FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Hannah Flath, hannahlee.flath@sierraclub.org, 860-634-0225
ROCKTON, IL -- Three weeks after an explosion at Chemtool Inc., a chemical plant in northern Illinois, Rockton residents are speaking up about how the disaster could have been prevented and how mitigation efforts should be improved. On Thursday evening, residents provided testimony at the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) public listening session regarding the importance of improving the Agency’s national Risk Management Plan (RMP) rules. According to Jane Williams, Clean Air Chair with Sierra Club, Chemtool Inc. was not covered by the agency’s RMP rules but should have been.
The EPA’s national RMP rules are designed to protect people living near industrial sites from emergencies like the recent chemical disaster in Rockton. In 2017, the EPA published and implemented the Chemical Disaster Rule, which included several provisions to protect worker and community safety from storage, use, and accidental release of hazardous substances at industrial facilities. The Trump administration rolled back this rule in 2019. Now, these rules have been identified as an action for review under the Biden-Harris administration’s Executive Order 13990: Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.
Rockton residents and local activists say the mitigation efforts in response to the explosion at Chemtool prove that the risk management and prevention program must be expanded and improved. The explosion on June 14 sparked massive fires and community members reported debris and ash falling into yards up to 7 miles away from the facility. In addition, the industrial fire fighting company U.S. Fire Pumps that deployed to the site used 3,000 gallons of fire-fighting foam containing toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) before switching to a PFAS-free foam. Two bills currently sit on the Illinois governor’s desk to curtail PFAS pollution by ending use in fire fighting and halting incineration as a means of disposal for PFAS waste. PFAS foam easily contaminates groundwater and is associated with cancer and other deadly diseases.
“With no risk management prevention and response plan in place, our community has been left in an information void,” says Steven Hall, local resident and Co-Chair of the Northwest River Valley Group of Sierra Club Illinois. “We’re left asking what chemicals are in our air, water and soil? What about my kids and pets playing outside? Can I eat my vegetables? Why am I getting headaches and bloody noses?”
“Chemtool is the poster child for why the risk management prevention program for chemical safety must be expanded,” says Jane Williams, National Clean Air Team Chair with the Sierra Club. “It’s very clear that first responders were completely unprepared for this fire. A common sense risk management prevention program would have helped prevent the Chemtool disaster and would have protected first responders and the front-line community. We need to expand the risk management program to include facilities like Chemtool so that these disasters are prevented and so that communities are prepared when they do happen.”