxpayer dollars are spent.)
West Virginia isn’t just prone to chemical incidents. It’s especially vulnerable to climate change impacts, too. A study released last year by First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research group that quantifies climate risk, found more than half of West Virginia’s critical infrastructure — including fire, police and power stations — are at risk of becoming inoperable due to flooding. That was a higher share than in any other state.
Nearly two-thirds of over five dozen Risk Management Program-covered facilities across West Virginia are located in areas with flooding that may be exacerbated by climate change, per a Government Accountability Office analysis of EPA data released in February. That’s a much higher clip than the 31% of facilities the office found were located in areas with natural hazards in its review of over 10,000 facilities nationwide.
The EPA noted in its Risk Management Program rule proposal that a large-scale natural disaster could threaten facilities in a community simultaneously, leaving communities to endure the direct effects of a natural disaster without receiving warning of chemical releases.
The Chemical Safety Board found in 2018 that chemical facilities lacked adequate industry guidance to prepare for natural hazards like flooding.
But the Government Accountability Office’s February report found no evidence that the EPA had developed direction for Risk Management Program facilities on incorporating climate change risks into facility risk management oversight. The office found no EPA guidance materials that mentioned climate change.
The EPA has left the door open to developing additional guidance for assessing natural hazards. The agency is seeking comment on whether it should require sources in areas exposed to heightened risk of flooding and other extreme weather to conduct hazard evaluations associated with climate while also requiring all facilities to consider potential for natural hazards unrelated to climate.
Chemical safety advocates have criticized the proposed rule for limiting a requirement to consider safer technology and alternative risk management measures to petroleum, coal products and chemical manufacturing processes within one mile of another facility using those processes. The EPA has asked for comment on whether it should limit the requirement for that analysis to those processes. The agency estimates the proposed approach would impact less than 5% of the more than 12,000 facilities covered by the rule. “A truly preventative RMP rule would require all facilities not just to consider but actually implement safer alternatives whenever possible,” Nelms said during the EPA hearing.
An information struggle ~ Air quality knowledge has been especially important in Betty Rivard’s life. The volunteer community advocate’s father was an air pollution regulator who joined West Virginia University’s faculty as professor and director of a new air pollution training program in 1963.
Nearly six decades later, Rivard looks up real-time air quality data on her smartphone to determine how challenging her daily walks will be. But Rivard, who lives in Charleston downwind of chemical plants, feels she needs to know more. “I want to know right away if something is happening,” Rivard told the EPA during its public hearing last month. Rivard also wants to know what facilities are doing to prevent incidents.
The EPA is proposing to amend the Risk Management Program rule to allow the public to request specific chemical hazard information if they live within six miles of a facility. The agency says the six-mile restriction would allow access to information for most residents living within worst-case scenario impact zones. Facilities receiving requests would be required to give certain chemical hazard information and access to community emergency preparedness information.
The rule would require a facility’s next scheduled compliance audit to be conducted by a third party when it experiences two reportable accidents within five years. The requirement also would apply when one reportable accident has occurred within five years at a facility with a Program 3 petroleum, coal products or chemical manufacturing process within one mile of another facility with one of those processes.
‘Anything can happen’ ~ The Kanawha Valley has gotten reminders in recent months that its Chemical Valley nickname still fits. Decomposition of a chlorination chemical at Clearon Corp.’s South Charleston tableting and packaging plant prompted a roughly 45-minute shelter-in-place in August. No injuries were reported.
Kanawha County officials later released a list of the highest business personal property assessments in the county showing that five of the 10 largest assessments were for chemical manufacturers. Then on Monday, the state Department of Environmental Protection announced it had made a preliminary determination to renew an air permit for Union Carbide to operate an ethylene oxide distribution system in Institute.
Union Carbide’s emissions of the carcinogenic chemical in Institute and South Charleston have concerned area residents. The EPA’s reclassification of the flammable, colorless gas as a carcinogen in 2016 drove up Kanawha County’s estimated cancer risk, prompting subsequent state air modeling and sampling efforts.
One of those concerned citizens, lifelong North Charleston resident Robbie Hendricks, 63, lives directly across the Kanawha River and Blaine Island, a roughly 1.25-mile-long island that’s been a Union Carbide manufacturing site, from Union Carbide’s South Charleston ethylene oxide-emitting facility.
Hendricks fears his community has suffered from industrial emissions, recalling that 40 residents within roughly a hundred yards of his Blaine Boulevard home of 37 years have had cancer. But Hendricks knows that chemical explosions elsewhere in the Kanawha Valley also pose a threat to his street. “Anything can happen over there,” Hendricks said.
Speaking to the EPA during its public hearing last month, Maya Nye made it clear what she feels the agency must do next. “We need prevention requirements now,” Nye told the agency.
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