EPA sets new rules to limit damage from disasters at chemical facilities

The Biden administration on Friday issued new rules to prevent disasters at nearly 12,000 chemical plants and other industrial sites across the country that handle hazardous materials.

The regulations, for the first time, require facilities to explicitly deal with disasters, such as storms or floods, that could lead to an accidental release, including threats related to climate change. For the first time, chemical sites that have previously suffered accidents will have to undergo an independent audit. And the rules require chemical plants to share more information with neighbors and first responders.

“We are implementing important safeguards to protect some of our most vulnerable populations,” Janet McCabe, deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters ahead of the announcement.

Government officials called the stricter measures a step forward for safety at a time when hazards such as floods and wildfires – made even more extreme by global warming – threaten industrial sites across the country. In 2017, severe flooding from Hurricane Harvey knocked out power at a peroxide plant outside Houston, causing chemicals to overheat and explode, prompting local evacuations.

Some safety advocates said the rules don’t go far enough. They have long advocated for rules that ensure facilities switch to safer technologies and chemicals to prevent disasters in the first place. The new regulations eschew such requirements for most facilities.

The lack of stricter requirements was particularly disappointing, advocates said, because President Biden as a senator advocated similar measures to strengthen national security.

“If we simply need facilities that store or use large quantities of chlorine or other hazardous chemicals to transition to inherently safer technologies where possible,” Mr. Biden said at a hearing from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in June 2006: “we could, in effect, eliminate all or most of the known threats to our communities.”

“He was a leader in this area, but now that he is in charge, that is no longer the case,” said Rick Hind, an environmental consultant and former legislative director at Greenpeace.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Friday morning.

The EPA estimates that more than 130 million people live within three miles of sites that handle hazardous chemicals covered by the new rule. In a “worst case scenario” accident, more than 2,000 of these locations could endanger 100,000 people or more, according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report. Eighty-three of these facilities could put more than a million people at risk in a worst-case scenario, the report said.

Facilities include chemical plants and wholesalers, oil refineries, natural gas plants, wastewater treatment plants, fertilizer distributors, many of which are critical infrastructure but also pose a risk to nearby communities.

Former President Barack Obama had tried to tighten the rules by proposing safety measures after a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas in 2013 killed 15 people. The Trump administration rolled back most of these rules before they went into effect, part of a slew of environmental and safety rules it unraveled. In 2021, the EPA announced plans to reinstate the rule.

Since then, a coalition of environmental groups and experts, as well as national security experts and former military officials dealing with terrorist and other threats to chemical sites, have urged the EPA to require hazardous sites to use safer chemicals.

“Using inherently safer alternatives is the only surefire way to prevent worst-case scenarios from becoming catastrophic disasters,” said Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and EPA administrator under George W. Bush, urged in a 2022 letter co-signed by several retired army generals.

There are examples of chemical manufacturers who quickly adopted alternatives. In 2009, The Clorox Company announced that it would phase out the use of chlorine gas, a particularly dangerous chemical used as a chemical weapon in World War I, in all its factories. Three years later, the company said it had accomplished that task.

And after the September 11 attacks, a wastewater treatment plant in Washington, DC, just miles from the White House and the US Capitol, removed hundreds of tons of explosive liquid chlorine and sulfur dioxide from its facilities within weeks.

In comments submitted to the EPA during the rulemaking process, the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s largest lobbying group, pushed back against the measure, saying that safer technologies were “not easy to identify or implement.” Overall, the rules burden affected industries by requiring them to undertake extensive new training, adjustments and analysis, none of which will result in a reduction in accidental emissions, the industry group said. Furthermore, “natural hazards are inherently difficult to predict, and complete protection may be unachievable.”

Qingsheng Wang, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University who specializes in process safety, said switching to safer alternatives was a no-brainer for new facilities that could start from scratch. “But for existing facilities, adapting processes can be very difficult,” he said.

Still, the goal should be to “minimize, replace and simplify certain chemicals,” he said. “If we can do that, it’s a good way to improve safety.”