Officials testified before the Texas House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday about the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people and injured more than 160. While the hearing didn’t focus on federal regulatory agencies, it did seek to uncover which local authorities are responsible for overseeing the plant. Nim Kidd, chief of emergency management for the Department of Public Safety (DPS), claimed, “Even in the midst of that great tragedy, the system worked.” But other officials disagreed. The takeaway was that no one agency is tasked with ensuring the safety of such plants.

Local officials: DPS officials testified that ultimately the responsibility for ensuring that hazardous materials like the chemicals stored at West Fertilizer Co. are stored safely falls to local officials, and that it’s up to local fire marshals to inspect them for safety. “It’s a local up,” McCraw said. “It’s not a state down.” Yet while West has a volunteer fire department, it does not have a fire marshal. Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League, said that expecting small areas like West to have the resources needed to develop systems and plans for emergency situations is unrealistic. Meanwhile, even though facilities like the one in West are required to share information on safety and hazardous chemicals with local officials and emergency planning committees, they may not always put emergency plans in place.

Insurance companies: The West plant did have insurance and Texas Insurance Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman said the plant was likely inspected for safety as part of the underwriting process. But companies only evaluate risk from a monetary point of view, not in terms of prevention, she said, and Texas doesn’t mandate the terms for insurance companies that offer policies to such plants. While the West plant had liability insurance, it was not enough to cover the risk inherent in its operations.

TCEQ: The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which inspected the plant in 2006 after a complaint and cited it for operating for two years without an air quality permit, said that it only handles some permits for such facilities. It also focuses on the dangers chemicals pose during normal business hours, according to chairman Bryan Shaw, but the plant was closed at the time of the fire.

Office of the State Chemist: The state chemist, Tim Herman, inspected the plant just before the explosion, on April 5. But at the hearing he testified that his office only looks at security from the perspective of deterring vandalism and theft when issuing permits for those who store or distribute ammonium nitrate. “Our job is to facilitate commerce and provide market protection,” he said. It did not discuss storage of the chemical when it inspected the plant; rather, its primary role is to ensure the purity of the fertilizer being sold.

Agriculture Department: A state official said the agency isn’t tasked with regulating fertilizer facilities.

The hearing also illuminated the many other plants that may pose a danger in the state. Officials from the Texas Department of State Health Services report that 14,000 facilities have extremely hazardous materials, and there are at least 44 with 10,000 pounds or more of ammonium nitrate or ammonium nitrate-based explosive material. West Fertilizer Co. reported more than 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate. There are nearly 7,000 chemical facilities around the country that pose a potential threat to populations larger than the town of West.

The cause of the explosion has yet to be determined, but the state fire marshal’s office expects to complete its investigation by May 10. Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has called for a hearing to investigate safety lapses at the plant. But industry groups and Texas lawmakers have already been quick to deny that any new regulations would be necessary in the wake of the explosion.

West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant exploded two weeks ago and killed 15 while injuring more than 160 people, is a small town of just 2,800 people. There are thousands of other chemical facilities around the country that pose a risk to far larger populations.

In a November memo prepared for Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), the Congressional Research Service reviewed all of the chemical facilities that submit risk management plans to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Facilities that process 140 specific chemicals above certain thresholds are required to submit plans. Each facility must calculate how the population within a certain radius of its plant would be affected by “a worse-case scenario release from a single chemical process.” Given weather effects, demographics, and potential precautions taken by each facility, the report says “it is unlikely that this entire population would be affected by any single chemical release, even if it is a result of a worst-case accident.”

Yet nearly 7,000 facilities – 6,985 to be exact – report that they post a risk to populations greater than 1,000, with 90 that could impact more than 1 million people in a worst-case scenario. 4,425 would likely impact a population similar to the town of West, or between 1,000 and 9,999 people.

Even worse, West Fertilizer Co. wasn’t included in these numbers, as it had told the EPA that it didn’t pose a risk of fire or explosion. It claimed that the worst-case scenario was a 10-minute release of ammonia gas or a leak from a broken hose, neither of which would harm anyone.

