Congressional Hearings – Week of 6-23-13

Three spending bills are on the hearing agenda this week as we get ever closer to the ‘Summer Recess’ in August. Railroad policy and the West Fertilizer Explosion also make the list of hearings that might be of interest to the chemical safety/security and the cybersecurity communities this coming week.

Spending Bills

The House Rules Committee will hold a hearing to look at rules for three separate bills on Tuesday evening. One of the bills will be HR 2410, the Agriculture and related agencies spending bill. The draft of this bill was released last week and I did not see any specific chemical safety or chemical transportation issues addressed. After the failure of HR 1947 last week, I expect that we might see the Ag chemical security amendment being offered for this bill.

Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will be dealing with the final markup of their separate versions of the Transportation spending bill. The House full Committee hearing will be on Wednesday and the Senate Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee will hold their markup on Tuesday and the Senate full Committee hearing will be on Thursday. As I reported last week the House subcommittee draft did not contain chemical safety or security measures. I haven’t seen a draft of the Senate bill yet.

Rail Policy

On Thursday the Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing on “National Rail Policy: Examining Goals, Objectives, and Responsibilities”. There is a possibility that chemical transportation issues might be addressed particularly toxic inhalation hazard (TIH) chemicals.

The witness list includes:

• Joseph Szabo, Federal Railroad Administration:

• Michael P. Melaniphy, American Public Transportation Association

• Edward Hamberger, Association of American Railroads

• Mike Lewis, American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials

• John P. Tolman, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen

West Fertilizer Explosion

On Thursday the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold the long promised hearing on the West Fertilizer Explosion. The purpose of the hearing will be muddied somewhat since the hearing will actually look at the “Events Up to the Explosions in West, TX and Geismar, LA”. It is disappointing that the Geismar explosion, at a regulated facility, is going to be combined with the explosion at West, at an unregulated (or at the very least under-regulated) facility.

No witness list is yet available, but I suspect that the major focus of this hearing will now be inherently safer technology (IST). That is unfortunate because it doesn’t appear that either facility would have been affected by such a measure.

Reader Comment – 04-28-13 – West Fertilizer and EPA General Duty Clause

It has been some time since Fred Millar has graced this blog with comments on a chemical safety issue, but today he returned with a comment on one of my recent posts about the West Fertilizer explosion. Fred’s comment was not about anything that I said in the particular post, rather it is a call to action to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take action in the case under the General Duty Clause (GDC) of the Clean Air Act {42 USC 7412(r)}.

I suggest that readers take time to read and consider Fred’s cogent arguments favoring the application of GDC in this case. This certainly comes closer to the intent of the law than does using the GDC to mandate the application of inherently safer technology to chemical facility security requirements for high-risk chemical facilities. It comes closer, but it still doesn’t quite get there.

Extremely Hazardous Substance

Fred explains the GDC this way:

The Clean Air Act's General Duty Clause says "the owners and operators of stationary sources [facilities] (sic) producing, processing, handling or storing [any extremely hazardous substance] (sic) have a general duty to identify hazards which may result from releases [including fire, explosion, toxic gas cloud] (sic) using appropriate hazard assessment techniques, to design and maintain a safe facility taking such steps as are necessary to prevent releases, and to minimize the consequences of accidental releases which do occur." 

What the GDC actually says is:

The owners and operators of stationary sources producing, processing, handling or storing such substances have a general duty in the same manner and to the same extent as section 654 of title 29 to identify hazards which may result from such releases using appropriate hazard assessment techniques, to design and maintain a safe facility taking such steps as are necessary to prevent releases, and to minimize the consequences of accidental releases which do occur.

The phrase ‘such substances’ refers to the preceding sentence in the paragraph that reads:

It shall be the objective of the regulations and programs authorized under this subsection to prevent the accidental release and to minimize the consequences of any such release of any substance listed pursuant to paragraph (3) or any other extremely hazardous substance.

Fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate is not one of the listed chemicals nor is it generally recognized as an ‘extremely hazardous substance’ in any regulation or statute that I can find. In fact, DOT regulations classify fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate as an oxidizer (UN 2067, 5.1) in packing group III; the least hazardous level that is still regulated by the hazardous material regulations.

