After a chemical leak at the Ames Goldsmith plant in Kanawha County killed two workers and injured dozens more last month, federal investigators quickly arrived in West Virginia to begin piecing together what went wrong.
Now, the federal agency tasked with determining the root cause of the accident could be eliminated.
President Trump is proposing to cut funding for the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, a small federal agency that probes chemical disasters and pushes for safety fixes.
Worker advocates and former CSB members warn dismantling the agency could leave states like West Virginia — with long histories of deadly industrial chemical incidents — more vulnerable to future disasters.
The board has opened investigations into eight chemical incidents in West Virginia since 2008.
Maya Nye, federal policy director for the environmental health organization Coming Clean, said before the most recent chemical leak at the Ames Goldsmith plant, the 2008 explosion at the Bayer Crop Science plant in Institute was the deadliest in her recent memory. Two workers were killed in that incident as well.
“These can be prevented,” she said. “Every incident that occurs is 100% preventable.”
Many of the state’s chemical facilities are concentrated along the Kanawha Valley’s industrial corridor.
Those incidents include a toxic release at DuPont’s Belle plant in 2010 that killed a worker. And in 2014, a spill at Freedom Industries tainted the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people.
Advocates say the impacts of chemical incidents often extend far beyond plant workers.
Nye said low-income communities and communities of color often face the greatest risks. But the employees stand to lose the most.
“Workers are typically hurt first and worst,” she said.
Why the Chemical Safety Board matters
The White House said the CSB duplicates work already done by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and argued that eliminating it would help shrink the federal government.
But Congress created the board after growing frustration that existing federal agencies were not adequately investigating major industrial chemical disasters.
The safety board was created through amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990, and has a budget of around $14 million and fewer than 50 employees. It was modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates airplane and train crashes.
Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary at OSHA, said the CSB investigates industrial chemical incidents differently than enforcement agencies.
While OSHA and the EPA primarily determine whether companies violated existing regulations, Barab said the board conducts broader “root cause” investigations into why disasters happened in the first place.
“They can look at other problems, other causes that aren’t necessarily covered by regulations or standards,” he said.
The CSB can unearth problems like worker fatigue, lack of routine maintenance, management changes and broader safety culture problems inside facilities, he said.
After the release of toxic chemicals at DuPont’s Belle plant in 2010, board investigators determined that a lack of planning and a lack of communication between plant operators, as well as deferred maintenance, had caused the leak.
The CSB has issued more than 1,000 recommendations over its history, many of which were later adopted by companies, trade associations and state regulators.
“A lot of the ways the industry has modernized to improve safety are based on recommendations that came out of the CSB,” Barab said.
The board has also publicly criticized recent efforts by the Trump administration to roll back chemical safety regulations known as Risk Management Program rules.
Earlier this year, the board warned the rollback would represent “a significant step backwards” in preventing catastrophic chemical accidents.
Trump proposes cuts to multiple worker protection agencies
The Trump administration has proposed eliminating the board multiple times in the past.
Rick Engler, a former CSB member appointed by President Barack Obama, said Congress has repeatedly rejected past attempts to eliminate the agency.
Despite its size, Engler said eliminating the board would leave a major gap in federal chemical safety oversight.
“It’s a very small agency,” he said. “But without the CSB, preventative solutions will not be identified.”
Kelly Moore, a spokesperson for Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said the senator has long supported the CSB and voted in the past to support additional funding for the agency.
Moore did not answer if Capito would support President Trump’s cuts this year.
The potential loss of the agency comes as federal workplace safety agencies already face staffing shortages and proposed budget cuts.
The Trump administration has proposed cuts to other agencies that protect workers. He proposed a 7.5% cut to OSHA’s budget and a 10% cut to the federal mine safety agency’s budget.
Barab said the administration’s push to eliminate the agency is especially puzzling because the board largely provides the kind of safety guidance and recommendations that Trump officials have said they prefer over aggressive enforcement.
“It’s ironic,” he said, “that they should try to kill an agency that actually does exactly that.”