Koch-Funded Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Limits Public Chemical Disclosure After Deadly Explosion
Shortly after the anniversary of the 2013 fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people, wounded 226, and upended a large portion of the small town of West, Texas, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said the incident was preventable and that it resulted from the failure of a company to take the necessary steps to avert it.
The explosion at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility was caused by ammonium nitrate. There are dozens of facilities across Texas storing that same chemical in large quantities. In the year since the explosion the Texas government has only made one change to laws surrounding chemical disclosure and safety: restricting publicly available information regarding the location of these chemicals.
In May, after the Chemical Safety Board report came out, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that government entities can withhold the locations of dangerous chemicals listed in state records (Tier II reports) to protect the public from terrorism or other threats. Abbott, a far-right Republican who is the leading candidate for Governor in Texas, then said that people can identify such facilities with a “drive around” their neighborhoods, and that they can find out about the chemicals by asking the companies via letter or email. He originally said they could just walk up and ask, but had to backtrack after remembering those facilities were on private property.
The statements set off a firestorm, and Abbott was forced to concede that this method of inquiry was burdensome, but that he still considered the change in law a “win-win.” Abbott is slavishly committed to a regrettable Texas tradition: Putting unbridled faith in oil and chemical companies to do the right thing.
University of Texas at Austin journalism professor and author of several books about Texas, including City on Fire: The Explosion That Devastated A Texas Town and Ignited A Historic Legal Battle told ThinkProgress that Abbott is following in the footsteps of current Gov. Rick Perry in putting the demands of big oil and chemical operations ahead of long-range societal problems in addressing the “so-called Texas Economic Miracle:”
I don’t believe Greg Abbott is waking up every morning like Mr. Burns in The Simpsons, rubbing his hands together and saying ‘How do we screw over the little people today?’ But he is slavishly committed to a regrettable Texas tradition: Putting unbridled faith in oil and chemical companies to do the right thing. To self-regulate.
Minutaglio said a similar occurrence to what happened in West, Texas actually also happened in Texas in 1947 during the greatest manmade disaster in American history — The Texas City Disaster — in which tons of ammonium nitrate exploded and killed close to 600 people.
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