Seven wrecks a day in Odessa

Seven a day.

That’s how many automobile crashes occurred on average throughout the calendar year in Odessa in 2012, according to statistics provided by the Odessa Police Department. Eighteen of those crashes resulted in 19 deaths. (These are just the crashes that the police department investigates.)

This year, so far, the city has had more than 1,000 crashes. Five of those wrecks resulted in five deaths.

But the number of citations has skyrocketed, a comparison from the first few months this year (January to May) to last year: 1,585 citations were given last year compared to 3,474 so far this year according to Sgt. Sherrie Carruth of OPD. Carruth, spokeswoman for the Odessa Police Department, said there have been significant citations written because of increased traffic and targeted enforcement, such as Safe Zones (around schools), Click It or Ticket and Selective Traffic Enforcement Program.

The police department employs just less than 185 officers.

“The Odessa Police Department is budgeted for 182 and of that, 138 are below the rank of sergeant,” said Carruth stated in an email response to questions. “Traffic volume along with calls for service demands and all other demands placed on department resources are managed on a priority basis. To the extent that we possibly can, we engage in traffic enforcement as a general product of patrol and also in targeted efforts to suppress speed. The workload is such that additional resources would be welcomed and would increase our ability to address all demands for service including demands placed on us by increased traffic volume.”

She said there is no one specific day that produces the most wrecks every year, that wrecks occur on any given day. “Memorial Day Weekend is not considered a dangerous weekend for OPD,” Carruth said. “The majority of major accidents occurred on the highways.”

Repeated messages left with a local Texas Department of Public Safety office were not returned. Steve LeSueur, a former patrol officer and the new communications officer for the OPD, has been with the OPD since August 2010 and said a lot of wrecks occur here because of speeding and driver inattention. Running red lights, another safety hazard, has led to wrecks, as well, he said.

He did not see many wrecks happen because of texting or cell phone usage or from people unsafely changing lanes, though.

His advice for motorists? “Pay attention, look both ways, be a defensive driver,” he said.

SIMPLE ARITHMETIC

James Beauchamp, president of the Midland Odessa Transportation Alliance, pointed to a couple of reasons why the area has experienced an uptick in wrecks: more vehicles on the roads and more miles driven.

“From 2011 to 2012, the number of registered vehicles here in the Odessa district — and primarily, the population based here is Midland and Odessa — increased by nearly 33,000,” he said. “The number of miles driven daily increased by over a million. We know there’s a lot more people, there’s a lot more cars, and we’re driving a lot more miles. That puts a strain on the existing infrastructure. There’s been very little out here in added capacity. Really, to be quite frank, we’re even pretty sparse in safety improvements. We’re making some, but not that many.”

Drivers can have a difficult time adjusting to a rapid type of change in the environment, Beauchamp said, and they end up “getting hurried, rushed, agitated, anxious, whatever you want to call it. And they end up making poor decisions.” That’s an explanation — not an excuse — for those decisions, he said. Capacity constraints can play a role, and driver behaviors and attitudes are exacerbated by that situation, creating a perfect storm.

CRASH DATA

Statewide, speed involvement crashes are down from 2008, according to data from the Texas Department of Transportation. In 2008, there were 26,092 crashes in which speed was a factor, including everything from fatality wrecks to noninjury crashes. In 2012, there were 24,189 crashes. In 2012, 679 of those wrecks resulted in fatalities, down from 821 in 2008. In the three years between 2008 and 2012 (2009-2011), deaths in crashes were in the 600s range. For the year to date, there have 212 speed-involvement crashes.

The fatality numbers are fewer for crashes attributed to cell/mobile phone usage and driver inattention and distraction in vehicle. Deaths caused by driver inattention and distraction hit 444 in 2008, with numbers falling into the 300s in the four years after. For the year to date, there have been 138 fatal crashes caused by driver inattention and distraction.

However, the overall number of crashes because of driver inattention and distraction is significantly higher than those involving speed: in 2008, there were 101,509 crashes, with 2012 posting a number of 88,785.

