Five years after West Fertilizer explosion, EPA rolls back chemical safety reforms

A 2013 memorial service in West honored people who died in a fertilizer plant explosion. The EPA is rolling back chemical plant safety reforms. (Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images) A 2013 memorial service in West honored people who died in a fertilizer plant explosion. The EPA is rolling back chemical plant safety reforms. (Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images) Photo: Erich Schlegel/Getty Images Photo: Erich Schlegel/Getty Images Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Five years after West Fertilizer explosion, EPA rolls back chemical safety reforms 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected next month to roll back chemical plant safety reforms that the Obama administration proposed after 15 people died in a fertilizer plant explosion in West.

The rollback means the disaster, which exposed wide safety gaps in the industry and its oversight, will result in no significant federal regulatory changes, as the Austin American-Statesman reports.

That angers the mayor of the Central Texas town.

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"With all due respect to (EPA Administrator) Scott Pruitt, he's never lost 15 firefighter friends," Mayor Tommy Muska told the Statesman. "I'm as pro-business as anyone, but some things are way, way, way more important than too much regulation, and that includes the safety of these chemical plants."

The April 17, 2013, blast injured more than 150 and destroyed a section of town, including an apartment building and a high school.

Without the new rules, plants won't be required to consider inherently safer materials and technologies or to submit to additional auditing requirements.

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Industry groups applauded the retreat from the Obama-era reforms, with Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge calling the scaled-back rules "another victory for common sense over environmental radicalism" -- a comment the EPA included in a press release.

Texas was among the states that asked the EPA to stop the reforms, arguing that a proposal to make chemical information more readily available to the public could help terrorists, the Statesman reports.

Among the problems the U.S. Chemical Safety Board identified in the West Explosion was that locals weren't sufficiently aware of the fertilizer ammonium nitrate's ability to explode. The volunteer firefighters who rushed in may have taken a different approach if they had been fully aware of the risks, and city officials could have curbed residential development near the plant.