Texas Lawmakers Too Busy Targeting Abortion Providers to Deal With Exploding Fertilizer Plants

More than two months after the deadly explosion in West, Texas, the state has done almost nothing to prevent future disasters.

• The Texas Department of State Health Services, which tracks the storage of dangerous chemicals, says it is prohibited from regulating those chemicals and that any regulations must come from local officials. Except...
  
• West is in McLennan County, which, like 70 percent of counties in the state, had been statutorily prohibited from adopting its own fire code until 2010, when it reached a high-enough population threshold. It has not adopted one since.
  
• Texas is one of just four states without statewide standards for fire safety and storage at chemical facilities.
  
• Free from the constraints of fire codes, the West Fertilizer Co. stored ammonium nitrate in wooden boxes and didn't even have a sprinkler system.
  
• A statewide cap on property taxes means that even if they were allowed to have fire codes, most rural Texas fire departments are unable to afford the equipment needed to fight fires at the chemical facilities that are located disproportionately in rural counties.
  
• The company didn't notify local planners of the presence of dangerous chemicals on site until 2012at least six years after federal law would have required them to do soand the town's volunteer firefighters were never briefed on how to handle a blaze at the facility. One firefighter tried to look up the information on his smartphone en route to the blaze but gave up.
  
• West Fertilizer Co.'s "worst-case release scenario," according to documents provided to the Environmental Protection Agency, did not allow for the possibility of fire or explosions.
  
• The site hadn't been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985, when, after finding five "serious violations," the company was fined $30. (That's $64.95 in today's dollars.) The 28-year lag between inspections isn't so bad, considering OSHA has the manpower to inspect each chemical facility in the US about once every 129 years.
  
• West Fertilizer Co. was insured for just $1 million, the same amount of liability coverage the state requires of bounce house operators. However, this was $1 million more than is required by the state for chemical storage facilities.
  
• The facility was storing an explosive product that doesn't actually have to be explosive.
  
• It understated the amount of said explosive material it was keeping at the site by 56,000 pounds (or about 50 percent).
  
• The company did not work with the Department of Homeland Security to develop security procedures as required by federal law, nor did DHS ever instruct it to do so. It did provide information on the site's explosive contents to the Texas Department of Health Services, but that agency did not pass that information along to DHS, nor was it required to.
  
• West Fertilizer Co. had no security guards, alarm system, or perimeter fencing despite the fact that it was a storage facility for the primary ingredient of improvised explosive devices, and had been robbed 11 times (presumably by meth manufacturers) in 12 years.
  
• In that same period, police responded to five different reports of ammonia leaks from the facility.
  
• In the 11 years since the US Chemical Safety Board recommended the EPA regulate ammonium nitrate, the source of the West fire, the agency has made no move to do so. It is not included on the agency's list of hazardous chemicals, and by extension, it's not included on Texas' list either.
  
• The facility was less than 3,000 feet away from two schools and a dense residential area and there are no federal or state laws on the books that would have prevented it from getting closer.