FEB 7, 2025
Chemical Companies Ask Trump’s EPA To Hide Potential Disasters
Biden increased transparency around the risks of chemical disaster — industry
lobbyists just asked Trump’s new EPA chief Lee Zeldin to roll that back.
KATYA SCHWENK
Chemical Companies Ask Trump’s EPA To Hide Potential Disasters
Firefighters battle a petrochemical fire at a chemical facility in Texas. (AP
Photo/David J. Phillip)
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The chemical industry is asking the Environmental Protection Agency, now
helmed by industry-friendly Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, to hide chemical
facilities at the highest risk of disaster and their safety records from public view.
On Jan. 30, more than a dozen chemical industry groups sent a letter to Zeldin
demanding he take “urgent action” to roll back Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) oversight of facilities that are at the highest risk for chemical
disasters. The trade groups also requested the agency “immediately shut
down” a government website that makes public where these facilities are
located and what dangerous toxins they hold.
Each year, dozens of chemical accidents occur at these high-risk facilities,
sometimes forcing entire communities to evacuate or shelter in place. In June
2023, a massive chemical fire at one of these plants in Southwest Louisiana, a
region where such chemical accidents are particularly frequent, sent a plume of
toxic gas into the air and forced residents within three miles of the facility to
shelter in place. Yet reducing EPA oversight of these facilities has for years
been a priority for chemical lobbyists.
The chemical lobby’s new letter is the latest industry push to unwind
environmental protections instated under the Biden administration. And
chemical interests could find an ally in Zeldin, who voted against measures to
crack down on cancer-causing “forever chemicals” during his time in the U.S.
House of Representatives.
Zeldin has already received the enthusiastic endorsement of chemical
lobbyists. The American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s biggest
lobbying group, urged lawmakers to support Zeldin’s nomination in January,
saying his record in Congress showed he was a “thoughtful leader who
understood you can protect the environment and human health without
imposing unreasonable and unnecessary regulations.”
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The American Chemistry Council was among the signatories of the Jan. 30
letter. Various other industry interest groups also signed on, including the
American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Corn Refiners
Association, and the Fertilizer Institute. The lobbyists first asked for a meeting
with Zeldin — but they also emphasized that they wanted to see swift action to
undo Biden-era regulations on dangerous chemical plants.
“If they were to roll back [the regulations], it would be devastating,” said Darya
Minovi, a senior analyst for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union
of Concerned Scientists, a research group. According to Minovi, communities
that live near these facilities, which are at high risk of chemical disasters and
exposure, had asked “for years” for the strengthened regulations enacted
under former President Joe Biden.
At the same time, Minovi added, the chemical industry letter was not a surprise.
Chemical lobbyists have for years been fighting regulations meant to prevent
chemical disasters — and with Zeldin now in charge of the top federal
environmental watchdog, they are launching a brazen new fight.
“They Don’t Want The Public To Know”
Chemical facilities handling the most dangerous, reactive chemicals are
required under the Clean Air Act of 1970 to submit risk management plans to
environmental regulators, a provision meant to help prevent devastating
chemical accidents.
There are hundreds of facilities around the country subject to EPA’s Risk
Management Program. Despite decades of mitigation efforts, accidents at
these facilities are still concerningly frequent, research has found, and
communities that surround them are at high risk for pollution and environmental
impacts.
And as The Lever reported last October, many facilities that process reactive
chemicals are not covered by the EPA regulations, like a chemical plant that
spewed a toxic plume of chlorine gas in Conyers, Georgia, in September 2024,
forcing residents to evacuate. That’s thanks to the chemical industry, which has
fought for loopholes in the regulations.
For years, environmentalists fought for the EPA to make public what chemical
facilities were covered by its Risk Management Program rule as well as the
chemicals that they handled and the safety protocols they had in place. Such
transparency was critical for nearby communities and the public, activists
argued.
In March 2024, regulators revealed a public website that for the first time
allowed viewers to search for high-risk chemical facilities — revealing the toxins
they handle and details about past accidents and safety violations.
According to the database, there are 228 high-risk facilities in Los Angeles
County alone.
High-risk chemical facilities in Los Angeles County. (EPA Risk Management
Plan search tool)
“This is information that the public deserves to know — what the facilities are
that are near them, what types of chemicals they deal with,” said Adam Kron, a
senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group. “It’s really
vital information, but also very basic information.”
Now, the chemical industry wants to make this information secret again —
alleging that making this information public presents security risks for chemical
facilities.
But Kron said he was skeptical of the industry’s claims that the website, which
contains no confidential or proprietary information, presented security risks. “I
think they just don’t want the public to know — because that will force change,”
Kron said. And he noted that companies may also be concerned about hits to
their reputation when they were forced to reveal accident history or the
dangerous chemicals they were using.
As of Feb. 7, the EPA data tool remains online. But as other EPA webpages go
dark — like webpages mentioning the climate crisis, as The Lever reported —
advocates worry that soon, a critical accountability tool for communities in the
vicinity of hazardous chemical plants will also be taken down.
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In the letter to Zeldin, the industry also pushed for the EPA to roll back
regulations of high-risk chemical facilities that were strengthened under the
Biden administration.
For the last several years, as different administrations have come into power,
the Risk Management Program rules have been repeatedly strengthened and
then repealed. Biden, during his term, restored many of the Obama-era
provisions that President Donald Trump repealed during his first administration.
Biden also added new requirements for high-risk chemical plants, like requiring
chemical processors to consider the impact of climate change and to upgrade
to newer, safer technologies.
These new rules are now the target of the chemical industry.
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