In the almost three years since September 11, the Bush administration has not only failed to safeguard vulnerable terrorist targets here at home, it has actively blocked an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiative to impose security measures for extremely hazardous chemicals stored at power plants across the country.
As a result, according to a new report by the Working Group on Community Right-to-Know, some 3.5 million people living near these non-nuclear power plants continue to face the danger that a terrorist attack could send a cloud of toxic and lethal gas into their neighborhoods.
Titled Unnecessary Dangers:Emergency Chemical Release Hazards at Power Plants, the report describes how a sudden release of ammonia or chlorine from a power plant could kill and injure far more people than the tragedy of September 11.
Power plants burning coal or oil use ammonia in air pollution control equipment and chlorine in their cooling water systems. The report calls for power plants to shift to safer chemicals, which are available today and would all but eliminate the hazard. [1]
"Safer chemicals should be the option of first resort," Paul Orum, the author of Unnecessary Dangers told BushGreenwatch. "We know security systems will fail". The Working Group on Community Right-to-Know website contains excerpts from numerous media reports which have documented security breaches at facilities storing chemicals around the country. "Power plants are only one industry among many that pose chemicals emergency release hazards to communities," he added.
Unnecessary Dangers reports that EPA was making final preparations in June 2002 to announce new security requirements for power plants and other industries with stores of hazardous chemicals. The staff had already drafted a press release and talking points, when the White House suddenly stepped in and blocked the regulatory initiative.
The report also details how opposition from chemical manufacturers has derailed a bill in Congress, the Chemical Security Act, which would have required facilities using the most dangerous chemicals to consider safer technologies and use them where practicable.
The report makes it clear that a power company's choice of chemicals determines the danger to the surrounding community:
-The choice of anhydrous ammonia by some 166 power plants endangers 21,000 people on average around each facility.
-The choice of the far less dangerous aqueous ammonia by 69 power plants endangers an average of 205 people off-site.
-The chlorine gas used at 40 power plants endangers on average 4,600 neighbors.
Orum says power plants can readily substitute safer chemicals that work just as well for pollution control and cooling systems. Urea can replace the extremely hazardous anhydrous ammonia, and chlorine bleach or bromine can replace chlorine gas. Unnecessary Dangers identifies the 225 power plants of concern and the specific chemicals used.
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SOURCES:
[1] Unnecessary Dangers:Emergency Chemical Release Hazards at Power Plants, Working Group on Community Right-to-Know.
