Center for Effective Government's analysis of North Texas chemical risks
If a liberal advocacy group is right, every child in every school in Dallas County is within the danger zone of a facility storing extremely hazardous chemicals, according to a study issued today by a group pressing for greater restrictions.
So are a substantial share of North Texas’ other school children and, for that matter, the rest of us, according to the Center for Effective Government. The Washington-based nonprofit says its mission is to increase government accountability through transparency.
In most cases, the group said, there are safer, economical alternatives to the chemicals being used. Chemicals that make residents safer from industrial accidents or even deliberate sabotage by terrorists. The group has lobbied heavily to require the use of such alternatives. In addition to tougher rules, it has urged greater disclosure of risks to the public.
“A year and a half ago, the West, Texas fertilizer facility explosion destroyed three schools,” Sean Moulton, a policy expert with the group, said in a prepared statement.
“Since then, we’ve seen a number of other chemical disasters that have caused deaths, injuries, and major property damage. It’s time to get serious about keeping our kids safe – before a chemical catastrophe causes another tragedy,” he said.
The group gathered public information from Environmental Protection Agency offices around the country providing details of the risks self-reported by facilities and mapped which had risk zones that included public or private schools.
Those risks typically would not expose everyone in the potential area at once and are not necessarily life-threatening.
The facility that poses risk to the largest number of North Texas school kids is the Central Regional Wastewater System plant in Grand Prairie, the group said.
More than 1,200 schools and 750,000 school children are within the area where they might be affected by the sulfur dioxide used there were released, according to the group.
The group released a similar study in the wake of the West explosion that looked at how many schools were within 1 mile of facilities required to report the possibility of off-site consequences to the Environmental Protection Agency.
That study figured in discussions and Congressional hearings about actions to take in light of the West explosion.
In this case, the group found more students by including all those within the range even though it looked at smaller number of facilities had self-reported posing the greatest risks.
The Dallas Morning News did not review the group’s analysis. Last year, The News did use related data from the group when reporting that a third of the 1,347 Texas plants that file emergency plans with the EPA because they handle “extremely hazardous substances” either reported having had no outside inspections or, like West Fertilizer, reported either no safety inspection or no safety inspection by a government agency.
The News also found, in its 9-month investigation of issues related to the West explosion that lax regulation of the explosive there, ammonium nitrate, is rampant and that 20,000 Texas live within 1 mile of a facility storing 10,000 pounds or more of that one chemical.
While there is a potential for release, officials at the Trinity River Authority – which runs the Grand Prairie sewer plant — said they’re confident they have plans in case to address them.
“I can assure you that that’s the case, and that we routinely go over that and make sure that we’re ready to go. We have all the proper equipment and all the proper procedures readily at hand for the responders we’ll have,” said general manager Kevin Ward.
Ward also said the authority is actively evaluating changes to its plants that could reduce or eliminate the use of specific dangerous chemicals.
“We are doing the engineering evaluations,” he said. “A lot of those are more costly but they may be worth the cost.”
Ward declined to comment on the group’s specific numbers, citing security concerns.
The Grand Prairie plant is one of 59 facilities nationwide the group said had 200,000 or more students potentially affected in the worse case. Only one facility in the country — a Kuehne Chemical Company plant in New Jersey — had more students within the range of danger.
Dallas and Rockwall were among the 102 U.S. counties (about 3 percent) where every student faced risk from at least one chemical facility.
Overall, Texas school kids were among the most likely to go to school in risk zones: 61 percent attend a school within the are of possible off-site consequences, the documents collected by the group show.
Texas has among the highest proportion of students in such zones in the U.S. Nationwide, 1 in 3 students attend a school within such a zone. The study was conducted by the, a liberal advocacy group that has argued for increased safety rules and disclosure to communities on the use of dangerous chemicals for which safer alternatives exist.
For more information from the group, check out its Web site.