Bayer Institute plant will eliminate 80 percent of the huge methyl isocyanate stockpile that has fueled public safety concerns in the Kanawha Valley since a leak of the chemical killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India, a quarter century ago.
Bayer officials announced the plan just two days before Friday's one-year anniversary of the Aug. 28, 2008, explosion and fire that killed Institute plant workers Bill Oxley and Barry Withrow.
Bayer officials said they planned to eliminate all above-ground storage of MIC and produce the chemical only on a "make-and-use" basis. After the changes, Bayer hopes to keep its daily maximum MIC inventory below 50,000 pounds -- still far more than any other chemical plant in the nation.
Bill Buckner, Bayer CropScience's president, said the decision isn't an admission the plant's MIC stockpile was unsafe, but is an effort to address continued concerns from the public and local government officials.
"I don't think the public should have had a reason to feel unsafe before, but we need to continue to earn our right to operate in the community," Buckner said.
A variety of longtime and more recent Institute plant critics praised Bayer's decision as a major public safety improvement for the region.
"I was pleasantly, pleasantly surprised," said Pam Nixon, a former leader of the group People Concerned About MIC, who now works as the state Department of Environmental Protection's Environmental Advocate. "It will dramatically reduce the risks to the community and the workers."
"Any measures by Bayer to reduce the inventory of MIC at the facility are a positive development, provided that the safety and environmental risk is truly mitigated," Bresland said. "If implemented in a careful and conscientious manner, the steps Bayer has outlined will lessen the risk to the public and the workforce from an uncontrolled release of MIC."
After Bhopal, other plants around the world eliminated large-scale MIC storage. The Bayer facility is the only one in the U.S. that continued to store large amounts and remains the only one nationwide that trips a 10,000-pound threshold for the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Risk Management Program.
Currently, Bayer reports to EPA that it stores a daily average of between 100,000 pounds and 999,999 pounds of MIC at the plant. But, given the size of its known MIC storage tanks, the maximum amount is closer to 240,000 pounds.
"An 80 percent reduction is a decent good first step in addressing the dangers that exist in the facility and we look forward to seeing more progress," said Maya Nye, a spokeswoman for People Concerned About MIC. "The 20 percent that remains will still be capable of causing the amount of damage as happened in Bhopal, so we need to remain vigilant about these dangers that still exist."
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