Industry Still Wants CFATS Back

I received a press release today from the Alliance for Chemical Distribution (ACD) about their annual ‘fly-in’ to Washington DC to meet with legislators and regulators. ACD members will meet with congressional delegations and representatives from regulatory agencies to push their federal wish lists of statutory and regulatory changes the industry would like to see.

One of the four bullet points in the press release dealt with the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program that died almost two years ago:

“Reauthorize the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s successful, bipartisan CFATS program expired in July 2023. Without the vital support of this successful public-private partnership, high-risk chemical facilities are left to manage site security, mitigate vulnerabilities, and ensure comprehensive employee background checks on their own. This is particularly concerning as chemical facilities and surrounding communities face increased exposure to new threats and potential acts of terror. ACD urges Congress to reinstate this vital security program immediately”

It has long surprised many people how much the chemical industry has supported the CFATS program. There have been differences between DHS and industry on many of the details (there was a big fight about the need for the personnel surety program, that most have forgotten) but even then, industry acknowledged that the people that ran the program listened to their concerns and tried to work with them to make the program work. You cannot ask much more from regulators than that.

The problem is twofold. First and foremost, the one-man obstacle that effectively killed the program {Sen Paul (R,KY)} is in a stronger position now to continue blocking the program. In 2023 he was the Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee which gave him a certain amount of veto authority beyond his ability to object to unanimous consent consideration of the reauthorization bill. Now he is the Chair of that Committee and there is no chance that a chemical security bill will be considered in the Senate without his active buy in. Add to that a President that never met a regulatory program that he liked, and you have a mostly insurmountable political problem

The second problem is time; it has been too long since the program died for it to be re-established with a simple date change. Facilities have moved on, keeping the easy, low cost parts of the security programs that took so long to put into place; management could not justify the costlier parts of security without the enforcement threat from CISA. Time has also inevitably led to changes in management at the previously covered facilities, a significant number of the key players have moved on and CISA’s list of points of contact for those facilities is no longer accurate. And I will not even mention what DOGE and the new Administration has done to the leadership of the Chemical Security Office in CISA.

Still, kudos to ACD (and other chemical industry lobbying organizations) for still trying to get the program going. But in the immortal words of WC Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then stop. There is no use being a damn fool about it.”