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TERRORISM AT THE PLANT LEVEL
Attacks lead to more security, secrecy for chemical companies
JEFF JOHNSON
In the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, chemical plant officials say they have increased security through greater plant surveillance, more guards, intense vehicle inspections, and plans to better coordinate security with similar facilities, fire departments, and police.
"We've gone on alert," says Rick Charter, vice president and chief administrative officer for Atofina Petrochemical, in Houston. Similar comments were made by Dow and other companies as well as the Louisiana Chemical Association and the American Chemistry Council (ACC).
Company officials were circumspect, however, about what they were actually doing, saying that the tragic events show the necessity for great secrecy, and, they say, proving the correctness of the industry's successful fight to limit public access to potential worst-case accident scenarios and to keep such information off the Internet (C&EN, July 3, 2000, page 16).
However, many local emergency planners don't agree. Tim Gablehouse, a state and local official who chairs the emergency planning committee for much of metropolitan Denver, urges companies to fight the temptation to be secretive.
Security is a chemical company responsibility, he agrees, and details should be confidential. But emergency responders and the community, like it or not, are on the firing line, he says, and are only more threatened when it is harder to get information about the possible impact of a terrorist attack or accident.
Emergency officials also are urging the Department of Justice to complete a long-delayed report on chemical companies' vulnerability to terrorists attacks. The report, they say, would be a key guide for industry and emergency planners. An interim draft was due in August 2000.
An ACC official says the council is working with the Justice Department on the report and a draft will be out by year-end. But a Senate Environment & Public Works Committee staff member disagrees, saying Justice has told the committee it is developing a narrow methodology to begin to assess the terrorist threat to industrial sites and has not started work on the larger site vulnerability study.
Committee Chairman James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) is pressing Justice to conduct the vulnerability study, says the staffer. Justice would not comment.
THREAT Map showing the distance chemicals could travel from a facility following a worst-case accident as posted on the Internet. Each circle represents a chemical plant along the Mississippi River.
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