The recent fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas has prompted supporters of strict chemical and water facility security legislation to renew their calls for Congress to act on the proposals.
In an April 18 press release, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said that Congress should respond to the disaster by approving his legislation “to require facilities to thoroughly review risk and … move toward more secure plants and safer communities.” Sen. Lautenberg is the author of two bills, S. 67 and S. 68, which would require water and industrial facilities that store certain amounts of hazardous chemicals to adopt facility security plans. The proposals would also allow government regulators to force owners and operators to replace certain chemicals with so-called “inherently safer technologies” (IST).
The investigations of the cause of the West blast are just beginning, so it is too early to speculate as to whether the disaster will lead to congressional action or any changes in federal policy. But Sen. Lautenberg’s “IST” bills are generally seen as unlikely to advance through Congress due to strong Republican opposition to government mandates that could overrule the operations decisions of water and chemical plant managers. There are no Senate cosponsors of S. 67 and S. 68, and previous versions of the bills have never made it out of committee in the upper chamber. In the House of Representatives, no companion legislation to the proposals has been introduced this year.
Meanwhile, while the Obama Administration supports giving federal authorities “IST” mandate power over chemical and water plants, its FY14 budget proposal only calls for Congress to temporarily extend DHS’ existing CFATS chemical facility security program for another year, through October of 2014. The budget does not propose any reforms to the program that would toughen federal oversight of chemical or water plants.