A 2008 report from the Center for American Progress looked at how to make the nation’s 101 most dangerous chemical facilities, which could impact populations above 1 million, less dangerous by converting them to safer and more secure substances and technologies. For plants that manufacture ammonia fertilizer, the report suggested reducing the amount of ammonia they store by using liquid nitrogen and dry urea fertilizers, which “do not post the emergency gas release hazards of anhydrous ammonia.”

Yet a 2009 bill to tighten security standards for chemical factories, fertilizer depots, and water-treatment plants was met by a $51 million lobbying campaign by big business. Two large lobbying forces, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau, labeled it a “key vote” for the year. The bill passed the House but then died in the Senate.

The industry has given $34 million to political candidates in the last three elections, two-thirds of whom were Republicans, and two fertilizer industry groups have spent $17.3 million on lobbying since 1998 with stated opposition to EPA regulation of fertilizer safety. The industry has already made statements in opposition to new regulations after the explosion in Texas.

Texas lawmakers have also recently sought to weaken the state environmental agency that oversaw the West plant and reduced its budget by $305 million. Governor Rick Perry (R) has also indicated that he isn’t interested in new safety regulations. Meanwhile, members have Congress have recently worked to advance a bill that would weaken the EPA’s powers to regulate major chemical plants.

The Bangladeshi garment factory whose collapse has cost 300 lives and counting never gained approval from the local development authority. In the days leading up to the collapse, with the building exhibiting deep cracks, police ordered owners to evacuate the building and workers fled to the streets. But the building’s owner told reporters the cracks were “nothing serious” and stood outside the building with a megaphone, reportedly warning workers they would be docked pay if they didn’t return to work.

The fire is one of a spate of incidents at Bangladeshi garment factories in recent months that have led to deaths and injuries. But even after a fire in November that killed 112 workers, clothing brands and retailers that include Wal-Mart, Gap, and H&M refused to implement a new union-proposed safety plan. The Associated Press reports:

The plan would ditch government inspections, which are infrequent and easily subverted by corruption, and establish an independent inspectorate to oversee all factories in Bangladesh, with powers to shut down unsafe facilities as part of a legally binding contract signed by suppliers, customers and unions. The inspections would be funded by contributions from the companies of up to $500,000 per year.

The proposal was presented at a 2011 meeting in Dhaka attended by more than a dozen of the world’s largest clothing brands and retailers — including Wal-Mart, Gap and Swedish clothing giant H&M — but was rejected by the companies because it would be legally binding and costly.

At the time, Wal-Mart’s representative told the meeting it was “not financially feasible … to make such investments,” according to minutes of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

After last year’s Tazreen blaze, Bangladeshi union president Amin said he and international labor activists renewed a push for the independent inspectorate plan, but none of the factories or big brands would agree.

This week, none of the large clothing brands or retailers would comment about the proposal.

Over the past several years, corporations have touted their in-house social responsibility programs as an alternative to binding agreements on working conditions, but these self-monitoring programs implement measures that are neither sufficient to fill huge regulatory gaps in an industry with 3 million workers, nor transparent enough to ensure compliance.

Retailers reap extraordinary savings from siting their garment factories in countries like Bangladesh, with miniscule wages and little compliance expense, casting doubt on their claims that stepped up oversight is not “financially feasible.” Some 100 years ago, a New York garment factory fire in which some 150 young women and teens jumped to their deaths sparked labor reform in the United States. But mega-corporations continue to skirt those reforms by simply moving to new and less developed countries without regulations, which poses particular hazards in the labor-intensive textile industry. In part, these clothiers are responding to U.S. demand for cheap clothing in a culture built on “fast fashion.” At the turn of the century, the average affordable clothing item cost around $8, or $380 adjusted for inflation, and by 1929, most women still only owned nine work outfits. Today, most Americans expect to own much more for much less.

Investigators still don’t know what caused the explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. in Texas last week, although criminal activity has already been ruled out. It is clear that while the plant fell under the purview of seven regulators, many of which have fined and/or cited it in the past, at least some steps weren’t taken, such as reporting its large amounts of ammonium nitrate to the Department of Homeland Security. As the Dallas Morning News has notes, many agencies knew that the plant had high levels of hazardous chemicals, yet none felt they had the authority or responsibility to address the potential for fires or explosions.

