Koch-Funded Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Limits Public Chemical Disclosure After Deadly Explosion [View all]

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BY ARI PHILLIPS

Shortly after the anniversary of the 2013 fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people, wounded 226, and upended a large portion of the small town of West, Texas, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said the incident was preventable and that it resulted from the failure of a company to take the necessary steps to avert it.

The explosion at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility was caused by ammonium nitrate. There are dozens of facilities across Texas storing that same chemical in large quantities. In the year since the explosion the Texas government has only made one change to laws surrounding chemical disclosure and safety: restricting publicly available information regarding the location of these chemicals.

In May, after the Chemical Safety Board report came out, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that government entities can withhold the locations of dangerous chemicals listed in state records (Tier II reports) to protect the public from terrorism or other threats. Abbott, a far-right Republican who is the leading candidate for Governor in Texas, then said that people can identify such facilities with a “drive around” their neighborhoods, and that they can find out about the chemicals by asking the companies via letter or email. He originally said they could just walk up and ask, but had to backtrack after remembering those facilities were on private property.

The statements set off a firestorm, and Abbott was forced to concede that this method of inquiry was burdensome, but that he still considered the change in law a “win-win.”

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/09/3457624/greg-abbott-koch-chemical-west-texas/