The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be holding a hearing tomorrow in Washington, D.C. on postponing pending changes to the agency’s Risk Management Program (RMP) designed to protect workers, first responders and communities. The hearing will likely feature witnesses from trade groups, business leaders, environmental justice advocates, and others.
Here is who we probably won’t be hearing from: the one in three school children who live less than one mile of a potentially dangerous chemical facility. At least 50 percent of students in the states of Utah, Rhode Island, Texas, Louisiana, Nevada, Delaware, and Florida are in these danger zones. Too many Americans have had to evacuate, shelter in place, or race to pick up their child from school as an industrial fire burns or a chemical release heads their way.
We also probably won’t hear from workers from Richmond, California, whose lives were put in danger in 2012 when an 8-inch diameter pipe carrying fuel oil ruptured, releasing flammable vapors that quickly expanded 100 yards in all directions. The flames engulfed 19 refinery workers. Less than two minutes later, the vapor cloud ignited into a massive fireball and plume of smoke that spread over the northeastern Bay Area.
During that brief window, 18 of the Chevron employees crawled to safety; the last worker—a Chevron firefighter—climbed into the cab of his engine moments before the flames rolled over it. Thankfully, he survived. But the disaster wasn’t confined to the plant: in the following hours, some 15,000 people in the communities downwind of the plant sought medical attention for symptoms of exposure to smoke and fire gases. According to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), among the reported health effects were chest pain, shortness of breath, headaches, and sore throat; about 20 people were admitted to hospitals for treatment.
Companies have a responsibility to let their neighbors know the dangers their facilities may bring to neighborhoods. Unfortunately, very few actually live up to that responsibility. That’s one of the problems that the EPA’s common-sense changes to the RMP are meant to solve.
In the years leading up to the fire, Chevron’s managers had learned from their own engineers in at least six different reports that pipes in the plant’s crude unit were corroding and needed inspection and replacement. Managers ignored those warnings, even after a corroded pipe failed in 2007, causing a fire that injured a Chevron employee. By 2009, Chevron engineers warned of the potential for a “catastrophic failure,” and yet still managers deferred action. By 2012, the crude unit piping failed exactly where the engineers had predicted it would.
The Chevron incident illustrates that these incidents are preventable. From 2004 to 2013 alone, there were over 1,500 reported incidents nationally, including chemical releases, fires, and explosions at RMP-covered facilities that caused harm to workers and communities. These incidents caused over $2 billion in property damage, resulted in orders to evacuate or shelter in place for half a million people, and caused 17,099 injuries and 58 deaths.
Workers, first responders and communities deserve to have the information needed to make sure they are safe and prepared to respond in the case of a failure or incident. The EPA has improved the RMP rules with these and other moderate updates and the Trump administration shouldn’t delay these much-needed changes. We will be at the hearing tomorrow, helping to elevate the voices of workers and communities whose lives are endangered by these facilities. These rules have already gone through an extensive multi-agency stakeholder and comment process, and workers and communities cannot wait another two years for these rules to be implemented.
While the EPA is considering this delay, Congress is also trying to stop these rules from going into effect. You can write your member of the House and let them know that you stand by workers, first responders and communities and want the EPA to keep these changes that will save lives.
Jessica Eckdish is the Senior Policy Advisor with the BlueGreen Alliance in Washington, D.C. She will be testifying tomorrow to help bring the voices of those impacted by the delay of these common-sense safety rules to the hearing.