But a look at fatality crash numbers attributed to cell/mobile phone use have remained pretty constant: Twenty-nine fatal crashes occurred in 2008, with 35 reported in 2012, and the three intervening years all had numbers in the 40s. Total crashes reported from 2008 to 2012 have all been in the low to mid-3000s.

Legislation to ban texting while driving died in this legislative session.

In a Friday email statement to the OA, Rep. Tom Craddick of Midland (R-82nd District) expressed disappointment about the failure of the legislation, House Bill 63, which he introduced.

“Unfortunately, the bill proposing the statewide ban on texting will not become law this year. Legislators were poised to act on this legislation that would have saved lives. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation denied lawmakers the opportunity to move House Bill 63 forward and subsequently denied Texans a chance to make our roads safer. I am incredibly disappointed by this result.

“Next legislative session, I will again attempt to put a statewide law in place to deter Texas drivers from texting while driving. It is devastating that we will have two more years of accidents and deaths on our Texas roadways from distracted driving that could have been prevented.

“Although there is no statewide law stopping Texans from picking up their phone to text while driving, I would implore everyone to focus on driving and put your phone down — it can wait.”

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (under the U.S. Department of Transportation), there were 32,367 deaths from motor vehicle wrecks in 2011 (last year information available). Texas had 3,016 deaths that year. NHTSA said 2012 data would be available in August.

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Source: OAOA (Munsch, 5/28)

States Urged to Cut Limit on Alcohol for Drivers

WASHINGTON — Thousands of people are killed or injured every year by drivers who have not reached the legal standard for being drunk but who have a reduced ability to see, make decisions or operate a vehicle, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday, and it recommended that the states reduce the allowable blood-alcohol concentration by more than a third, to 0.05 percent from 0.08 percent.

The current standard was established a decade ago at the instigation of Congress, and progress has stalled, the board said, with about 10,000 fatalities a year.

“There are at least 10,000 reasons to tackle this issue,” said Deborah A. P. Hersman, the chairwoman of the board. Foreign countries with stricter standards have had substantially more success, according to the board.

The board voted for a variety of recommendations. Some, like requiring that everyone convicted of drunken driving be required to install a Breathalyzer interlock in their car, which would prevent the vehicle from starting without an alcohol test, were focused on heavy drinkers and repeat offenders.

Officials said they hoped that a stricter standard would reduce drinking and driving both among social drinkers and among heavy drinkers.

Blood-alcohol concentration varies by body weight, gender, stomach contents and other factors, but generally speaking, a 180-pound man could consume four beers or glasses of wine in 90 minutes without reaching the current limit. At a limit of 0.05 percent, he could legally consume only three. A 130-pound woman could probably consume three drinks in 90 minutes and be legal under the existing standard; if the limit were lowered, she could consume only two.

The blood-alcohol recommendation faces opposition. Sarah Longwell, the managing director at the American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association, called the idea “ludicrous.”

“Moving from 0.08 to 0.05 would criminalize perfectly responsible behavior,” she said. And “further restriction of moderate consumption of alcohol by responsible adults prior to driving does nothing to stop hard-core drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel.”

The board is already on record favoring research on built-in alcohol detectors, which could measure blood-alcohol content through a driver’s palms on the steering wheel or some other unobtrusive way. Those could be available as an option on new cars or could be universally required. Either would affect drinkers who have never been caught driving, who make up more than 90 percent of those involved in fatal alcohol-related crashes.

People with a blood-alcohol level of 0.05 percent are 38 percent more likely to be involved in a crash than those who have not been drinking, according to government statistics. People with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent are 169 percent more likely.

The standard in most of the industrialized world is 0.05 percent. All 50 states and the District of Columbia switched to 0.08 percent after President Bill Clinton signed a law in 2000 that withheld highway construction money from states that did not agree to that standard.

“These tragedies affect both sides,” said Robert J. Sumwalt, one of the board members. He said his wife’s first cousin was killed by a drunken driver who was traveling down a highway in the wrong direction. And his own cousin, he said, goes on Sundays to visit her 21-year-old daughter who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for drunken driving.

