Bayer v CSB Hearing: First Response

I just completed listening to the testimony before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on “Secrecy in the Response to Bayer’s Fatal Chemical Plant Explosion”. I have to say that Bayer CropScience came off looking real bad. I’ll do a detailed review of the testimony for tomorrow’s blog, but right now I just want to hit on my impressions. All of the response personnel testifying told a scary story of seeing and hearing the explosion that hot August night, but not being able to get any information from Bayer to make appropriate emergency response decisions. They described communications that could only be charitably called stonewalling, but were characterized by Bayer testimony as being ‘a break-down in communications’. Chairman Bresland of the CSB described the mechanics of the incident in scary details. An inappropriately high concentration of byproduct waste was fed into a system to be thermally degraded. Safety controls on the equipment were routinely defeated to initiate the thermal degradation process. With a non-diluted waste stream the heat built up faster than normal and a runaway reaction resulted that led to a catastrophic failure of the reaction equipment. The worst part of the story came from the Bayer management testimony. The Bayer CropScience President and CEO admitted that his company initially attempted to hide data about their methyl isocyanate production and storage system from CSB behind the SSI designation. When informed by legal counsel that that was not appropriate they still tried to limit the CSB’s public disclosure of that information by classifying 2000 documents as SSI. Subsequent review by Bayer counsel determined that only 12% of those documents could be classified as SSI. No one, outside of Bayer and its counsel, have verified the SSI status of those remaining documents. The Coast Guard testimony was cheerful, but disappointing. It was noted that Bayer alone was responsible for classifying information for their facility as SSI. There are potential civil penalties for Bayer if they disclose SSI, but no penalties for over classifying information. Thus there is every reason for Bayer to overly classify information. Finally, the questions from the Committee members were very supportive of the first responders, community leaders and unsupportive of Bayer. Chairman Stupak’s final round of questions was especially telling. He kept pounding on the Bayer CropScience President and the Plant Manager about inherently safer technology. He challenged them on why they were the only plant that still stored large amounts of MIC instead of using a produce as you consume process. When they responded that they thought they were using the safest process he asked if they would submit their analysis to outside review. Their failure to accept even that did not impress him. As I said before, there will be a more considered evaluation tomorrow.