The five-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks figured prominently in the news last week, along with numerous observations of how our lives have changed as a result of heightened security concerns, both in the immediate days after the attacks and in the years since.
This is true for the fertilizer industry as well, which has faced new regulations regarding the handling and storage of some products, and has implemented its own code of practices to beef up security at all stages of the distribution chain. Security awareness has also prompted lawmakers to push for worker identification standards and chemical site security legislation that will figure prominently in how fertilizer companies do business going forward.
In the weeks following 9/11, the fertilizer and ag chem industries were the focus of high level investigations, fueled by the reality that at least one of the 9/11 conspirators had repeatedly visited a crop dusting firm in Florida and tried to get a loan to buy an airplane, allegedly to carry out some type of chemical attack (GM Oct. 1, 2001). That information, as well as the paranoia-fueled reports of crop dusters dousing a towboat on the Mississippi River and a Coast Guard station in Natchez, Miss., (GM Nov. 12, 2001), resulted in crop dusters being grounded on separate occasions during the fall of 2001.
The attacks also put an immediate imprint on attendance at subsequent conferences as companies canceled travel plans. This resulted in significant drops in registrants for the Fertilizer Roundtable Conference and other events in the fall and winter of 2001.
TFI, the Agricultural Retailers Association, and numerous state associations started security task forces in the months following the attacks, and within a year the U.S. Department of Justice and EPA had released guidelines for chemical facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and implement safeguards (GM June 24, 2002). TFI published its Security Code of Management Practices, ARA released a security checklist for members, and an online vulnerability assessment sponsored by ARA, TFI, and CropLife America became available in spring 2003 (GM May 12, 2003). In early 2005, Asmark Inc., a provider of risk management services and regulatory compliance products, announced that it was forming a new organization to assist retailers with state and federal compliance issues (GM Jan. 24, 2005).
Ammonium nitrate thefts, both real and imagined, became national news after 9/11, and various news organizations conducted stings of fertilizer retailers to illustrate the ease of purchasing AN in quantities suitable for bomb-making. This gave the industry a black eye in some cases (GM Nov. 22, 2004), but also prompted overzealous reporters to mistakenly target dealers for lax AN security (GM Dec. 20, 2004). Public confusion about which fertilizers constitute an explosive risk still exists; the controversial ABC miniseries “The Path to 9/11,” which aired Sept. 10-11, depicts a scene in which a U.S./Canada border guard finds bags of AN in the trunk of car and refers to the product as “urea.”
Dealers and distributors began backing away from AN even as op-ed columnists in prominent newspapers began calling for AN bans in the U.S. (GM May 17, 2004). In July 2004, TFI announced that it was joining the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Association of American Plant Food Control Officials to launch “America’s Security Begins with You,” a campaign to secure AN against criminal misuse (GM July 19, 2004). In June 2005, the Canadian Fertilizer Institute unveiled its own AN security program, called “On Guard for Canada” (GM June 20, 2005).
Despite those efforts, the burdensome and costly Coast Guard security regulations for AN, implemented in July of 2004 as part of the 2002 Maritime Transportation Security Act (GM Oct. 11, 2004), ultimately drove several barge lines and distributors to stop carrying the product. In January 2005, the J.R. Simplot Co. informed wholesale and retail customers that it would stop selling fertilizer-grade AN after the spring 2005 season (GM Jan. 31, 2005), and in June of that year, Agrium Inc. announced that it would discontinue the production and sale of fertilizer-grade AN (GM July 4, 2005). Effective Dec. 31 of last year, Wilbur-Ellis Co. also stopped distributing AN in the U.S. (GM Aug. 8, 2005). With the departure of Air Products and Chemicals Inc. from the AN market late last year (GM Jan. 2, p. 1), the only two remaining AN producers in the U.S. are Terra Industries Inc. and El Dorado Chemical Co.
Also since 9/11, TFI, ARA, and other associations have been engaged in an ongoing discussion with lawmakers about chemical site security. The industry first came up against a Senate bill in the summer of 2002, called the “Chemical Security Act,” that proposed aggressive measures to monitor chemical site security, including giving EPA authority to enter premises and copy records (GM Aug. 5, 2002). That bill, along with other early efforts at broad-based and layered security regulations sponsored by then Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), drew heated opposition from the fertilizer and ag chemical industries (GM Sept. 9, 2002), who argued that the industry had already taken significant voluntary steps to reduce vulnerabilities, and that security enforcement belonged under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security and not with EPA or other agencies. The industry also opposes mandates requiring the use of inherently safer technologies at chemical facilities.
According to ARA, House and Senate Republican leaders are considering attaching chemical site security legislation to the FY 2007 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations bill if the authorizing committees can reach agreement on the measure. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Pete King (R-NY) indicated he would like to complete this legislation this month, and is working with Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-ME) to reconcile differences in the bill. The target date to wrap up negotiations on the homeland security spending bill is Sept. 21, ARA said.
In addition, legislators are considering nationwide AN sales tracking regulations (GM June 19, p. 1), a measure that TFI, Terra Industries, and other trade groups support. The Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Act of 2006, which received House Homeland Security Committee approval in June, directs DHS to promulgate regulations requiring registration of all facilities that sell AN fertilizer and record-keeping on all purchases of the product.
As recently as Sept. 12, it was reported that New York City police investigators posing as apple growers had purchased more than 1,000 pounds of AN in 2004 from agricultural supply outlets in Schaghticoke, N.Y., and Yardley, Pa., and then constructed a 2,400-pound truck bomb using instructions posted on the Internet. In testimony before the Senate committee on Homeland Security, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the operation “demonstrated that safeguards are needed to make it harder to acquire bomb-building material and easier to regulate and track their sales.”
It was also noted, however, that the New York retailer involved in the sting had reportedly become suspicious and notified federal authorities, who learned about the undercover operation while trying to do a background check on the purchasers.