Progress is mostly a matter of political will, board members said.

About 30 percent of all vehicle fatalities are tied to drunken driving, down from 50 percent when President Ronald Reagan raised the issue 30 years ago. The number of deaths is down to about 10,000 a year from about 21,000 over the same period. Highway deaths are decreasing over all because of better-designed cars, seat belt use and better highways.

The board has the support of other safety advocates, but not Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That group said it favored many parts of the board’s agenda, including the mandatory installation of the Breathalyzer interlock for anyone convicted of driving drunk, research on the passive alcohol sensors and “administrative license revocation,” which gives police officers on the highway the authority to seize a driver’s license at the time of an arrest. Those show strong potential for reducing the death toll, said J. T. Griffin, a Washington representative of the group.

The discussion of changing the definition of drunk, Mr. Griffin said, was the safety board’s “trying to focus on a group of people who are more social drinkers, who haven’t been targeted in a while.” MADD would not oppose the change, he said, but would pursue other remedies.

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Source: The New York Times (Wald, 5/14)

After West Blast, Chemical Stockpiles Scrutinized

NEW BRAUNFELS — Off a dirt road connected to ever-flowing Interstate 35, a little metal sign on a wooden fence is the only indication of what lies ahead. Nearby, Buckley Powder, a mining and construction supply company, stores large quantities of ammonium nitrate, the source of the explosion at fertilizer depot that killed at least 14 people and injured hundreds more last month in West.

In 2012, according to state records, Buckley Powder had as much as 90,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate in bins at this Central Texas plant — stored, according to Howard Wichter, Buckley’s chief financial officer, under conditions in which “nothing can happen to it.”

At a Country Fare restaurant tucked inside a truck stop not far from the bins, Lisa Slickerman, a waitress, said people who lived in the community nearby knew little about what was stored at the plant, but perhaps should have, especially after the West explosion.

“Nobody talks about it,” she said.

“I thought they just sold rocks and dirt,” another waitress chimed in.

The facility is one of more than 110 across the state that report storing 10,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate or more at a time. Some companies hold it in powder form, like the depot in West, which in 2012 reported storing 540,000 pounds of the chemical. Others store it in a liquid solution, which is a much less volatile form, said Charles Mitchell, a professor of soil sciences at Auburn University.

The responsibility for overseeing these facilities varies. Some, like Buckley, which supplies materials used for blasting at rock quarries and construction sites, are inspected by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Others, like Adair Grain, which owned the West storage site, are subject to inconsistent scrutiny by a long list of state and federal agencies, said Neil Carman, director of the clean air program at the state’s chapter of the Sierra Club.

As the authorities continue to investigate the cause of the West explosion, and state and federal lawmakers discuss whether new regulations and greater oversight are needed, stockpiles of chemicals stored in communities across the state are the subject of intense concern.

A patchwork of regulations, generated by municipal, state and federal authorities, has led to almost exclusively local control over disaster preparation. “If I have a plant near my house, do I know that they have a plan?” said state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, the chairman of the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee. “The public needs to know who to go to and who to ask for a plan, so it brings attention to these facilities.”

“It’s just ludicrous. I think it’s a pattern of lax regulation in Texas," Carman said, "and it’s surprising, given the number of industrial plants.”

At the federal level, safety and accident prevention falls to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which according to an agency fact sheet oversees more than seven million workplaces and last inspected the West depot in 1985. The Environmental Protection Agency requires companies to report their methods of handling certain dangerous chemicals, but not ammonium nitrate. And the Department of Homeland Security keeps track of facilities that hold ammonium nitrate, but the agency did not know about the West facility, which had not reported to it. According to a department spokesman, Peter Boogaard, the agency is currently investigating whether the West facility should have submitted documentation of its ammonium nitrate.

