Is the federal government capable of policing ExxonMobil refinery and other plants?
The federal agency in charge of ensuring the safety of industrial plants that use highly toxic chemicals, such as the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, is paralyzed by political infighting and incapable of carrying out its mission, government watchdog groups contend.
But South Bay Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, believes the U.S. Chemical Safety Board is functioning well under recently installed new leadership and will successfully complete its investigation into February’s refinery explosion.
“They have a new leader now,” he said, adding he was highly critical of the predecessor of chair Vanessa Allen Sutherland.
“I have confidence in her,” Lieu said. “I believe she will do a good job. They are very focused on the ExxonMobil refinery. She knew a lot about what was going on at ExxonMobil and they are, in my opinion, doing a very good job with the ExxonMobil investigation.”
Lieu has accused ExxonMobil of not fully cooperating with the investigation.
Neither the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General nor the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility appear to share Lieu’s optimism, however.
The EPA is required by law to investigate when a “failure to perform well could seriously affect the ability of an agency ... to achieve its mission.”
The 13-page report found that the CSB:
• Needed to address employee morale because a June 2014 House Oversight Committee determined a “toxic work environment” had resulted in an exodus of nine experienced employees — nearly 25 percent of its staff . Those toxic practices included “retaliation against whistle-blowers” and the former chair’s “disregard for proper board governance.”
• Lost a “vast amount of institutional knowledge” with those departures, making it difficult to complete investigations” or open new ones, including those involving fatalities.
• Failed to require industrial facilities to report all chemical accidents as the U.S. Government Accounting Office recommended it should in 2009.
“CSB stated that even if it had already adopted a reporting rule, the agency would have essentially no capacity to collect or interpret much of the data it received or seek enforcement action against any non-reporters,” the EPA report concluded.
Sutherland has said the agency’s $11 million annual budget has been unchanged for a decade and needs to be increased.
Lieu repeatedly has called upon the CSB to investigate not only February’s explosion that crippled the refinery’s capacity to produce gasoline and showered the community with industrial debris, but a September leak of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid.
The state determined the February explosion was caused by ExxonMobil’s deliberate failure to fix a piece of equipment the company knew could cause a life-threatening blast and fined it more than $500,000.
The Fire Department has said ExxonMobil failed to follow emergency notification procedures in the wake of the leak.
More than 20 accidental releases of hydrofluoric acid have occurred in the last five years at the refinery, according to the Torrance Fire Department. Virtually all of them were never reported to the community.
City officials also have yet to report the cause of the most recent accidental release; they did not return a message left Friday seeking comment.
The CSB’s investigation into the February explosion is the last the agency has committed to undertake this year. Despite that, since March, 19 major accidents have occurred, resulting in 16 fatalities and 32 serious injuries, PEER said.
“Plants are exploding, workers dying and communities endangered, but this agency has no current plans to do anything about it,” PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said.
But South Bay Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, believes the U.S. Chemical Safety Board is functioning well under recently installed new leadership and will successfully complete its investigation into February’s refinery explosion.
“They have a new leader now,” he said, adding he was highly critical of the predecessor of chair Vanessa Allen Sutherland.
“I have confidence in her,” Lieu said. “I believe she will do a good job. They are very focused on the ExxonMobil refinery. She knew a lot about what was going on at ExxonMobil and they are, in my opinion, doing a very good job with the ExxonMobil investigation.”
Lieu has accused ExxonMobil of not fully cooperating with the investigation.
Neither the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General nor the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility appear to share Lieu’s optimism, however.
EPA report
The EPA published a report last month detailing the “management challenges” the CSB faces.The EPA is required by law to investigate when a “failure to perform well could seriously affect the ability of an agency ... to achieve its mission.”
The 13-page report found that the CSB:
• Needed to address employee morale because a June 2014 House Oversight Committee determined a “toxic work environment” had resulted in an exodus of nine experienced employees — nearly 25 percent of its staff . Those toxic practices included “retaliation against whistle-blowers” and the former chair’s “disregard for proper board governance.”
• Lost a “vast amount of institutional knowledge” with those departures, making it difficult to complete investigations” or open new ones, including those involving fatalities.
• Failed to require industrial facilities to report all chemical accidents as the U.S. Government Accounting Office recommended it should in 2009.
“CSB stated that even if it had already adopted a reporting rule, the agency would have essentially no capacity to collect or interpret much of the data it received or seek enforcement action against any non-reporters,” the EPA report concluded.
Sutherland has said the agency’s $11 million annual budget has been unchanged for a decade and needs to be increased.
Lieu repeatedly has called upon the CSB to investigate not only February’s explosion that crippled the refinery’s capacity to produce gasoline and showered the community with industrial debris, but a September leak of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid.
The state determined the February explosion was caused by ExxonMobil’s deliberate failure to fix a piece of equipment the company knew could cause a life-threatening blast and fined it more than $500,000.
The Fire Department has said ExxonMobil failed to follow emergency notification procedures in the wake of the leak.
More than 20 accidental releases of hydrofluoric acid have occurred in the last five years at the refinery, according to the Torrance Fire Department. Virtually all of them were never reported to the community.
City officials also have yet to report the cause of the most recent accidental release; they did not return a message left Friday seeking comment.
The CSB’s investigation into the February explosion is the last the agency has committed to undertake this year. Despite that, since March, 19 major accidents have occurred, resulting in 16 fatalities and 32 serious injuries, PEER said.
“Plants are exploding, workers dying and communities endangered, but this agency has no current plans to do anything about it,” PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said.
“A large part of the fight in the past year-and-a-half has been attempts by the now-departed chair to come up with industrywide approaches so you didn’t have to go from explosion to explosion,” he added. “In his removal there appears to be nothing but a vacuum.”
As a result, Ruch said he didn’t know the status of the Torrance refinery investigation or what the outcome will be.
Ruch said the group believes the blast site was “altered” in the wake of the explosion, including the removal of an extremely heavy piece of equipment sent flying though the air by the force of the blast. It reportedly landed near a large vessel containing modified hydrofluoric acid.
Had that ruptured, thousands of nearby residents could have been injured or killed from the subsequent release of the acid, which turns into a highly toxic, ground-hugging cloud of gas, experts have said.
Modified HF has been reformulated to supposedly make it safer, but not all industry experts are convinced it actually is.
“That’s the kind of question the Chemical Safety Board should be asking, but they’re not,” Ruch said.
The board is planning to hold a public meeting Nov. 23 in Washington, D.C. “to discuss investigations and operational activities though the end of the year.”
As of August, the CSB had seven open investigations, including two more than 5 years old, the EPA report said, although final reports in the oldest pair are under review.
Sutherland told Chemical & Engineering News earlier this month she is aiming to have all pending investigations completed by the first quarter of 2016.
In the future, the agency wants an 18-month turnaround time.
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