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Pallone & Smith Host Discussion on Chemical Security With Environment and Industry Groups

June 6, 2005

Piscataway, N.J. --- With the House Homeland Security Committee set to hold its first hearing on chemical security next Tuesday in Washington, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and New Jersey State Senator Bob Smith (D-Piscataway) hosted a roundtable discussion today to hear from representatives of environmental, industry, labor, and emergency management groups on how best we can protect New Jersey's chemical facilities from potential terrorist attacks.

Last month Pallone, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, reintroduced legislation that would improve security and reduce hazards at chemical facilities around the nation, including at least seven chemical plants in New Jersey that, if targeted by terrorists, could impact more than one million people.

"Chemical plant security could possibly be the most pressing national security issue facing us, and yet the federal government has done virtually nothing to make them more secure," Pallone said at today's roundtable. "For the past three Congresses, Senator Jon Corzine and I have introduced legislation that would create clear federal authority to monitor and improve security at chemical facilities. The consequences are just too dire for Congress not to step in and develop a plan that will secure these facilities for the future."

The New Jersey congressman's Chemical Security Act (H.R. 2237)requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Homeland Security to work together to identify "high priority" chemical facilities. Once identified, these facilities would be required to assess vulnerabilities and hazards, and then develop and implement a plan to improve security and use safer technologies within 18 months.

Pallone's legislation would use several factors to identify high priority facilities, including: the severity of harm that could be caused by a release, proximity to population centers, threats to national security or critical infrastructure, threshold quantities of substances of concern that pose a serious threat, and other safety factors that the EPA Administrator considers appropriate.

Since he first introduced this legislation in the House in 2002, Pallone has been trying to get the Republican leadership and Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over chemical facilities, to conduct a congressional hearing on chemical security.

While the Senate held a hearing in April devoted exclusively to chemical security, the New Jersey congressman remains frustrated that it has taken House Republicans nearly four years to finally conduct a hearing on this very real security risk. Pallone welcomes the Homeland Security Committee hearing next week, but he will continue to urge House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) to conduct a hearing this summer on ways to secure on chemical plants.

Last year, the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union, with help from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, surveyed local union leadership at 125 U.S. companies that make or use large quantities of hazardous chemicals. The results were disturbing -- 54 percent of workers at these plants believe they face a high or medium likelihood of a catastrophic event due to a terrorist attack, and 59 percent fear catastrophe due to an accident. Only 38 percent of the local unions felt that they worked at companies with adequate plans to respond to a terrorist attack.

Pallone and Smith held today's roundtable at the North Stelton Fire Station in Piscataway, whose firefighters would be among the first to respond to any attack against a Union Carbide chemical facility six miles away. Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, is one of many chemical facilities in New Jersey that if targeted by terrorists has the potential to kill or injure hundreds of thousands of people.