Senate Prepares for Chemical Plant Security Showdown
A brewing battle focusing on states' rights and chemical plant security will come to a head later this month when the Senate decides whether to follow the House's lead on controversial chemical plant security legislation.
The Department of Homeland Security proposed draft chemical plant security legislation in December that would allow federal regulations to pre-empt tougher rules set by individual states. The House attached a provision to a must-pass emergency Iraq war funding bill that takes away DHS's right to pre-empt such state laws. The Senate version of the bill, which will be voted on before the April recess, contains a similar provision.
Members of Congress from New Jersey are particularly interested in the issue, since the Garden State boasts the toughest chemical plant security regulations in the country. DHS must issue finalized regulations by April 4, and the department is expected to maintain its right to pre-empt state law.
"Every state in the union has the right–and the obligation–to protect its residents from a terrorist attack," Sen. Frank Lautenberg tells U.S. News. "We simply cannot allow the Bush administration to undermine our security by pre-empting and weakening [our] laws.... If the Congress is serious about stronger homeland security, this is the moment that counts."
U.S. News has received internal congressional letters that show how staunch the dividing lines are on this issue. One letter addressed to the top senators on the Appropriations Committee urges them to leave chemical plant security language out of the bill. The letter is signed by Sens. Susan Collins and James Inhofe, who both formerly chaired the committees that gave DHS the right to regulate the chemical plant industry for the first time ever in late 2006.
"We believe it would be premature to amend [the bill] before the Department has even had the opportunity to issue its ... final regulations," Collins and Inhofe wrote, in a letter also signed by Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and Norm Coleman. "We should not interrupt the regulatory process and further delay the implementation of a long-overdue program to manage the security risk at our nation's high-risk chemical facilities."
The senators emphasized that "due to the urgency of security at our nation's chemical facilities, Congress gave the Department only six months" to draft and issue finalized chemical plant security regulations.
A group of 14 Republicans has signed on to a stronger letter also opposing the move to stop DHS from pre-empting state law. They said such an action would "have a damaging impact on our nation's chemical facilities," by allowing the government "to disapprove and shut down facilities based on nonsecurity related, prescriptive measures such as environmentally driven" changes in their operations. The latter sentence refers to a movement in some states to force industry to use "inherently safer" chemicals so their facilities won't be attractive terrorist targets.
Sens. George Voinovich, Mike Enzi, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Kit Bond, John Thune, John Cornyn, and others signed the more strongly worded letter. Stephen Flynn, a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations and a chemical plant security expert, called the move "disheartening."
"It is bizarre even by Washington standards," Flynn wrote in an E-mail, "to have a unified group of Republicans rallying around federal pre-emption over states while northern Democrats are making the pitch for states' rights!"
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