At the state level, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality focuses on pollution and air quality, not accident prevention. The Office of the State Chemist checks the composition of feed and fertilizer for consumers, and whether explosives are behind fences and locked doors. The primary responsibility for tracking potentially dangerous chemicals in Texas falls to the Department of State Health Services, but Commissioner David Lakey told lawmakers at a hearing this month that the agency did “not have authority related to the regulation of these chemicals.” Its role is as a data depository, Lakey said, suggesting that regulations are the responsibility of local officials like fire chiefs and city councils in the form of fire and safety codes.

Those local officials are also responsible for preparing communities for disaster prevention, Steve McCraw, the director of the state’s Department of Public Safety, testified at the same hearing. “There’s no orchestrated, overarching effort to educate people about what’s in their areas,” he said. “It’s local level, not state down.”

McCraw’s department oversees a statewide network of 270 local emergency-planning committees, which operate differently in every county, and bring together public officials and industry leaders to develop safety plans. “The best experts are on the ground,” said W. Nim Kidd of who oversees emergency management for the DPS.

Amarillo knows the importance of local involvement in disaster planning firsthand. High on the Texas plains, the city is home to several heavy industry and petrochemical facilities — including the largest repository of ammonium nitrate in the state — and has adapted to the risk. The city’s fire department includes a hazmat team, which drills to prepare for specific threats. Sonja Gross, a community relations coordinator for the city, said the regional planning committee met quarterly to work on disaster preparation and prevention.

A fertilizer depot in the northeast quadrant of the city, owned by the multinational company Gavilon, reported an average daily stockpile of more than 2.1 million pounds of a liquid ammonium-nitrate mixture in 2012.

The fertilizer at the Gavilon facility is stored as a liquid with the organic chemical urea, which experts say ordinarily poses little combustion risk. But while the solution is much safer than ammonium nitrate stored in a powder form, explosions at similar facilities — as a consequence of spills or misused equipment — are not unheard of.

In Amarillo, as in New Braunfels, many who live in the industrial area near the fertilizer facility say they had no idea about the chemical stockpile next door and are concerned, even if the risks were comparatively low.

“They should have let us know" in some way, said Judy Watson, manager of the Red Rock Saloon, a bar down the street from the plant. “A lot of people live here. A lot of homeless people sleep here, too.”

The neighborhood isn’t unfamiliar with industrial accidents; in March, a warehouse containing propane tanks — less than a third of a mile from the Gavilon facility — erupted in flames when an employee spilled flammable liquid near an open-flame portable heater, according to the Amarillo Fire Department. Casey Essery, who lives on the same block as the warehouse, recalled watching the crackling flames multiply from his house.

But many are pragmatic about the risks. David Bernhardt, the owner of the Adult Video Gallery at the Paramount, across the street from the Gavilon depot, said he was unfazed by the tanks’ presence: “It’s one of those things that comes with being in an industrial part of town.”

An appreciation for the benefits and hazards of industry may explain why some, including state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, remain reluctant simply to call for more oversight of Texas’ industrial facilities.

“In our part of the state, because it’s been very heavy in oil and gas production and plastics and fertilizers,” Seliger said, "a lot of lessons have been learned” on the importance of setting and enforcing regulations to ensure safe practices.

In New Braunfels, home of Buckley Powder, Lynn Lindsay, the local emergency-management coordinator, said Comal County’s committee had little financing and did not meet regularly. “We are actively working to rectify the situation,” said Lindsay, who is also a courthouse administrator. “We have active relationships with first responders, but it’s a matter of tying it all together.”

Lindsay said New Braunfels residents had expressed more concerns since the West explosion, and he is trying to develop a database of chemicals in facilities across the county so first responders know what to do in case of an emergency.

He said the Legislature could consider creating standards for reporting or directing an agency to list best practices for first responders.

State Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, said there was “a point at which you can overregulate” companies that store dangerous chemicals and that many large manufacturing companies have their own emergency preparation plans.

“I think we’re doing a good job,” she said. “Just periodically something happens that’s not predictable.”

And whether heightened public disclosure will happen is already a subject of debate. "I have the right to know where these chemicals are in my community,” Rep. Pickett said at a recent hearing. "But 9/11 happened, and there’s a balance. I understand that.”

