Time: Trump Admin Looks To Roll Back Safety Regs After Big Chemical Plant Incidents

It’s wild how many times I read a rage-bait headline about a Republican, a bit of the article (3 paragraphs 30 seconds is the Internet rule to get your message out before most move on), and then find out some rather pertinent information

Back-to-Back Chemical Disasters Strike as Trump Seeks to Roll Back Safety Rules

Two major incidents at chemical plants within the past week sent tens of thousands fleeing from their homes in California and left 11 people dead in Washington.

But despite a spate of similar incidents over the last year, the Trump Administration is planning to roll back federal regulations designed to prevent similar disasters. Experts and environmental groups have warned that such a move would make chemical accidents far more common.

Mass evacuations were ordered and a state of emergency declared when a tank containing nearly 7,000 gallons of highly toxic chemical methyl methacrylate became unstable at an aerospace plastics facility in Garden Grove, California, causing it to heat up and risk explosion.

Just as those residents were cleared to return home on Tuesday morning, a 900,000-gallon tank containing a mixture of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide, and disodium carbonate, known as “white liquor,” imploded at a paper mill in Longview, Washington. It was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the U.S. in years, and came not long after safety complaints were filed against Nippon Dynawave in March and May. The state’s labor and industries department said on X that they were about “various violations that weren’t related to chemical process or storage safety.”

So, got that? Orange Man Bad is going to roll back the safety regs for chemical plants which….had incidents with the safety regs in place?

The incidents have drawn fresh scrutiny to plans by the Trump Administration to repeal regulations designed to prevent and investigate catastrophic industrial chemical releases, fires, and explosions.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is led by Trump appointee Lee Zeldin and oversees the chemical industry, has sought to loosen reforms introduced in 2024 that were designed to “further protect vulnerable communities from chemical accidents, especially those living near facilities in industry sectors with high accident rates.” The 2024 Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention (SCCAP) changes implemented by the Biden Administration included additional safeguards, third-party audits for facilities with prior accidents, and employee participation in facility accident prevention.

The EPA’s revisions would slash these safeguards and propose removing the agency’s rule that facilities should establish a process for employees to report unaddressed hazards. They would also eliminate the requirement for facilities to consider climate-related disasters such as floods when developing emergency plans.

So, despite the Biden admin putting in those rules, the incidents kept happening. The climate scam rules would make zero difference in plant safety, and, there are still plenty of methods to report unaddressed hazards, including through their unions. Removing the rules won’t make a difference in the world, especially when the far let states have plenty of regulations of their own.

An EPA spokesperson said in a statement to TIME that the regulations implemented by the Biden Administration in 2024 “disregarded warnings from national security experts that it would make chemical facilities and other sensitive sites more vulnerable to attack,” and that the Trump EPA’s changes “would preserve every core accident-prevention protection while removing duplicative, contradictory, or unproven requirements, ensuring stronger safety outcomes through clearer and more workable rules.”

The spokesperson said both the California and Washington facilities “are highly regulated and these regulations are largely overseen by the states — not EPA.”
“It’s clear that these far-left activists have no idea how to actually prevent chemical disasters. Nor do they seem to have any grasp about how EPA regulations actually work,” the spokesperson said, referring to criticisms from environmental justice groups.

Huh. Rage-bait headline.