Law-enforcement agencies knew long before Sept. 11 that chemical facilities offered an inviting target: in the late 1990s the FBI foiled a plot by the Ku Klux Klan to blow up a Texas gas refinery. But as companies beef up security by issuing new ID badges and increasing the number of security officers at gates and on patrol–and as the government pitches in with, for instance, air surveillance by the Texas Air National Guard over refineries and chemical plants–they are falling short. This month infiltrators in frogmen suits slipped into the ship channel that flows past a Sterling Chemicals, Inc., plant in Texas City. Silently climbing out near the facility, they gained access (Sterling spokesman Mark Kahil declines to detail how, for obvious reasons). The frogmen were cops testing security at the plant, which manufactures styrene (which can cause respiratory irritation and mutations), acrylonitrile (headache, nausea, cancer), acetic acid (lung damage), sodium cyanide (death) and tertiary butylamine (eye and lung irritation, convulsions). Sterling’s recent security upgrades–prisonlike watchtowers, security cameras, concrete barricades at all entrances and additional guards–had not kept them out. “The police said they had to work harder to get in” than during the last drill, Kahil says. Despite such lapses, says Jim White, director of emergency preparedness for Harris County (which includes Houston), “I think the companies are as well prepared as can be. They have put forth a great deal of effort and expense.''
The consequences of a chemical release would depend on what got out, whether it stayed airborne and where the wind took the “vapor explosion cloud.” For years the nearly 15,000 facilities that produce or store toxic chemicals have been required to file, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reports specifying what could happen in a “worst-case scenario.’’ After Sept. 11, the EPA removed the reports from its Web site. But, NEWSWEEK has learned, hundreds of sites reported that a worst-case release could spread a toxic cloud 14 miles. A release from any of more than 2,000 facilities could affect upwards of 100,000 people. If all the wrong conditions come together, a terrorist attack could kill hundreds and injure tens of thousands with anything from inflamed eyes to permanent lung damage. Many of the sites with highly toxic substances are located near schools and homes. And they are not all obvious “chemical facilities”: many water-processing plants store large tanks of chlorine.
Chemical facilities are limited to the EPA’s 15,000. Pipelines carrying hazardous liquids and natural gas spread across 489,862 miles, mostly underground and through populated areas. Joe Caldwell, who in 1970 established the Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) in the Department of Transportation, says that a terrorist attack on a pipeline would be “a piece of cake.’’ The lines are usually only three to four feet down. Their locations are a matter of public record, though OPS has now deleted the information from its Web site, too.
FIRST STEPS: Shut down pipelines while operators review safety. Tighten security at all sites with hazardous chemicals. Formulate emergency and evacuation plans.
