Contact: Ernie Blazar 202.224.7627 Shana Stribling 202.224.0309
Thursday, May 30, 2002

ST. LOUIS - Senator Kit Bond today introduced legislation to protect local communities from terrorist attacks at chemical plants. The Community Protection from Chemical Terrorism Act would prevent terrorists from gaining a virtual blueprint for their attacks by accessing publicly available government mandated reports from chemical facilities.

“Communities have a right to prevent terrorists from using government information to target and attack chemical facilities in their backyard,” said Bond, during a meeting with Ray Gruender, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, and other federal and local law enforcement officials. “After the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001, we must be even more vigilant not to help terrorists exploit and harm our vulnerable communities.”

Federal law currently requires 15,000 chemical facilities across the country to estimate their worst-case scenario accident and send a report describing the conditions under which such an accident would occur to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Federal law also requires EPA to make these reports, known as off-site consequence analysis (OCA), available to the public. OCA reports include the vulnerable chemical, the conditions under which a release would occur, the distance a toxic cloud would travel, the number of people who might be hurt by a release, and any vulnerable targets in harm’s way such as hospitals or schools.

According to EPA, at least 123 plants each keep amounts of chemicals that, if released, could form a deadly vapor cloud that would put more than one million people in danger. An OCA report submitted by a Kansas City plant shows that 850,000 Missourians would be seriously affected by a chlorine release forming a toxic cloud over a 14 mile radius.

"According to the Department of Justice, chemical facilities are exactly the type of targets terrorists would attack to create mayhem and destruction," said Bond. "Many such facilities exist in well-populated areas, where a chemical release could result in mass casualties and widespread destruction. And yet, we have current law making public precisely the type of factors that a terrorist would weigh when planning an attack. We must protect our communities from attack."

Bond’s bill will allow the government to continue to collect OCA information for official emergency and disaster response activities. The bill will also allow the public to view OCA information with only the specific facility name and address withheld. This will prevent terrorists from using OCA data to target specific communities. The Bond bill also expands membership in local emergency response committees to include members of environmental groups, underscoring their role in protecting communities from chemical accidents.