CSB Chastises Didion Milling for Not Addressing Recommendations

Yesterday the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) took the unusual step of publicly taking to task the owners of Didion Milling for failure to make an attempt to address the nine recommendations that the Board made as a result of their investigation of the fatal 2017 explosions at Didion’s Cambria, Wisconsin, facility. The CSB reports that Didion’s attorneys claimed that a December 2023 settlement agreement with OSHA about their accident investigation also addressed the CSB recommendations. Didion has not responded to a September 2024 letter from CSB about the differences between the two investigations, nor have they responded to multiple subsequent attempts the CSB has made to contact Didion’s owners.

Commentary

The CSB could not make a better example of the differences between investigations being conducted by regulatory agencies like OSHA or EPA and investigations by the Board. Regulatory agencies look for legal violations of their rules that may or may not have had anything to do with the incident while the Board looks specifically at the physical and procedural mistakes that led to the incident. While the Administration does not understand the importance of the differences between the two, it certainly appears that Congress does.