Survey Reveals Risks of Chlorine
By Scott Streater, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Mar. 11–The first sign of impending disaster would be a piercing hiss as thousands of pounds of chlorine gas rushed through a hole in one of the 4,000-gallon storage tanks at the Tarrant County Water Supply Project plant in Euless.
Within minutes, 34,400 pounds of chlorine gas would escape, forming a teardrop shaped plume that would quickly move into nearby neighborhoods, schools and parks. Because chlorine gas is heavier than air, the greenish-yellow cloud would hug the ground like a blanket of fog. Anyone in its path would immediately feel as if their lungs and eyes were on fire. Those who did not get out of the way would suffer permanent lung damage, even death.
The toxic cloud would travel 12 miles, and even at that distance, the concentrations of chlorine in the plume would be high enough to cause permanent lung damage in an otherwise healthy person. Emergency officials would quickly order evacuations and direct people to stay indoors.
But 1.1 million people would be in the plume’s path. Even if everyone were notified of the disaster there’s, no way all could flee in time to avoid harm.
This is the nightmare scenario outlined by the Trinity River Authority in its Risk Management Plan, a document required by the federal government to help water and wastewater utilities, chemical plants and other manufacturers deal with the worst disaster they can imagine. The goal is to identify potential hazards and adequately plan for them, and alert nearby residents of risk in their communities.
It is one of dozens of worst-case scenarios in Dallas-Fort Worth detailed in the plans, which were reviewed by the Star-Telegram as part of Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative orchestrated by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to promote discussion about public access to government information.
The Star-Telegram reviewed risk plans for dozens of water and wastewater plants, chemical facilities, and food storage and manufacturing facilities in Tarrant County. The plans reveal numerous potential catastrophes, including releases of anhydrous ammonia, formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals that could place tens of thousands of Tarrant County residents at risk.
But the biggest hazard, by far, is chlorine, in part because large volumes are stored at most water and wastewater treatment plants.
“There’s a vulnerability, whether you’re talking about a terrorist attack, a natural hazard or just an accident,” said Rae Zimmerman, an urban planner and risk assessor at New York University who served on a government panel that identified chlorine gas as the main security threat to wastewater treatment plants.
“It’s a potentially serious problem,” she said.
Calls for change
The concern has become particularly acute in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
A Homeland Security Council report last year concluded that an explosive placed beside a chlorine gas tank in a highly populated area could kill 17,500 people, severely injure 10,000 and send as many as 1 million people to local hospitals.
There are about 100 plants nationwide that store enough chlorine or other chemicals to harm at least 100,000 people, according to federal records. Texas is home to more of these plants than any other state.
In each case, the danger could be significantly reduced by using safer alternatives to chlorine disinfection.
Lawmakers and advocates have called for utilities to reduce chlorine use since 9-11. The federal government’s own watchdog agency has urged Congress to set aside money to help thousands of utilities switch to a less dangerous alternative.
So far, little has been done.
Some local utilities, including the Trinity River Authority, and the city of Fort Worth, are taking steps to reduce the amount of chlorine they use and store on site.
But the Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to one of the nation’s largest concentrations of chlorine gas use and storage.
“We recognize that there are lots of risks out there, and I’m not saying that chlorine at wastewater treatment plants or drinking water plants is necessarily the biggest risk to the public,” said Carol Andress, an economics specialist at Environmental Defense who has studied the issue.
“But it’s a preventable one. It’s one where we have alternatives that are cost-effective and that have proven to be very successful.”
Taking action
Hours after 9-11, Michael Marcotte sat in his bedroom unable to sleep.
Marcotte was chief engineer and deputy general manager of the Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant, about two miles from the center of downtown Washington. His thoughts were on the rail cars that deliver chlorine to the plant, and on the large tanks where the gas was stored. He knew a leak from any one of the tanks would put 1.7 million people at risk of injury or death.
“If I was a terrorist, and I was going to do something else in Washington, D.C., knowing what I knew, my chlorine tank cars and tanks were right up there near the top of the list,” said Marcotte, who today heads Houston’s Department of Public Works and Engineering. “Once I came to that conclusion, I decided that we needed to do something posthaste.”
Within days, the plant began installing equipment to replace chlorine with a liquid bleach solution. Marcotte and his staff went to surplus stores to buy tanks and pumps, and improvised on the fly when needed.
In only 90 days, the plant was chlorine-free.
“The issue is a real one, especially when you have large quantities of chlorine in proximity to a whole lot of folks,” he said.
Since 9-11, more than 200 wastewater treatment plants in the country have stopped using chlorine to disinfect waste, although nearly 3,000 other plants have not, according to a report last year published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group.
There are a number of alternative treatment systems that can dramatically reduce the amount of chlorine needed.
A popular alternative is the liquid bleach combination used by the Blue Plains plant. Other wastewater treatment plants have begun to use high-beams of ultraviolet light to kill harmful microbes. And some water plants are using a system that injects ozone gas into the water to kill bacteria.
