The Waco Tribune has a comprehensive look at the investigation thus far, and includes this:
Meanwhile, a hazy picture emerged Thursday of the fertilizer plant’s past regulatory issues. Because of the plant’s age, it was “grandfathered” and exempted from a TCEQ air permit until 2004. But it continued without the required permit until 2006, when the TCEQ received a complaint about strong ammonia smells in the neighborhood and served the company with a notice of violation.
That same year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fined the facility $2,300, citing several deficiencies in its risk management plan. The plant got its TCEQ permit in late 2006 for the anhydrous ammonia storage, promising to mitigate any accidental releases of the substance offsite. Another permit for loading and storing dry fertilizer was granted in March 2007. The TCEQ had no records of inspections after January 2007.The Dallas Morning News reports that Texas regulators did not consider the plant to pose a significant risk to the surrounding area.
The explosion came after years in which state and federal agencies overlooked the potential for what some say was a preventable catastrophe. “Last night’s tragic explosion points to the need for stricter regulations of plants that store and use large quantities of hazardous chemicals,” said Tom O’Connor, executive director of the National Council on Occupational Safety and Health, a union-affiliated nonprofit group.
Neil Carman, a Ph.D. chemist with the Sierra Club in Texas and a former state environmental inspector, said lax controls are putting people in danger in scores of Texas communities “A basic concern here is that the chemical ammonia, NH3, is very weakly regulated at the federal and state level, or else this accident would not have likely occurred,” Carman said.
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality did not respond to questions about why they repeatedly approved the companies’ operations without addressing the risk of explosions.
The Huffington Post comments that one culprit is the reduced funds given to regulatory agencies to actually do their jobs:
According to the 2011 budget submitted to congress by OSHA, which provides most of the federal oversight for that industry, there are 7.5 million workplaces in the U.S. and only 2,218 inspectors to check them for safety violations. The number of employed nationally means that there is one inspector for every 57,984 workers. One analyst reported that means OSHA has the capacity to inspect a business work place once every 129 years. Fortunately, state level OSHA workers aren't as pressed and they can get to a facility every 67 years.
The Washington Post surveys a variety of issues related to fertilizer plants, including commentary on regulatory oversight:
. . . the operators of the West Texas facility thought an explosion was impossible. The Dallas Morning News obtained a copy of the facility’s internal safety review for fire or explosive risks. “The worst possible scenario, the report said, would be a 10-minute release of ammonia gas that would kill or injure no one.”
As for other oversight: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration tends to be understaffed and inspections are relatively infrequent. The Texas fertilizer industry has only seen six inspections in the past five years — and the West Texas Fertilizer Co. facility was not one of them.