If it is such a low hazard, how did such a large explosion result? The specific answer to that in this instance is still under investigation by OSHA, the ATF and the Chemical Safety Board. I expect that the final report by the CSB will be enlightening and more than a little scary for other communities that contain large ammonium nitrate storage facilities. But, we do know that ammonium nitrate is hard to ignite but it will burn. If the burning ammonium nitrate is confined in some way (by a collapsing storage building for instance) there is a possibility that an explosion could result.

Releases

Another problem with Fred’s assessment revolves around the GDC’s use of the term ‘releases’. There is no specific definition of ‘releases’ in §7412, but the GDC does define ‘accidental releases’ as “an unanticipated emission of a regulated substance or other extremely hazardous substance into the ambient air from a stationary source” §7412(r)(2)(A). Thus it hardly seems possible that there was a ‘covered’ release of ammonium nitrate involved in the West Fertilizer explosion even if fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate were specifically covered under the GDC.

Who Could Have Covered West Fertilizer?

If the EPA’s GDC did not apply to the West Fertilizer Facility, does that mean that no agency was responsible for the regulation of the handling of ammonium nitrate at the facility? While there are no specific safety regulations pertaining to the handling of fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) General Duty Clause (GDC; 29 USC §654) appears to be a much closer fit than does the EPA’s GDC. The OSHA GDC states that each employer “shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees” {§654(a)(1)}.

That phrases ‘recognized hazards’ and ‘are likely to cause’ will provide lots of room for lawyers to argue that the West Fertilizer situation does not really come under the coverage of the OSHA GDC.  There may be case law on the books that covers this type situation, but I suspect that any OSHA action under the GDC in this particular case will spend a number of years wending its way through the judicial system.

Who Should Have Covered the West Fertilizer Situation?

In my not so humble opinion it probably should have been OSHA that had regulations on the books that would have covered the safe storage of fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate. The catastrophic potential is clearly understood even if it is not even a remotely common occurrence. But ammonium nitrate fertilizer is an agricultural commodity. As such is falls under the protection of arguably the most powerful lobby in the United States (NO, not the NRA); the agriculture lobby.

Unfortunately neither OSHA nor the EPA is likely to take on the Ag Lobby to regulate the safe storage and handling of fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate. Unless we see a rash of such explosions across rural America, or someone determines that the cause was something other than an accident, I doubt that we will see any change in the way that ammonium nitrate fertilizer is stored in these small retail distribution centers.

Two Reader Comments – 04-19-13 - West Fertilizer Explosion

There have been two comments about to my post from last night about the explosion at the West Fertilizer facility in West, TX (which is actually in the east-central portion of the State between Dallas and San Antonio). Those comments and my replies provide some additional information about the potential cause of the incident.

Ammonium Nitrate Decomposition

Jim avoids giving us a specific chemistry lesson but comments:

“There is not enough space for a chemistry lesson but AN will decompose into oxides of N2 and water when heated. This reaction is very exothermic. In bulk storage situations the heat cannot dissipate faster than it is being produced and a runaway decomposition can occur.”

If you are interested in a brief chemistry lesson on the decomposition see this at Yahoo.com.

To understand how this impacts storage of ammonium nitrate see this Canadian government site. Three things to note:

• Each mole (80.0 g) of ammonium nitrate produces 3.25 moles of gas. Combined with the exotherm produced by the reaction this provides for a rapidly expanding shell of gas which produces the devastating shock wave.

• The reaction also produces oxygen (O₂) that promotes additional combustion of the already existing fire that would have started the heat rise in the first place in this instance.

• Fires frequently cause the collapse of storage tanks. This could provide the confinement to change the burning ammonium nitrate into exploding ammonium nitrate.

Probably not a Bleve

Ed Clarke doesn’t believe that the explosion was caused by an anhydrous ammonia bleve based upon the shock wave seen in various videos. He notes:

“Under intense heat form the fire, in a confined space, the AN in the storage bins pictured in the GE imagery (BTW, Bing birds eye view [here’s a link; click on Birds Eye] provides much better perspective) would have exploded.”

He does have questions about the source of the fire seen in the videos and suggests possible propane storage tanks. I suspect either that or some of the open top transport containers for ammonium nitrate could have been the fuel source, or even some of the other storage tanks that I mentioned in the original post.

A Potential Terrorist Target?