The city of Dallas is nearing completion of an ozone purification system at its Bachman plant that will significantly reduce the amount of chlorine at the site, said Charles Stringer, assistant director of water operations.
These types of changes can cost millions of dollars, however, and not every agency has the money.
Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., D-Del., led efforts last year to pass legislation that would provide federal grants to utilities to switch from chlorine to safer alternatives. The bill never made it out of committee. Biden plans to refile it this year, said Nelson Peacock, a staff counsel who handles homeland security issues for the senator.
“There are really no technological barriers,” said Charles Haas, an environmental engineer at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “There are only economic barriers.”
Local efforts
Fort Worth officials say they’re prepared for any disaster at the South Holly or North Holly water treatment plants southwest of downtown.
The two plants, separated by West Lancaster Avenue about a quarter of a mile apart, supply the city with 180 million gallons of water a day. The plants use chlorine to disinfect the water, and they store thousands of pounds of chlorine gas on-site in large steel cylinders.
According to the public reports, a rupture to one of the storage tanks at the South Holly plant would send 52,000 pounds of the toxic gas spewing into the air. Depending on wind direction, the chlorine cloud would move northeast into downtown, or south across Interstate 30 into a dense cluster of houses, schools, hospitals and businesses.
The city estimates the plume would travel 4.6 miles and place 219,448 people at risk.
Paul Bounds, who handles safety and security for the Fort Worth Water Department, said the city has beefed up security at its water and wastewater treatment plants since 9-11. The city has erected fences and other barriers around the chlorine tanks, and access to them is limited to a few employees. The city has also installed sensors that can detect a chlorine leak, and a large vacuum system that could suck the chlorine out of the air.
“That’s a pretty substantial system that really would help control and isolate an accidental, or even a deliberate, discharge,” Bounds said.
Still, Fort Worth plans to install by 2011 a new water-treatment system that uses much less chlorine, said Charly Angadicheril, the city’s assistant water director.
“Again, we recognize that gaseous chlorine can be something that would be attractive to terrorists,” Bounds said.
Tasteful alternative
The Trinity River Authority is nearing completion of a multimillion-dollar effort to replace chlorine as its primary disinfectant.
The new water purification system, which will come online next month, will inject ozone gas to disinfect the water.
The chlorine tanks will remain filled for many months as officials make the switch, in case there are problems with the new system.
But by year’s end, the plant could cut in half the amount of chlorine that’s trucked to the plant each month and that’s stored on site, said John Jadrosich, a Trinity River Authority spokesman.
But concerns about odor and taste had as much to do with the decision as security, Jadrosich said.
“The thing the public is going to appreciate most about the change is the reduction in taste and odor problems, ” he said.
IN THE KNOW
Sunshine Week
The Star-Telegram was one of hundreds of media outlets to participate in a national survey designed to gauge public accessibility to Comprehensive Emergency Response Plans, the federally mandated public document that tracks facilities that use or store hazardous materials and outlines local plans for dealing with hazardous spills.
The survey was sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to spark discussion of public access to government information during Sunshine Week, which kicks off today. But the assignment wasn’t as easy as it appeared. Of the 404 professional and student journalists and advocates in 37 states and one U.S. territory that requested to see the plans, less than half were successful, according to the survey. Some who made requests reported that officials ran background checks on them or sent police to follow them.
Fort Worth officials were far less paranoid. But it took nearly three weeks for the Star-Telegram to obtain a copy of the report. And the report that was e-mailed to the paper was missing key appendixes that would make the document relevant to any resident.
In the process, however, the Star-Telegram found detailed information in the Risk Management Plans available in regional reading rooms.
IN THE KNOW
If you go
The Risk Management Plans that utilities and industries are required to produce are available at the federal reading room in the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional headquarters at 1445 Ross Ave. in downtown Dallas. Some tips:
Call in advance: Appointments are not necessary, but officials will have the documents printed and ready to inspect if you call 214-665-6617.
Know what you want: Executive summaries for each facility are available online at www.rtknet.org/rmp. A portion of the plan, the Offsite Consequence Analysis, can be found in Sections 2-4 of the report at the reading room.
Know the rules: You may inspect the records for all facilities within the Local Emergency Planning Committee district. For Fort Worth, the district includes all of Tarrant County. If you want hazard risk information on facilities outside your district, you are limited to reviewing records for only 10 facilities per calendar month.
Bring your driver’s license: You must provide a picture ID, and if you are inspecting the records on behalf of a company, you must produce proof that you actually work for the business you represent.
Bring a notepad and pen: You cannot photocopy or scan any of the documents on file at the reading room. You are limited to what you can write down. The Community Right-to-Know Network provides a one-page form that makes it easy to get the information you need for each facility.
SOURCES: Environmental Protection Agency; Community Right-to-Know Network
——
Scott Streater, 817-390-7657 sstreater@star-telegram.com
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.