The repercussions of the explosion five months ago at the West Fertilizer storage and distribution facility in West, Texas, continue to resonate as city officials in Greenville, Texas, have requested a public meeting regarding plans for a proposed new plant near the city’s downtown area. Although the proposed facility would not store ammonium nitrate, the trigger for the explosion that devastated West, it would occasionally store toxic chemicals.
The most worrisome aspect for city officials is that the facility is located in one of the busiest parts of the town. The site is surrounded by a residential neighborhood, two churches, a number of businesses, and the Hunt County Criminal Justice Center, which houses the Sheriff’s Office, the local offices of the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the county jail.
City leaders have not taken an official stance on the facility, saying they want answers from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) – which has already granted preliminary approval – on chemical storage and security precautions. Still, the city may have little power to stop the facility from proceeding, as the property is already zoned for heavy industrial use.
City Attorney Daniel Ray, who filed for the public meeting, has been evaluating the city’s options, says he is growing increasingly alarmed. Ray said he isn’t worried about the ammonium phosphate, which would be stored in tanks on the property and sold to local farmers. He instead has focused on the mixing process. Several times a year, raw materials would be shipped by train to the site by Kansas-based Mears Fertilizer Inc. Those materials would be mixed onsite for about two days.
One of the raw chemicals – anhydrous ammonia – is of particular concern to Ray. He referred to a 1976 accident in Houston when a truck carrying anhydrous ammonia overturned, resulting in a gas cloud that killed seven people and injured several hundred others. Ray says that in a worst-case scenario there could be more than 600 people in just one building directly across the street from the facility. Add to that the residential neighborhoods, offices, restaurants, and stores nearby, and the potential for disaster is too great.
Joey Rice, general manager of Martinek Grain, the company seeking to operate the facility, says there is no comparison between what happened in West and the products that will be used in Greenville. “This is a liquid fertilizer; what happened in West was dry fertilizer,” said Rice. “This looks like water. If you had to, you could pipe my stuff in and put out a fire.”