Wading into a decade-old controversy, former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman has urged current EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to close loopholes in a 2006 chemical security law "before a tragedy of historic proportions occurs."
Whitman, who led the EPA under George W. Bush, suggests the agency use its authority to seal gaps in Department of Homeland Security rules adopted in 2007, according to her April 3 letter to Jackson, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.
Those rules are "extremely limited," Whitman wrote, barring DHS from requiring industry to take specific measures to prevent accidental or terrorism-related toxic releases. The rules, she wrote, exempt "thousands of chemical facilities, including all water treatment plants and hundreds of other potentially high-risk facilities, such as refineries located on navigable waters."
The EPA has the power to regulate chemical security under 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, Whitman noted, writing that that the act's "general duty" clause "obligates chemical facilities handling the most dangerous chemicals to prevent potentially catastrophic releases to surrounding communities.
"Facilities with the largest quantities … should assess their operations to identify safer cost-effective processes that will reduce or eliminate hazards in the event of a terrorist attack or accident," Whitman wrote. "This has never been required and today hundreds of these facilities continue to put millions of Americans at risk."
According to DHS testimony this year, there are 4,458 high-risk facilities nationwide.
Whitman sent her letter just weeks after the EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council also recommended that Jackson use the Clean Air Act to overcome "fatal flaws" in the current law.
The flaws "are particularly threatening to low-income and tribal communities and communities of color because they frequently reside near waste water treatment plants, refineries, and port facilities," council chair Elizabeth Yeampierre wrote March 14. The council includes industry representatives, academics and environmental and community development advocates.
An EPA spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.