In any case, we will need to watch for the CSB reports on this investigation. Also note that the fire and explosion (and its extensive media coverage) show that an attack on small, out-of-the-way facilities like this could still bring the notoriety that terrorists crave. How much security do you see in the aerial view of the facility? Not even a fence.

ISCD – How many of these facilities have not been reviewed because no Top Screen was submitted? How many facilities like this that did submit Top Screens received a pass because they were in small towns?

West Fertilizer Facility and CFATS

I just had an interesting conversation with a television news person who contacted me about some research he was doing about the explosion the day before yesterday at the West Fertilizer Company facility in West, TX. He had apparently talked to someone at ISCD earlier who told him that (so this is now third hand information that I have not verified) that the facility had not filed a top screen reporting the anhydrous ammonia stored in two storage tanks on site. The facility has (according to rtknet.org) had filed Risk Management Plan (RMP) reports with the EPA documenting 54,000 lbs of anhydrous ammonia on site.

CFATS Coverage

I was asked if I thought that it would be unusual for a facility of this type not to have filed a Top Screen. My reply was essentially yes and no. I mentioned that ISCD had done considerable outreach to chemical facilities in the years since the introduction of the program in 2007. I know that agricultural supplier organizations were one of their target audiences in the early days; so one would like to think that the word had gotten down to facilities like West Fertilizer.

But the CFATS program is the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards and I would bet that many owners of facilities like this ignored the information pushed their way because they knew that they weren’t ‘chemical companies’; they were agricultural supply retailers. That plus the fact that no terrorist worthy of the name would waste their time in an attack on a rural facility like the one in West, TX would tend to reinforce the view in the minds of many owners of this type of facility that the CFATS program couldn’t possibly apply to them.

Anhydrous Ammonia Explosion?

I was also asked if I though an anhydrous ammonia bleve (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) could have been responsible for the catastrophic explosion at the facility. Now I am hardly an expert on bleves, but I do know that they are typically preceded by a hot fire outside of the tank (and videos and news reports certainly show a fire before the explosion) and can produce spectacular explosions. Now anhydrous ammonia is hardly a flammable chemical, but a fire hot enough to cause the combination of tank softening and increased pressure necessary for a bleve would certainly be hot enough to ignite an anhydrous ammonia cloud. So you certainly have a potential for a fuel-air explosion.

There are other possible explosion sources at a fertilizer company. An Ag retail facility like this could typically be expected to store/sell ammonium nitrate and urea fertilizers. Both of these types of fertilizers can also produce spectacular explosions. So why the immediate focus on the anhydrous ammonia? It is the only chemical that a news organization can readily confirm was located at the site by searching an on-line source like rtknet.org; neither ammonium nitrate nor urea are required to be reported to the EPA under the RMP program.

Google Map® Investigation

This conversation peaked my interest enough that I did a map investigation of the facility using Google Maps®. If you look at the facility from the satellite view you will see four good size tanks; three to the north of the two main buildings and one to the south. None of these tanks would be holding anhydrous ammonia; they are not pressure tanks.

I can’t tell what is actually in them, but the large diameter piping going to the smaller three of these tanks would be typical of a solids handling system similar to the type used to handle ammonium nitrate or urea.

Again, I can’t see any tank markings in these satellite images, but I think that we’ll find that the two anhydrous ammonia tanks are among the four horizontal tanks south of the larger building along the railroad siding. These horizontal tanks are commonly used for storing anhydrous ammonia.

Now there are a number of smaller vertical tanks between the building and the horizontal tanks. If these tanks contained some sort of flammable or combustible liquid and they released their contents to the ground you could get the type of fire that could cause a partially filled anhydrous ammonia tank to bleve. Of course this is also the type fire that we would expect a responding fire crew to be flooding with water and that would effectively prevent a bleve.

No, I think that we will find that one or more of the three intermediate size tanks held ammonium nitrate and that was what caused the devastatingly catastrophic explosion.

Chemical Safety Board Starting Investigation

The Chemical Safety Board investigators started arriving on site yesterday. They are deploying a large contingent because of the number of deaths and the amount of property damage that certainly places this chemical accident among the most deadly in recent memory. There is no telling how long it will take for them to complete their investigation, but we should start to hear some definitive information being provided by the CSB to the national media.