Unprotected factories
THE UGLY CLASH between Congress and the Bush administration over a Dubai company handling US ports management had one benefit: putting a spotlight on two gaps in security against terrorism. One is the failure to inspect most containers in ports, and the other is the lack of mandates for better protection of the nation's chemical plants. On Tuesday, the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, proposed new regulations on the chemical industry, but they are too weak to do much good. Worse, Chertoff suggested that federal rules should preempt any state ones, which would block New Jersey in its effort to require tough standards for its many chemical companies.
The Bush administration has done some twists and turns on this issue. When the Department of Homeland Security was first formed after Sept. 11, then-Secretary Tom Ridge discussed mandatory regulations for the industry with Christine Whitman, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency. Leaders of the oil and chemical industries quickly complained to Bush adviser Karl Rove, and all talk about mandatory rules ended. Security upgrades would be voluntary.
Chertoff now believes that too many companies are not complying voluntarily, but the regulations he seeks are not nearly tough enough. In his view, firms should be responsible for drawing up their own security plans, to be checked by private-sector ''third party" inspectors. He also called for uniform federal standards. Another case of conservatism disavowing its states' rights roots, federal standards would simplify security planning for firms and at the same time protect them from state regulators who take terrorism more seriously than the administration does.
Chertoff specifically rejects an approach to plant safety that has been included in bills before Congress, including ones sponsored by Representative Edward Markey and former senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey. These bills would require companies to consider safer replacements for the most dangerous substances they use. If the replacements do not place an undue financial burden on the companies, they would be required to use them. One great advantage to this approach is that, in addition to preventing terrorism, it would also lower the risk of accidental spills in plants and in transport. Before there was Sept. 11, there was Bhopal, the release of lethal chemicals that killed more than 2,800 at a US-owned plant in India.
Nationwide, the EPA has said there are 123 chemical facilities where an accident or terrorist attack would threaten more than a million people. A chemical industry security plan that does not try to reduce society's overall vulnerability to these lethal substances is a half-measure at best.
