OUCH! A Regular Bulletin on How Money in Politics Hurts You 
     
      #29                       Public Campaign            August 18, 1999
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     IGNORANCE IS BLISS
     In 1990, after the Bhopal chemical plant disaster in India, Congress 
     moved to help prevent similar accidents at facilities using extremely 
     hazardous substances. Thousands of facilities that use certain 
     flammable and toxic chemicals were required, under the Clean Air Act,  
     to submit risk management plans to the Environmental Protection Agency 
     and state and local governments. The deadline: June 21, 1999. 
     
     The core idea was that the public has a right to know about the 
     chemical hazards in their communities, and that local emergency  
     response personnel need advance information to prepare for and prevent 
     possible chemical accidents. In addition, by allowing researchers to 
     collect and compare information about accident risks at existing 
     facilities, safety advocates could set priorities for hazard reduction 
     and determine which companies were taking necessary precautions and 
     which companies were needlessly endangering their neighbors. 
     
     All that prudent legislation has gone out the window with the passage 
     of the Chemical Safety Information, Site Security and Fuels Regulatory 
     Relief Act (S. 880). Signed into law by President Clinton in early 
     August, the new law blocks the EPA from posting on the Internet any 
     information about a facility's "offsite-consequence analysis" (that's 
     bureaucrateze for information describing how dangerous a facility 
     currently is)--including worst-case scenarios involving toxic releases 
     or explosions. Only "qualified researchers" may request access to that 
     information, but they are explicitly prohibited from disseminating it 
     in any form, under pain of criminal fines. The only thing companies 
     have to do to demonstrate that they are taking any precautionary 
     action is hold a meeting with local stakeholders sometime in the next 
     six months, summarizing the issues around any worst-case scenario 
     involving a local facility. 
     
     So much for the public's right-to-know. This approach can be 
     summarized as follows: if there is a danger of a chemical accident, 
     the best solution is to keep the public in the dark as to how bad the 
     risks are and what, if anything, is being done about it.
     
     This is a classic case of how moneyed interests, focused hard on a 
     narrow concern, can easily defeat the broader interest when the public 
     isn't paying attention. The chemical industry led the charge for S. 
     880, its influence rooted in $4 million in PAC donations, soft money 
     and large individual ($200 and up) contributions to congressional 
     candidates in 1997-98. Its allies in the food processing industry, oil 
     and gas producers and refiners, and agricultural fertilizer 
     sectors--all of which are also subject to the Clean Air Act--gave 
     another $22.5 million. Three-quarters of that went to Republicans. The 
     leading sponsors of S. 880 were Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), who 
     raised $432,730 from those industries between 1993 and 1998, and Rep. 
     Tom Bliley (R-VA), recipient of $93,261. Against them were a host of 
     consumer and environmental groups, none of them major campaign 
     contributors.
     
     The chemical industry claims that S. 880 was needed to prevent 
     dangerous information from falling into the hands of terrorists, 
     giving them a road map of which plants to attack. Never mind that the 
     EPA had specifically exempted any classified information from being 
     released in facility risk management plans. And forget that from 1987 
     to 1996, there have been 600,000 accidents reported involving 
     hazardous chemicals--and not one has been caused by terrorists. As it 
     is, S. 880 contains no provisions to improve site security, reduce 
     hazards through inherent safety, or harden facilities against attack.
     
     Two-hundred-fifty people, plant-workers as well as people living 
     nearby, die each year from chemical accidents. The more the public 
     knows about those risks, the more the pressure that proper precautions 
     be taken. Which is apparently the last thing the chemical industry 
     wants.
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     OUCH! is a regular e-mail bulletin on how private money in politics 
     hurts average citizens, published by Public Campaign, a non-partisan, 
     non-profit organization devoted to comprehensive campaign finance 
     reform. Every day, we pay more as consumers and taxpayers for special 
     interest subsidies and boondoggles because of our system of privately 
     financed elections. It's time for a change. 
     
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