There is at least one agency that is responsible for inspecting such plants: the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which the Dallas Morning News says “has by far the longest reach of any Texas regulatory agency and issues permits for many agricultural companies.” The TCEQ inspected the plant in 2006 after a complaint of a strong ammonia smell. While there, it found that the company’s “grandfathered” status expired in 2004 and cited it for failing to get a permit, which it later obtained.

This very agency had been targeted by Texas lawmakers before the explosion, as Elena Craft writes at EDF:

[S]ome legislators have recommended this legislative session that state environmental laws be weakened. This is in addition to recent budget cuts at the state environmental agency; the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ) budget was recently cut by $305 million, which reduced the agency by 235 full-time employees.

The bill to weaken the TCEQ was introduced by state Sen. Troy Fraser (R) and state Rep. Allan Ritter (R) and would make it harder for citizens to contest permits under consideration. One of the few full accountings of what chemicals the plant was storing and in what volumes was with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which is meant to provide the community with information about what facilities are storing in their areas.

The fact that the plant was able to store such high volumes of hazardous chemicals without regular safety inspections or, reportedly, having sprinklers or fire walls has led many environmental groups to argue for more and stronger regulations. Yet a spokesperson for an industry group, The Fertilizer Institute, has already stated that there is “a very rigorous regulatory structure in place right now” and worried that “someone may react quickly and perhaps try to change things or impose new regulation on top of existing regulation that’s already effective.”

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has joined this perspective, saying that calls for increased regulation are “premature” and he remains comfortable with the level of oversight in Texas.

A factory collapse in Bangladesh on Wednesday has killed at least 70 people and left an unknown number trapped, despite warnings from workers that there were cracks in the building on Tuesday. This comes after a fire at a different factory in the same country just five months ago that killed more than 100.

These tragedies highlight serious safety concerns in the world’s second-leading garment exporter. And it comes on the heels of a new report from labor groups that lays some of the blame with social auditing programs that many major American companies use to monitor working conditions in their supply chains. These programs are funded by corporations themselves and have recently come under scrutiny:

Social Accountability International is a recipient of much of the report’s criticisms, along with another non-profit, the Fair Labor Association, which has monitored the Foxconn plant that supplies Apple.

The two groups emerged after a series of sweatshop scandals in the 1990s, when U.S. retail companies and politicians, including then-President Bill Clinton, decided to bring more transparency and accountability to working conditions in the garment supply chain. The auditing process, largely funded by corporate members, now serves as one of the few forms of scrutiny of garment factories in countries with weak government oversight and poor enforcement of labor laws.

Labor activists, however, argue that such auditing is deceptively insufficient, and they’ve grown more critical of groups whose boards are comprised largely of corporate members and academics. According to the report, a majority of Fair Labor Association’s dues money was derived from corporations such as Apple and Nestle in 2010, and two-thirds of Social Accountability International’s funding that year came as earned income from member companies as well as accreditation fees from for-profit auditors.

Social Accountability International was criticized after a fire in Pakistan killed nearly 300 workers at a factory that been awarded its prestigious SA8000 certification. That meant the group had found that it met international standards in nine areas, including health and safety. While it isn’t clear whether the factory in Bangladesh had been inspected or certified by either of these groups, they operate in the country. Yet more than 300 Bangladeshi garment workers died between 2006 and 2012.

These groups only offer voluntary compliance programs and issue non-binding resolutions. But few other routes exist for monitoring and improving working conditions in major companies’ supply chains around the globe. In a 2011 meeting, Walmart decided that paying its suppliers more to upgrade their manufacturing facilities to make them safer, one of which was the Bangladeshi factory that killed 100 people in the fire, was too expensive. One of the workers who survived that fire has since been trying to get large U.S. brands to sign onto a binding contract related to factory safety. Labor groups have also been pressuring them to sign written agreements to upgrade facilities and enforce safety standards.

While it’s still unclear what caused the explosion at a West, Texas fertilizer facility last week, authorities have already ruled out criminal activity. And it is clear that while seven different regulatory agencies were responsible for overseeing the plant, and in fact five out of those seven have previously cited and/or fined it, the lack of coordination or concerted effort meant that it slipped through the cracks.

