DOW Facility Fails Greenpeace Security Inspection

Following a citizen inspection conducted
earlier this week by Greenpeace, the organization has issued a 'failed
inspection' report to Dow Chemical Company for failing to fully secure
its Texas Operations facility in Freeport, TX against terrorists or
catastrophic accidents. A copy of the inspection report was delivered in
person at the local headquarters today and also submitted to the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Freeport facility puts130,000
people at risk.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/media-center/reports/Dow-Inspection-Report/

"We know Dow can eliminate these risks by switching to safer
processes, they just choose not to," said Greenpeace policy analyst John
Deans. "It's pretty shocking that disaster prevention is still
voluntary in a post 9/11 world, particularly in light of the magnitude
of the risk. As we have seen in the petrochemical industry, self
regulation is a hazardous proposition."

In 2008, Dow Chemical
partnered with K2Pure Solutions to begin converting its Pittsburgh, CA
plant to a safer process that eliminates the bulk storage of chlorine.
In 2009, Dow provided Greenpeace legislative language showing that Dow
could support a policy requiring safer chemical processes. Now, however,
Dow is leading the industry trade groups lobbying against policies that
would require safer chemical processes at plants and protect nearby
communities.

Although the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
plans to inspect 'high risk' chemical plants, they will only inspect 3
percent of the 5,333 "high risk" plants by the end of 2010. Under a
temporary law, the DHS also has no authority to require the use of safer
chemical processes that would eliminate catastrophic poison gas risks
at a chemical facility.

Nearly nine years after the attacks of
9/11, the nation's chemical plants remain vulnerable to terrorist
attack. Chemical plant risk zones frequently extend up to 20 miles
downwind into densely populated areas due to the bulk storage or use of
poison gases such as chlorine. More than 100 million Americans are put
at risk by just 300 of the nation's "high risk" chemical plants. In
2004, the Homeland Security Council estimated that an attack on a
chemical facility would kill 17,500 people, seriously injure 10,000, and
send an additional 100,000 people to the hospital.

Since 1999,
more than 500 plants have switched to safer and more secure chemicals or
processes nationwide, eliminating risks to 40 million Americans. At
least 6 facilities in Texas use safer processes eliminating risks to
over 70 thousand people.

The U.S. House of Representatives
passed a bill (HR 2868) on Nov. 6, 2009 that would require the highest
risk plants to convert to safer processes where commercially feasible.
This bill is now under consideration by the Senate.

"If the
chemical industry hasn't eliminated these risks by now, there is no
reason to believe that it ever will," said Deans. "Sadly, we all know
too well that security cameras and fences are an insufficient deterrent
to a terrorist, and we have seen that industrial accidents can have
fatal consequences."

Terrorism experts from agencies such as DHS,
the EPA, and the Government Accountability Office have documented the
nation's vulnerability to toxic releases at U.S. chemical plants and the
need to require safer processes. An accident could result in a deadly
release similar to that experienced in Bhopal, India in 1984, when a gas
leak at a pesticide plant killed 8,000 within three days.