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Source: Texas Tribune (Hooks, 5/10)

West Fertilizer Plant Pushed For 'Exemption' From Safety Rules, Targeted Workplace Inspections

The Texas fertilizer plant that blew up on April 17, killing at least 15 people, appears to have been claiming an arcane exemption that allowed it to avoid targeted workplace inspections and safety requirements and enter a “streamlined prevention program” with environmental regulators, a government spokesman confirmed.

The owner of the facility near Waco, West Chemical and Fertilizer, apparently determined that the exemption — a few words advocated by industry groups, including The Fertilizer Institute, as part of a 20-year-old regulation — applied. In the wake of the deadly blast in West, Texas, last month, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating whether this claim was justified, an OSHA spokesman said.

By claiming the exemption, the company became subject to other, less stringent requirements and avoided certain OSHA and Environmental Protection Agency rules.

West Chemical and Fertilizer did not respond to requests for comment.

The interlocking web of company-claimed exceptions has implications beyond a small town in Central Texas. Sites across a host of industries housing large amounts of dangerous chemicals could claim they sell primarily to end users and avoid stricter regulation, though the number of facilities invoking this exemption is unclear. A representative for a company storing toxic chlorine gas, for example, wrote to OSHA in 2005 to clarify that the exemption applied to the site.

“It’s a major flaw,” said Bryan Haywood, an Ohio consultant who advises companies on the safe use of dangerous substances. “This incident’s going to get a lot of people’s interest into how people are squirming out of [stricter requirements].”

Closely related OSHA and EPA rules require facilities using large quantities of hazardous substances to take preventive steps and plan for accidents. West Chemical and Fertilizer had enough anhydrous ammonia — a chemical that attacks the eyes, skin and respiratory system — to require it to follow OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard, issued more than two decades ago.

But the standard contains what is known as the “retail exemption.” The Fertilizer Institute spoke out in favor of the exemption while the rule was being developed. Soon after the rule became final, the institute asked OSHA to confirm that it would not apply to facilities that store and blend fertilizer and sell it primarily to end users, often farmers.

OSHA responded that a fertilizer facility could indeed avoid the strictures of the rule as long as more than half of the company’s sales were to end users. OSHA, however, does not check on the validity of an exemption unless it inspects the site, an agency spokesman confirmed.

The Fertilizer Institute said in a statement to the Center for Public Integrity that it agreed with OSHA when the agency concluded in 1992 that retail facilities “did not present the same degree of hazard to employees as other workplaces covered by the proposal.”

But the institute added, “While the cause of the West, Texas, explosion has yet to be determined, we will re-examine our stance if necessary when the report on the cause is made final.”

OSHA is also investigating whether the West plant was covered by a legislative rider that makes sites with fewer than 10 employees in industries with low reported injury rates off-limits for regular inspections, an agency spokesman said. The site had not been inspected since 1985.

Invocation of the “retail exemption” can begin a chain reaction of less stringent standards. The EPA’s program for designating the risk posed by a facility relies, in part, on the site’s standing with OSHA. The amount of anhydrous ammonia stored at West Chemical and Fertilizer normally would have placed the facility in the EPA category requiring extensive preventive measures and accident-response plans. But because the site claimed the OSHA exemption, it qualified for a “streamlined prevention program” under the EPA’s Risk Management Plan program, known as RMP.

The agency said in a statement that it “reviewed the RMP from the facility to determine the RMP was complete and correct.” Asked whether it verified the basis for placing the site in a lower-risk category — its exemption from the OSHA rule based on its sales records — the EPA did not respond.

This EPA designation, along with the site’s lack of a history of accidents or recent inspections, removed it from a list of facilities subject to an OSHA special inspection program targeting locations using large amounts of hazardous substances, such as anhydrous ammonia.

It is unclear how many facilities enjoy more relaxed regulation as a result of their self-designation as retailers, but Haywood said the number could be large. “A lot of these businesses like in West, Texas, they’re everywhere,” he said. “They’re in every small farming community in the country.”

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Source: Huffington Post (Hamby, 5/3)