By
Phil Mattera in the Dirt
Diggers Digest
Newscasts
these days often seem to be less a form of journalism than a kind of bizarre
game show for paranoids: what horrible possibility should one worry about the
most?
Most
of the time, the main choice is between terrorism and gun violence, especially
in recent days as the Boston Marathon bombings have shared the airwaves with
the gun control debate in the Senate.
Now
the horrific events in a small town in Texas provide a reminder of another
danger, which for most of the population is actually a more significant threat:
industrial accidents. As of this writing, the explosion at a fertilizer plant
near Waco is reported to have killed up to 15 people and injured more than 180
others.
Map from Daily Kos. Shows proximity of fertilizer plant to homes and schools |
The
truth is that corporations often show a brazen disregard for the safety of
their employees—and nearby residents. Probably the biggest workplace assailant
in recent years has been BP, which even before the 2010 explosion at its oil
rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers had been cited for atrocious
safety violations at its refinery in Texas City, Texas, where 15 workers were
killed and about 180 injured in a 2005 explosion.
BP
initially agreed to
pay a then-record $21.4 million in fines for nearly 300 “egregious” violations
at the refinery, but in 2009 OSHA announced that
the company was not living up to its obligations under the settlement and
proposed an even larger fine–$87.4 million–against the company for allowing
unsafe conditions to persist. BP challenged the fine and later agreed to
pay $50.6 million. Apparently deciding it could not run the refinery safely, BP
announced in 2012 that it was selling the facility.
In
the list of the all-time largest
fines in OSHA’s history, BP is at the top of the list. It’s
interesting that the next largest fine involved another fertilizer company—IMC
Fertilizer, which along with Angus Chemical was initially fined $11.6 million (negotiated down to
about $10 million) for violations linked to a 1991 explosion at a plant in
Louisiana in which eight workers were killed and 120 injured.
The
new incident at the fertilizer plant in Texas shows that risky business
behavior is not limited to corporate giants. While many press accounts refer to
the plant as West Fertilizer Co., the corporate entity is actually Adair Grain
Inc., which according to Dun & Bradstreet has only eight employees and
annual revenues of only a few million dollars.
Although
the facility’s listing in
the EPA’s ECHO enforcement database shows no violations and no inspections
during the past five years (the period covered by ECHO), there have been press reports of
an earlier citation for failing to have a risk management plan. The
facility did not get
an air pollution permit until 2007, after there were complaints about foul
odors from the site. Last year, the company was fined all
of $10,100 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for
violations in the transportation of anhydrous ammonia. There is no indication
in the OSHA database that the facility has ever been inspected.
It’s
the same old story: a dangerous industrial facility with limited regulatory
oversight finally creates death and destruction.
Footnote:
Until the accident, the only time Adair Grain rose out of obscurity was in
2007, when under the name of its affiliate Texas Grain Storage it filed a
federal lawsuit against Monsanto, charging it with anticompetitive practices in
its sale of Roundup herbicides (U.S. District Court for the Western District of
Texas civil case SA-07-CA-673-OG). The case, which was brought with the
involvement of ten mostly out-of-state law firms and sought class action
status, appears to be dormant.
——————
The
latest addition to CORPORATE RAP SHEETS is dossier on agribusiness giant Cargill,
whose record includes some of the largest meat recalls in U.S. history and
repeated workplace safety violations, including several at fertilizer plants it
used to own. Read the Rap Sheet here.