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News Release
For Release: 11:00
AM, March 7, 2002
For more information contact: David
Ponder, MontPIRG 949-0664
Six Months After 9/11, Chemical Facilities Continue
to Put Millions of Americans at Risk from Terrorism and Accidents
Groups call on Martz Homeland Security Taskforce to
Address Concerns
A coalition of citizen groups - the Safe Hometowns
Initiative - today said that thousands remain at risk from potential terrorist
attacks on chemical facilities in Montana and millions of Americans remain
at risk nationwide. The coalition called for reducing chemical hazards
through local community efforts and through state and federal policy changes
to require companies to consider “inherently safer” technologies and materials,
which could reduce, and in many cases eliminate the possibility of a significant
chemical release.
“The bad news is that to date, industry has taken
only the inadequate step of providing voluntary site security guidelines
to its facilities, meaning more guards and higher fences,” said David
Ponder, MontPIRG Executive Director. “These may be useless against terrorists
known to use passenger planes and truck bombs. The good news is that reducing
chemical hazards can make terrorist-induced chemical releases impossible.”
The groups released two reports: the Safe Hometowns
Guide, a citizens’ guide to reducing chemical hazards in communities,
and Protecting Our Hometowns, a report by MontPIRG that assesses chemical
hazards state by state and makes the case for state and federal policy
changes.
The MontPIRG report cites EPA documents showing that
a chemical release at any one of 125 facilities nationwide could put at
least 1 million people at risk; some 3,000 facilities each put 10,000
people’s safety at risk. Because the U.S. EPA has cut off access to public
right-to-know records, the coalition could not say how many of these facilities
are in Montana, but the report notes that at least 42 facilities in Montana
store at least 100,000 pounds each of an EPA-listed “extremely hazardous
chemical.”
“We know that hazards can be reduced through the use
of inherently safer materials and processes,” said Alexandra Gorman, project
coordinator for Women’s Voices for the Earth. “Thousands of people have
been protected from chemical explosions or leaks when facilities across
the country have eliminated or reduced the use of hazardous materials.
With a combination of community involvement and state and federal policy
changes, we can protect people here in Montana.”
“For years we've been focused on responding to chemical
releases, rather than preventing them" said State Rep. Dave Gallick..
"The events of September 11th give us an imperative to change that. There
may be no time to respond in a meaningful way to an armed attack. We have
to make our communities less attractive to terrorists by eliminating chemical
hazards.”
The Safe Hometowns Guide explains how citizens can
asses the hazards in their community and take steps to reduce the risk
of a catastrophic chemical release. Among many examples, the guide
cites changes in hundreds of New Jersey water treatment facilities and a
Washington, DC sewage treatment plant that switched from a toxic liquid
chlorine treatment system to a less dangerous alternative. The Washington
plant made the move within weeks after September 11th to eliminate the
previously real possibility of a toxic chlorine cloud spreading across the
nation's capital.
The groups called on Governor Martz and the Montana
Homeland Security Taskforce to consider the policy recommendations made
in the reports. Those recommendations include using existing
regulatory authority and planning programs as a starting point to reduce
or replace the use of hazardous chemicals at at-risk facilities.
The groups recommended that companies that manufacture, use, or store hazardous
chemicals also look for ways to make processes inherently safer by reducing
chemical quantities, switching to safer chemicals, or storing chemicals
under safer conditions, starting with the facilities that pose the greatest
risk.
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The Safe Hometowns Guide is available at www.safehometowns.org.
The policy paper, Protecting Our Hometowns, lays out the case for a federal
inherent safety program. It can be found at www.pirg.org.
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Safe Home Towns