Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
Despite Safety Concerns, Chlorine Gas Tanks
Remain in Use
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | May 29, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Water-treatment plants in dozens of cities continue to use tanks of concentrated chlorine gas, the same substance used as a deadly weapon on World War I battlefields, in the midst of densely populated areas despite the existence of much safer alternatives.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, big cities such as Washington and Baltimore
decided to stop using chlorine gas to disinfect water at plants for drinking
water and sewage treatment. Switching to nongaseous methods, such as industrial
bleach or ultraviolet radiation, eliminates the risk that a ruptured tank could
send poisonous gases floating over a city.
But other cities have lagged, including plants near Detroit, Salt Lake City, and
Tampa, each of which has about a million residents who live in downwind danger
zones, according to risk-management plans filed with the Environmental
Protection Agency.
In New England, the response at chlorine-using plants has been mixed. Water
officials in Hartford are studying alternatives but have decided not to switch
for now. In Massachusetts, a former chlorine plant in Lawrence has been
converted, while officials at the one in Lynn have plans to switch but have yet
to do so. In Portland, Maine, conversion is underway. Boston does not use
chlorine in water treatment.
Getting rid of chlorine gas tanks in populated areas would significantly improve
security, officials say. According to a July 2004 report by President Bush's
Homeland Security Council, a simple explosive placed beside a chlorine gas tank
in a high-density area could cause 17,500 fatalities, 10,000 severe injuries,
and 100,000 hospitalizations.
''With any kind of threat-based analysis, you look for the combination of an
urban center, a dangerous manufacturing process or piece of critical
infrastructure, and the prospect of significant damage involving the large life
of civilians," said P. J. Crowley, a former National Security Council official
in the Clinton administration. ''Wastewater-treatment plants provide that
opportunity. Remove chlorine gas from the equation, and you largely take those
facilities off the terrorist target list."
Crowley is not alone. A January 2005 Government Accountability Office report,
compiling the views of 50 specialists on wastewater plants, found that
converting away from using chlorine gas was their top priority. And many
officials at water plant have heeded that call, especially since Sept. 11, 2001.
''We made our decision to switch on the heels of 9/11," said Jay Sakai,
wastewater chief for Baltimore. ''I think like a lot of utilities, we recognized
that this represented a significant threat to public safety."
Others have no plans to switch. Given the sluggish pace of change at some
plants, a range of homeland security specialists have called for the federal
government to do more to help or push local officials to use less hazardous
means of disinfection, couching it as a national security issue akin to nuclear
plant regulation.
Page 2 of 3 -- ''The fact that any facility in a major urban area is still using
chlorine gas is outrageous," said Carol Andress of the advocacy group
Environmental Defense. ''If they aren't even taking care of this low-hanging
fruit, what progress has DHS been making elsewhere?"
Although Homeland Security is charged with overseeing chemical plants in
general, the EPA bears primary responsibility for water facilities.
But neither has the authority to order a facility to change to safer processes.
Proposals to give the federal government that power have twice died in Congress.
The EPA may require all water facilities that serve more than 3,300 people to
conduct a vulnerability assessment.
Beyond that, it can only offer advice to help reduce risks, said David Travers,
deputy director of the EPA's water-security division.
''Gaseous chlorine clearly represents a vulnerability," Travers said. ''The
issue is whether utilities should stop using gaseous chlorine and use
alternatives, or whether there are mitigating circumstances and efforts that
would justify the continued use of chlorine.
''We defer to individual utilities to make that judgment, to do that
cost-benefit analysis."
Local officials in places where plants have not been switched generally agreed
they would be safer without chlorine gas. But they say the cost of the upgrade
is a chief obstacle. Changing a large plant from chlorine gas costs $12.5
million for new equipment and another $1.4 million per year, according to a
government study.
''We have looked at it," said Dave Pickard, manager of the treatment plant in
Tampa. ''We found that there is considerable capital cost and a considerable
increase in operating cost in switching."
Tampa decided the cost was not worth it, he said, in part because they are a
seaport and benefit from its perimeter security. Still, according to EPA data,
910,000 people live within the vulnerability zone created by the plant's
chlorine tanks.
Spread over many water users, the cost is less daunting. In Washington, for
example, converting away from chlorine gas raised residents' water bills by an
average of 25 cents a month. Switching also results in less need for costly
security measures.
Moreover, according to Rick Hind, toxics policy analyst for Greenpeace,
water-treatment plants are the primary reason that chlorine tankers must be
transported through populated areas. Stop moving chlorine gas, he said, and the
need to improve rail and truck security is diminished.
But some cities have not even evaluated what it would take to switch to bleach
because chlorine gas remains the most efficient way to disinfect water. In
Detroit, assistant director of water-supply operations Pamela Turner said
officials are satisfied with their security measures.
''We haven't really looked at trying to go with [bleach]," she said. ''I don't
know what that would cost."
Page 3 of 3 -- Congress has been struggling with how to better secure privately
owned chemical plants. Republicans with a free-market orientation have been
reluctant to impose new regulations on the $420 billion chemical industry.
Andress, who wrote a 2003 report on chemical risks at public water-treatment
facilities, said such facilities should be an exception. She said they are not
businesses, and there is a clear alternative process. Congress has leverage
through its grants to local governments, she said.
Two lawmakers -- Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and
Senator James Jeffords, Independent of Vermont -- are drafting legislation to
help cities pay for changing their infrastructure.
Managers of local plants say they would welcome federal money, but oppose new
federal requirements.
C. T. ''Kip" Howlett Jr., executive director of the Chlorine Chemistry Council,
part of the chemical industry's lobbying arm, said his group also would oppose
any effort to require plants to shift away from chlorine gas. He said it was
simplistic to think that chlorine gas never makes sense. Decisions should be
made on a case-by-case basis by local officials, he said.
That view was echoed by Ken Kirk, executive director of the National Association
of Clean Water Agencies.
''I think it's really difficult to characterize one city as having its act
together and others as not having their act together," Kirk said.
''I think you have to rely to a great extent on the judgment and wisdom, if you
will, of local governments to do the right thing. If their assessment is that
they don't need to move away from one approach and adopt another, then I think
you need to accept that."
Still, Kirk said, the idea of grants to help cities pay for switching was a good
one.
Howlett, the chemical industry lobbyist, was less enthusiastic, suggesting that
there are so many potential targets that it might be better to give more funds
to first responders who would be involved no matter what is attacked.
But Markey pushed the need for grants to water facilities who ''wish to do the
right thing and keep the surrounding communities safer."
Getting chlorine gas out of populated areas ''will be the key to preventing
another Bhopal," he said, referring to the chemical-plant disaster in India that
killed 20,000 people in 1984.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.