Chemical industry spends millions shaping chemical facilities security legislation
but also reduces the cost of physical security and the attractiveness of the facility as a target for attack. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee chair Joseph Lieberman has called safer chemicals and processes “the only foolproof way to defeat a terrorist determined to strike a chemical facility.”
PIRG says that the findings in its report — titled “Chemical Insecurity: America’s most dangerous companies and the multimillion dollar campaign against common sense solutions” — show how the outsized influence of corporate interests in the political process has kept common sense chemical disaster prevention measures from becoming law. Comprehensive chemical security legislation has been vigorously opposed by the corporations that own and operate some of the most dangerous facilities in the country. It now faces an uncertain pathway through the Senate.
U.S. PIRG examined the Risk Management Plans that facilities using and storing high hazard chemicals are required to file with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in order to determine the U.S. facilities that pose the greatest danger to the surrounding community in the event of an attack or accident. The organization then determined the parent companies that own and operate facilities putting the greatest numbers of people in jeopardy. This analysis identified the fourteen most dangerous companies in the United States.
PIRG then researched those corporations’ lobbying expenses, both how much they spend and who is participating in the “revolving door” of lobbying employment. It also reviewed campaign contributions from the company CEOs and senior executives, their political action committees, and their affiliated trade associations.
The key findings:
- The fourteen companies endangering the most people in the event of an accident or attack on one of their facilities are: Clorox, Kuehne Chemical, JCI Jones, KIK Custom Products, DuPont, PVS Chemicals, Olin, DX Holding, Solvay, Valero, Occidental Petroleum, Honeywell, Dow Chemical, and Sunoco
- These fourteen parent companies own 163 facilities in 37 different states and Puerto Rico
- The facilities owned by The Clorox Company, Kuehne Chemical, and JCI Jones Chemical each put more than 12 million people at risk.
- These fourteen companies and their affiliated trade associations spent $69,286,198 lobbying the committees with jurisdiction over chemical security legislation in 2008 and 2009 — Energy and Commerce and Homeland Security in the House, and Environment and Public Works and Homeland Security and Government Oversight in the Senate
- The political action committees (PACs) of these fourteen companies and the PACs of their affiliated trade associations gave $2,187,868 in the 2008 election cycle and the 2010 cycle to date directly to the campaigns of members of the committees of jurisdiction over chemical security legislation
- These fourteen companies and their affiliated trade associations employ twenty “revolving door” lobbyists who previously staffed the committees of jurisdiction over chemical security and toxics before becoming lobbyists on those same issues
PIRG offers these recommendations:
- Congress should pass and the president should sign comprehensive chemical security legislation that covers all facilities using and storing high hazard chemicals. Such legislation should require that all high risk facilities assess their ability to reduce the consequences of an attack or accident at a facility to the community, and should give the federal government the ability to require implementation of those methods at the most dangerous facilities.
- Congress should move a wide range of good government reforms to help put the voters on equal footing with corporations. These reforms include: strong corporate governance changes like the Shareholder Protection Act (H.R.4790), which would require corporations to get prior approval of their political expenditures from their shareholders; revolving door reforms to keep government workers from “cashing in” on their public service in lobby firms; and a voluntary small donor focused public financing system which would allow citizens to reclaim the process by reducing the access and influence of large corporate donors.
