The push to implement statewide safety precautions for ammonium nitrate facilities — while also continuing to block information from public release — has some local officials and citizens' rights activists concerned.
"This wasn't on our radar two years ago," said Tommy Muska, mayor of West, the small central Texas town thrown into a state of mourning and national headlines after a fertilizer plant explosion and fire killed 15 people in April 2013. "I think that the public needs to be informed if there's any kind of chemicals in their neighborhood."
This session, three state lawmakers have filed bills to require the implementation of a statewide safety protocol for facilities that store ammonium nitrate, the necessary but highly volatile component in some fertilizers, and to shift responsibility for gathering facility compliance data from the Department of State Health Services to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The bills would give the state fire marshal the authority to request inspections of such facilities, and require more information sharing among state and local emergency planners and response personnel. They also would mandate companies with ammonium nitrate and other volatile chemicals on site to submit updated reports within three months of any change in their inventories.
What the proposals do not do is force officials to share more information about volatile chemical storage with the public, leaving Texans with little access to information about potentially dangerous stockpiles near their homes or across the state.
Public Safety Concerns
For a short time last year, the issue dominated the race for governor after then-Attorney General Greg Abbott cited public safety concerns when he broke with precedent in ruling that state agencies did not need to release information about volatile chemical storage facilities to the public because it would violate state homeland security laws.
He said Texans could simply "drive around" to see where these facilities were, and get the data from the private companies themselves, a difficult task if people do not know where the locations exist or how to properly ask for the information.
One of this year's bill sponsors, Joe Pickett, said he agrees with Abbott that detailed information about chemical stockpiles should remain available only to local and state officials, as a way to ensure the information does not fall into the hands of criminals or terrorists that could use the material to manufacture homemade explosives.
"They're saying, 'well, we don't necessarily know where there's ammonium (nitrate) so they should just tell everybody in the public.' And I disagree because of the fact that it can be used against us, and has in the past, by a terrorist," the El Paso Democrat said, referring to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
Pickett said the bills focus on getting the right information to those who really need it: first responders and local safety officials. Volunteer firefighters suffered the highest death toll at West; and those called to the deadly Dupont leak last year had received only scant information on the amounts of the dangerous chemicals on site before they responded.
Muska said he is glad the issue is being addressed, and understands the security concerns, which he called a "two-sided sword."
"I'm caught between the middle. I do respect the public's ability to know what's going on and I think there is a way of doing that, there's a way of completing both of those tasks," he said. "I just don't know what that would be or that would look like."
Similar Legislation
Craig McDonald, director of the liberal watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, was more critical.
"Texas is turning back from the principle of transparent and open government," McDonald said. "It was such a controversy when Abbott said 'if you want to know this, go knock on their door.' This controversy should have led to more clarity and more openness."
Sen. Brian Birdwell and Rep. Kyle Kacal, both Republicans whose districts include West, have filed similar legislation. Unlike Pickett's bill, however, their bills also require facility owners to provide evidence of compliance with new rules, and requires them to post warning placards outside of ammonium nitrate storage areas.
Like Pickett's bill, they do not include increased public reporting requirements.
"It seeks to strike a careful balance between public safety regulations and a crucial agriculture industry," Kacal, R-College Station, said of his bill. "My approach with this legislation strives to clearly define any requirements on businesses so that they can be vetted through the legislative process, as well as clarify reporting requirements for those in the chemical industry."
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