For 40 days, flares burned 500,000 pounds of toxic chemicals over BP's Texas City refinery. Yet residents didn't know until weeks later that the flare released 17,000 pounds of cancer-causing benzene.

The reason: State law required BP to report the unauthorized release of chemicals only twice — once when the incident began and once two weeks after it ended.

The company acknowledges the release and contends it posed no health threat, but the incident is prompting questions about the adequacy of state laws in informing residents when plants release poisons beyond permitted levels.

Texas law requires companies to report to regulators within 24 hours after an unpermitted release occurs and within two weeks after it ends. BP says it gave the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality three more verbal notices during the pollution event from April 6 to May 16.

But those were voluntary, and the law doesn't set a reporting schedule for ongoing events like the one last spring.

The city's 40,000 residents heard nothing about the release until weeks after the flaring stopped, when a local newspaper reported it and lawyers began canvassing Texas City to sign up plaintiffs for class-action lawsuits.

City officials said BP told them about its notices to the state, but did not provide verbal updates during the course of the release.

Mary Larson, a Texas City resident for 57 years, said residents might have raised their voices during the event had they known about it: "Maybe we could have put the pressure on them, somehow, some way, enough people could have called in and gotten someone to do something."

EPA investigating

In addition to such questions about the adequacy of state reporting requirements, the release has prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to investigate whether the emissions should have triggered reports to federal regulators.

Michael Marr, a BP spokesman, said the company did not notify federal regulators because it didn't think the event required reporting.

Karen Priddy, 25, a mother of two young girls suffering from breathing problems she believes may be related to the event, wants to know why state officials didn't stop BP from polluting if they knew about the flaring.

"What else is happening that we don't know about?" she asked.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality declined to comment, citing a lawsuit filed against the company last week by the state's attorney general. The lawsuit alleges a pattern of poor operational and maintenance practices led to BP's "excessive emissions event."

It also accuses the company of putting profits over environmental compliance when it chose to keep running its ultracracker at reduced capacity after a fire damaged a hydrogen compressor. Continuing to run the ultracracker, which uses pressurized hydrogen to make gasoline and diesel fuel, required the company to flare gases.

Thousands of lawsuits

BP maintains that community air quality and fence line monitors, which measure for the presence of benzene and other substances, did not show elevated readings or ground-level effects from the flaring.

BP and the state commission said other monitoring showed chemical concentrations in the air did not exceed state or federal limits, although the commission said it could not determine the short-term health effects.

Plaintiffs who live or work near the plant have signed onto lawsuits claiming the release has harmed their health, or might later. One lawyer, Tony Buzbee, said he represents 12,000.

Dangerous loopholes?

Lawyers and environmentalists say the event has revealed loopholes in state law that could put the public in danger since companies can pollute indefinitely between the initial and final reports.

Initial incident reports are posted immediately on the TCEQ website, but nothing in the rules requires companies otherwise to alert authorities or the public.

"The regulation typically applies to situations where you have an isolated event that happens quickly. You shut it down, you fix it and you come back two weeks after it's over with a report explaining what happened," said attorney Tracy Hester, director of the Environment, Energy & Natural Resource Center at the University of Houston Law Center.

Last year, 2,801 emissions events were reported to the TCEQ. The agency said it did not know their average duration.

Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas, said the BP release shows the law needs revision. "If an emissions event is going to be longer than certainly more than a few hours, then they should provide real-time reporting to the public so that citizens can know their health might be at risk, but also so state regulators can take timely action to intervene and stop the event and force compliance."

Patricia Bonilla Harrison, a Houston lawyer representing multiple BP workers who believe they were sickened by direct exposure during the release, said many claim they weren't told by plant bosses about the pollution until word of it swept the town.

"There should be a reporting requirement that you have to tell your employees immediately," she said. It's almost as if employees have to come with a canary to work to see if he makes it through the day."

monica.hatcher@chron.com