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Uneasy Neighbors in Texas
Huge Chemical Plant a Potentially Deadly Terrorist Target
 Listen to Jack Speer's report.
A part of the Dow Chemical facility outside Freeport, Texas, the company's biggest chemical plant in the United States. Together with two smaller sites, the plant stretches over 5,000 acres, producing 40 billion pounds of chemicals and other products per year.
Photo: Marisa Peñaloza, NPR News
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A truck gets inspected at Gate B of the Dow Chemical plant in Freeport.
Photo: Marisa Peñaloza, NPR News
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Tim Scott, director of safety at Dow Chemical in Freeport, says the plant has voluntarily boosted security.
Photo: Marisa Peñaloza, NPR News
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Jim Phillips, a former judge and current city council member in Freeport, says Dow Chemical helped to build and support the city.
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Aug. 7, 2002 --Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, more and more attention has been focused on security at airports and nuclear power plants. That's far less true for America's vast chemical industry.
Attacks on chemicals plants could threaten the lives of millions of people, since many plants create or store highly toxic substances. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are more than 100 chemical plants in America where a major explosion would affect one million people or more.
Legislation pending in the Senate would require chemical plants to beef up security. But as NPR's Jack Speer discovered, some chemical plants aren't waiting for the government -- they are beefing up their own security procedures.
The Dow Chemical plant in Freeport, Texas -- a city near the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles south of Houston -- is the company's largest in the United States. Dow Chemical employs about 5,000 people at the plant, which produces at least 30 regulated chemicals.
Tim Scott, the plant's director of safety, says that since Sept. 11 security at the plant has gotten much tighter. At the central command center, guards check cameras, some of them new. They also monitor two-way radios. Some of the new security measures were being done before, but Scott says there is an increased sense of urgency now.
The chemical industry has stressed its willingness to work with the federal government to make sure its plants are secure. However, the industry's position has been that corporations, rather than the federal government, should be responsible for their own security at chemical plants.
As the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, there are still no firm federal security standards in place for the U.S. chemical industry. Critics say allowing the industry to set its own security standards makes little sense.
A proposed bill being considered in Congress, the so-called "Chemical Security Act," would mandate tighter security at chemical plants. It would also require chemical companies to consider safer means of producing chemicals, as well as third-party verification that plants were taking the required security steps.
Some experts say security changes the chemical industry have put in place are purely cosmetic, and the federal government should step in. Nicholas Ashford, a professor of engineering at MIT, says terrorists bent on sabotaging a chemical plant would not find it too difficult.
But he adds that reducing the risk could mean changing the way chemicals are physically created -- something that could cost billions of dollars, on top of what the industry is already spending on increased security.
If the Dow Chemical plant is attacked, the people of Freeport would be the first to feel the effects -- and residents say the mood has changed since Sept. 11. Some say there is little the chemical plants can do to prevent an attack, and are more vigilant about reporting anything "suspicious."
 Browse more NPR stories on homeland security.
Other Resources
• A copy of the Chemical Security Act (in Adobe Acrobat format) provided by the Chemical Producers and Distributors Association. An alternate source for a copy of the act can be found at the U.S. Government Printing Office site.
• Dow Chemical
• Freeport, Texas official Web site
• Environmental Protection Agency
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