Chemical Companies Want Trump’s EPA to Keep Their Secrets
Every year, dozens of accidents occur at high-risk chemical facilities. The chemical industry is pushing Donald Trump’s EPA to delete a public database that at least lets residents know whether a potential disaster could take place in their backyard.
Lee Zeldin, President Donald Trump’s EPA administrator, speaks during his confirmation hearing on January 16, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
The chemical industry is asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), now helmed by industry-friendly Donald Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, to hide chemical facilities at the highest risk of disaster and their safety records from public view.
On January 30, more than a dozen chemical industry groups sent a letter to Zeldin demanding he take “urgent action” to roll back EPA oversight of facilities that are at the highest risk for chemical disasters. The trade groups also requested the agency “immediately shut down” a government website that makes public where these facilities are located and what dangerous toxins they hold.
Each year, dozens of chemical accidents occur at these high-risk facilities, sometimes forcing entire communities to evacuate or shelter in place. In June 2023, a massive chemical fire at one of these plants in Southwest Louisiana, a region where such chemical accidents are particularly frequent, sent a plume of toxic gas into the air and forced residents within three miles of the facility to shelter in place. Yet reducing EPA oversight of these facilities has been a priority for chemical lobbyists for years.
The chemical lobby’s new letter is the latest industry push to unwind environmental protections instated under the Biden administration. And chemical interests could find an ally in Zeldin, who voted against measures to crack down on cancer-causing “forever chemicals” during his time in the US House of Representatives.
Zeldin has already received the enthusiastic endorsement of chemical lobbyists. The American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s biggest lobbying group, urged lawmakers to support Zeldin’s nomination in January, saying his record in Congress showed he was a “thoughtful leader who understood you can protect the environment and human health without imposing unreasonable and unnecessary regulations.”
The American Chemistry Council was among the signatories of the January 30 letter. Various other industry interest groups also signed on, including the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Corn Refiners Association, and the Fertilizer Institute. The lobbyists first asked for a meeting with Zeldin — but they also emphasized that they wanted to see swift action to undo Biden-era regulations on dangerous chemical plants.
“If they were to roll back [the regulations], it would be devastating,” said Darya Minovi, a senior analyst for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research group. According to Minovi, communities that live near these facilities, which are at high risk of chemical disasters and exposure, had asked “for years” for the strengthened regulations enacted under former President Joe Biden.
At the same time, Minovi added, the chemical industry letter was not a surprise. Chemical lobbyists have for years been fighting regulations meant to prevent chemical disasters — and with Zeldin now in charge of the top federal environmental watchdog, they are launching a brazen new fight.
“They Don’t Want the Public to Know”
Chemical facilities handling the most dangerous, reactive chemicals are required under the Clean Air Act of 1970 to submit risk management plans to environmental regulators, a provision meant to help prevent devastating chemical accidents.
There are hundreds of facilities around the country subject to EPA’s Risk Management Program. Despite decades of mitigation efforts, accidents at these facilities are still concerningly frequent, research has found, and communities that surround them are at high risk for pollution and environmental impacts.
And as we reported last October, many facilities that process reactive chemicals are not covered by the EPA regulations, like a chemical plant that spewed a toxic plume of chlorine gas in Conyers, Georgia, in September 2023, forcing residents to evacuate. That’s thanks to the chemical industry, which has fought for loopholes in the regulations.
For years, environmentalists fought for the EPA to make public what chemical facilities were covered by its Risk Management Program rule as well as the chemicals that they handled and the safety protocols they had in place. Such transparency was critical for nearby communities and the public, activists argued.
In March 2024, regulators revealed a public website that for the first time allowed viewers to search for high-risk chemical facilities — revealing the toxins that they handle and details about past accidents and safety violations.
According to the database, there are 228 high-risk facilities in Los Angeles County alone.
“This is information that the public deserves to know — what the facilities are that are near them, what types of chemicals they deal with,” said Adam Kron, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group. “It’s really vital information, but also very basic information.”
Now the chemical industry wants to make this information secret again — alleging that making this information public presents security risks for chemical facilities.
But Kron said he was skeptical of the industry’s claims that the website, which contains no confidential or proprietary information, presented security risks. “I think they just don’t want the public to know — because that will force change,” Kron said. And he noted that companies may also be concerned about hits to their reputation when they were forced to reveal accident history or the dangerous chemicals they were using.
As of February 7, the EPA data tool remains online. But as other EPA webpages go dark — like webpages mentioning the climate crisis, as we reported — advocates worry that soon a critical accountability tool for communities in the vicinity of hazardous chemical plants will also be taken down.
In the letter to Zeldin, the industry also pushed for the EPA to roll back regulations of high-risk chemical facilities that were strengthened under the Biden administration.
For the last several years, as different administrations have come into power, the Risk Management Program rules have been repeatedly strengthened and then repealed. Biden, during his term, restored many of the Obama-era provisions that President Donald Trump repealed during his first administration.
Biden also added new requirements for high-risk chemical plants, like requiring chemical processors to consider the impact of climate change and to upgrade to newer, safer technologies.
These new rules are now the target of the chemical industry.