While conceding that “incidents involving ammonium nitrate may be among the most severe and highest-profile accidental releases both in the United States and around the world,” the Environmental Protection Agency proposes leaving the highly explosive chemical unregulated as it updates rules covering the storage of hazardous substances.
In a report to be released Tuesday, a pair of national environmental organizations points to the Jan. 31 Winston Weaver Co. fire as clear evidence that the EPA’s approach puts lives and communities at grave risk.
“Companies should be required to disclose the presence of ammonium nitrate at their facilities and have approved risk management plans in place to protect workers and surrounding communities,” Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform note in their 19-page report.
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“If the more than 1 million pounds of ammonium nitrate stored on site at Weaver — or even a significant portion of it — had exploded, the damage would have been catastrophic,” the organizations note.
The fire, which took days to extinguish, destroyed the facility that had operated for more than 80 years at 4440 N. Cherry St. and was exempt from many local safety measures because it was not within the Winston-Salem city limits when it opened.
In August, EPA Administrator Michael Regan — former secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Policy — proposed changes to the agency’s Risk Management Program, which requires facilities that use extremely hazardous materials to develop detailed plans for how they would prevent incidents such as fires and leaks, and how to respond to those emergencies if they do occur.
The revised RMP would “further protect vulnerable communities from chemical accidents, especially those living near facilities with high accident rates,” the EPA said in its announcement of the recommendation. “When finalized, the rule is expected to make communities safer by reducing the frequency of chemical releases and their adverse effects.”
But ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in fertilizer that also is used in explosives, is not one of those chemicals whose presence would mandate a risk management plan.
Because ammonium nitrate is not on the EPA’s RMP list, Winston-Weaver was not required to disclose the chemical’s presence under federal guidelines, a reality that angered neighbors and some local officials who had no idea that a potential explosive was stored in high quantities in a facility surrounded by more than 6,000 residents and dozens of businesses in a one-mile radius affected by a voluntary evacuation.
“EPA must expand the RMP program to cover ammonium nitrate production and storage facilities, as well as other highly hazardous chemicals,” Tuesday’s report insists.
‘Systemic set of risks’
The Winston Weaver incident was one of three major chemical fires in a two-week period highlighted in the report.
In mid-January, 200 firefighters in Passaic, New Jersey, battled a blaze at a furniture warehouse for three days. The fire, in a densely populated area, threatened to ignite 3 million pounds of chemicals, including chlorine pellets.
Twelve days later, six workers were injured in an explosion at a chemical plant in Westlake, Louisiana. Officials said the facility had the potential to release 660,000 pounds of highly toxic gas across a 25-mile radius.
Chronicling multiple events that threatened communities within a brief period of time is an effective way to make the case for more oversite of chemicals, said Stan Meiburg, former deputy administrator at the EPA who now directs Wake Forest University’s graduate program in sustainability.
“It’s useful to see incidents such as the Weaver fire as not just a series of one-offs, but as an example of a more systemic set of risks from industrial operations close to where people live and work,” he explained. “Even if it is true that accidents will happen, that’s no reason not to take steps to minimize their occurrence and their consequences.”
To illustrate the potentially volatility of the Winston Weaver fire, the newly released report highlights another incident: a 2013 ammonium nitrate explosion in the town of West, Texas, that killed 15 (including a dozen first responders), injured 250, leveled an entire block, and damaged or destroyed more than 150 buildings, including two schools and a nursing home.
The 30 tons of ammonium nitrate that ignited and caused $150 million in damage in the Texas explosion represented jut 5 percent of what was stored at the Winston Weaver plant at the time of the fire.
In August of 2020, 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate — more than four times what was stored at the Weaver plant — ignited in a Beirut, Lebanon, warehouse, triggering an explosion that caused 220 deaths and 7,000 injuries, left 300,000 homeless and caused $15 billion in property damage.
In 1995, 2.5 tons of ammonium nitrate, detonated in a rental truck in an act of domestic terror, destroyed much of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring 850. Timothy McVeigh was convicted and executed by lethal injection in 2001.
‘Similar to West, Texas’
In addition to ammonium nitrate, more than two-dozen other chemicals totaling 2,000 tons also were stored at the Weaver site.
“Had the fire reached other chemical storage locations, it could have caused a chemical fire, explosion, or release with a much larger radius and several immediate health hazards,” the report notes.
Following the Texas explosion, the Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates chemical accidents, recommended that ammonium nitrate be added to the list of substances regulated by the EPA’s Risk Management Program.
That didn’t — and still hasn’t — happened.
“The conditions found at the West, Texas, facility by the (Chemical Safety Board) are extremely similar to those present at the Winston Weaver facility almost a decade later, but have yet to be addressed in the EPA’s chemical disaster prevention rule,” the organizations conclude in their report. “If the draft rule is not strengthened, facility workers and neighbors across the country will continue to bear the human, environmental, and financial costs of more preventable disasters.”