But it wasn’t just that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was perpetually underfunded and understaffed, nor that the Texas Department of State Health Services didn’t pass the plant’s report of huge amounts of ammonium on to federal regulators. The Sunlight Foundation has found that industry groups such as the Agricultural Retailers Association, which represents suppliers of fertilizers and pesticides, and the Fertilizer Institute have actively worked to weaken potential safety regulations:

Since 1998, the specific issues that appear most frequently in [the Agricultural Retailers Association and Fertilizer Institute’s] lobbying disclosure reports are bills dealing with the safety and security of chemical facilities. During that period, the Agricultural Retailers Association has spent a cumulative $2.9 million on lobbying while the Fertilizer Institute has spent even more, some $14.4 million, according to data in Influence Explorer.

In a lobbying disclosure on file with the Senate, the Agricultural Retailers Association clearly states its opposition to EPA regulation of fertilizer safety. The group listed, “Work with EPA to clarify their new Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act interpretation of fertilizer retailer to exclude facilities that blend fertilizer,” among its specific lobbying issues, adding that it “Oppose[d] EPA’s efforts to consider agricultural retailer who custom blend fertilizer as fertilizer manufacturers for the purposes of EPCRA.” [...]

West Fertilizer Co. was a retailer that blended fertilizer, according to a report from Reuters.

In fact, West Fertilizer Co. failed to report to the Department of Homeland Security how much ammonium nitrate it had on hand, despite the fact that it had far more than is required to report. The only report it did make of the chemicals it was storing at the facility was with the Texas Department of State Health Services, the very reporting these lobbying groups have been seeking to do away with. Without that requirement it may not have had to give a full accounting of all the chemicals it was storing, many of them extremely hazardous.

The Agricultural Retailers Association also opposes Inherently Safer Technology requirements, such as mandating the use of chemical processing procedures, equipment, protection, and substances that could improve safety, and the ability for citizens or third parties to bring lawsuits. Industry groups looking to reduce safety regulations also have friends in Congress who have been advancing a bill to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to regulate major chemical sites.

The Associated Press is reporting that the fertilizer plant in West, Texas that exploded on Wednesday night hasn’t been inspected by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) since 1985, nearly three decades ago. It was issued a fine on its last inspection for a violation related to storing ammonia:

Records reviewed by The Associated Press show that OSHA issued the West Chemical & Fertilizer Co., as the plant was called at the time, a $30 fine for a serious violation for storage of anhydrous ammonia.

OSHA cited the plant for four other serious violations of respiratory protection standards but did not issue fines. The maximum fine for a serious violation was $1,000.

The plant was also cited for failing to get a permit in 2006 after a complaint of a strong ammonia smell. That smell was reported to be “very bad” on the night of the explosion. Storing ammonia at fertilizer plants can be very hazardous; in 2008, the Center for American Progress found a fertilizer plant that stored millions of pounds of anhydrous ammonia in Pasadena, Texas to be among the most hazardous chemical facilities in the country, with more than 3 million people living in range of a worst-case ammonia gas release.

A day after the explosion in West, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report documenting a widespread lack of workplace inspections by state OSHA programs. After surveying 22 state-run programs, it found that the agencies had problems with hiring and retaining inspectors, in part due to low pay. State budget cuts have had a big impact, leading to funding problems, and the federal agency often hasn’t taken over state plans because its own budget is too tight. This has meant that a workplace only gets a visit from OSHA inspectors every 99 years on average, with some state programs even worse. In Texas, a plant can only expect an inspection every 126 years.

The report led Rep. George Miller (D-CA) to introduce a bill to give the federal agency more authority to intervene in state plans and strengthen fines and prosecutions against violations. The lack of OSHA inspections contributes to a high rate of workplace deaths in the U.S., with over 4,500 in 2010 alone. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already stated its opposition to Democrats’ efforts to strengthen workplace safety regulations.

