Where is the outrage? On deadly chemicals and sorry jokes

to campaigns over the past four election cycles, almost 80 percent of it going to Republicans.

DHS has an assistant secretary in charge of overseeing chemical facilities. His name is Robert Stephan. He says that some chemical plants will not let DHS officials on their premises. Many of the plants which do allow visits by DHS officials prohibit these officials from leaving with any written notes. The American Chemistry Council, a leading industry group with 2,000 chemical facilities as members, says that its members have invested nearly $3 billion in security since 9/11 to adhere to an industry-developed set of voluntary security measures — note the adjectives “industry-developed” and “voluntary.” Sal DePasquale, a former security official with Georgia-Pacific Corp., who helped craft the industry-developed voluntary security code, calls it “window dressing.” He says investments in cameras, fencing, and network security are “a sorry joke” compared with the highly armed teams that guard nuclear plants. The industry-developed security code is indeed nothing but window dressing — but even this window dressing proved too onerous for many of the plants: DHS estimates that 20 percent of the roughly 300 highest-risk chemical plants are not even signed up for the industry-developed voluntary program.

Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joseph Liberman (D-Connecticut) have now introduced a bill which would put an end to this recklessness by the chemical industry and its friends in Congress and in the political section in the White House. As we wrote in the past, the bill is not perfect, at least in two respects: First, although the bill will supersede states’ regulatory standards, there is a clause in it (rather weak one, we believe) allowing states, in some cases, to be tougher on the industry than the feds. We believe this clause should be more explicit in specifically allowing states to go further than federal standards. The second flaw is that the bill would not mandate that facilities closest to residential areas — and, hence, the most likely to produce mass-casualty catastrophe — must substitute less toxic and lethal chemicals for the ones they currently used. The chemical industry has already said that it would fight to remove the clause allowing states to enact tougher measures.

Richard Falkenrath, former national security adviser to President Bush, told U.S. News that “This bill strikes a very delicate balance between fiercely competing interests.” He is right. We should hope it is not so delicate that it will not withstand the pressures of a recalcitrant and irresponsible industry, senators and congressmen who only speak tough when it comes to homeland security, and political operatives for whom everything — and anything — is negotiable.

-read more in Angie Marek’s U.S. News & World Report article; and see CRS February 2005 “Chemical Plant Security” report