Last night, a huge explosion ripped through West, Texas, a small town near Waco, killing somewhere between five and 15 people and injuring hundreds. While criminal activity hasn’t been ruled out, the New York Times has reported that the fire began at a fertilizer plant:

It began with a smaller fire at the plant, West Fertilizer, just off Interstate 35, about 20 miles north of Waco that was attended by local volunteer firefighters, said United States Representative Bill Flores. “The fire spread and hit some of these tanks that contain chemicals to treat the fertilizer,” Mr. Flores said, “and there was an explosion which caused wide damage.”

It’s impossible to know at this point whether unsafe workplace conditions were a direct cause of this disaster, but we do know that it was cited for failing to obtain or qualify for a permit in 2006 after a complaint of a strong ammonia smell, a smell that was reported to be “very bad last night.” The plant hasn’t been inspected in the past five years, and in fact only six Texas fertilizer plants were inspected in that time. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is chronically understaffed, which means that a given plant like West Fertilizer can only expect to get a state inspection once every 67 years on average.

With this kind of neglect, worker safety is in serious condition. More than 4,500 people were killed at work in 2010, up three percent from the previous year, meaning that more American workers died on the job in one year than died during the entire Iraq war. This doesn’t even count the others who might suffer from dangerous workplace conditions like those residents of West injured in the blast who didn’t work at the plant.

While OSHA has been a good deal more effective than it was during the Bush years, it still suffers from a lack of funding and staff. Worse, it’s slated to take a huge cut under the sequester. The agency will have to cut its $564.8 million budget by 8.2 percent, which the White House predicted would mean 1,200 fewer workplace inspections. And it would be even more hobbled if House Republicans get their way. The party’s 2011 budget, which was little changed in the most recent iteration, sought to reduce OSHA’s budget by $99 million while slashing other workplace protection agencies.

Requiring that businesses provide employees decent amounts of sick leave doesn’t cost jobs, according to research by the consumer advocate group Public Citizen. The researchers studied three examples of sick leave policies — the San Francisco paid sick leave ordinance (which requires general paid sick leave), the wider California Paid Family and Medical Leave (which requires paid time to take care of children or sick family members), and federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA, which mandated job-protected, but unpaid sick leave).

In each case, Republicans and industry advocates like the Chamber of Commerce warned that sick leave would kill jobs. In each case, the evidence after the fact proved them wrong.

Take the San Francisco law, both the most progressive of the three laws (in that it mandated paid sick leave for a wide set of reasons) and the clearest case of success. Here’s what Public Citizen found:

[A]fter implementation of the paid sick-leave law, San Francisco experienced an increase in employment. A study by the Drum Major Institute found that employment in San Francisco increased 3.5 percent between the start of 2006 and the start of 2010. In San Francisco’s five closest neighboring counties, employment fell 3.4 percent during the same period. The same study found that despite predictions to the contrary, the number of businesses in San Francisco grew by 1.64 percent between 2006 and 2008 while falling by 0.61 percent in neighboring counties. San Francisco also experienced growth within both large and small businesses, and within the retail and food service industry during this period. (These industries expected to be affected most by the ordinance.)

The impact on businesses themselves was minor. A majority reported that understanding and implementing the ordinance was either “not difficult” or “not too difficult.” Additionally, while only 14 percent of businesses reported a negative impact on profits, more than 70 percent reported that the law had either no impact or a positive impact on their profitability…After its implementation, many small business owners discovered that many of the dire consequences predicted prior to the ordinance’s passage, virtually none of them came to fruition. In 2010, three years after the ordinance was enacted, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce realized there was very little impact on business, noting that “it has not been a huge issue that we have heard from our members about.”

The reason for the gap between industry predictions and reality, as Public Citizen notes, is clear: “Productivity, and thus profitability, suffers when workers are forced to come to work when they are sick. One study on the impact of illness on productivity estimates that businesses lose twice as much money to workers who show up at work while sick then when workers stay home due to an illness.”

Currently, the FMLA does not, as San Francisco does, mandate paid sick leave. For this and other reasons, Congress should consider expanding the FMLA’s protections.

Public Citizen also studied the effect of three other unrelated regulations which business interests decried as job killing, coming to similar conclusions about their actual impact. Their conclusion squares with a wide body of evidence suggesting that overregulation is not the problem holding back American growth and, moreover, that smart regulation can effectively create jobs under certain circumstances.