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Last week, Biden administration officials finalized a rule they said would significantly reduce cancer-causing air pollutants, lowering cancer risk and advancing environmental justice goals. But the move by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency left out a Black West Virginia community yet again.  While the rule will target facilities surrounding communities historically overburdened by toxic air pollution, it doesn’t cover the chemical production category that has disproportionately affected one of West Virginia’s only two majority-Black communities. “It’s actually a positive development, but it doesn’t fully address the issues in Institute,” said Maya Nye, a former Kanawha Valley resident and member of the Charleston-based People Concerned About Chemical Safety. 

The rule addresses a critical vulnerability in the protection of the country's waterways and communities. Thousands of facilities that manufacture, use and store some of the most dangerous chemicals brush up against waterways or are in flood-prone areas. The new policy comes after numerous disasters affecting drinking water supplies, wildlife habitats, and environmental justice communities that experience the brunt of extreme weather supercharged by climate change.  “We are thankful that this administration is finally taking long overdue action to protect workers and communities against chemical disasters. Communities of color and the poor, who are experiencing the worst of the climate crisis, are also on the front lines of the fight against policies that permit billions of pounds of pollution and concentrate the most dangerous industries in our communities” said Michele Roberts, National Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA). “While we’re glad to see this rule taking steps in the right direction, we will continue to call on EPA to truly prevent disasters by transitioning away from inherently dangerous chemicals and processes as outlined in the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals.” 

The unusually high profile of the East Palestine derailment — which prompted the railroad to send a massive black plume into the air, went viral on social media and became a political flash point — drew national attention to federal rules governing toxic chemicals, railroad safety and chemical transport. While activists who talked to The Washington Post said heightened awareness of chemical risks is good, watching an emergency unfold can also be difficult. “Every time they happen, they remind you of the disasters that you’ve experienced,” said Maya Nye, a West Virginia activist and federal policy director at Coming Clean, a nonprofit organization that advocates for preventing chemical disasters. “It’s just yet another reminder of the protections that aren’t there that people in my community have been fighting for for so long,” Nye said. Some have also noted that the incident in East Palestine, a majority-White town of 4,700 people, drew more attention than those in their communities of color. In Houston, advocates’ frustration was compounded by the news that some of the toxic waste excavated in East Palestine would be trucked to a Southeast Texas facility. “We have become the dumping ground for the rest of the nation,” said Ana Parras, co-director of the Houston-based group Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, which advocates for people living near rail tracks and chemical facilities. Her organization and others protested the movement of the derailment waste to Harris County, Tex.

Maya Nye felt the boom that changed her life from a mile away. Then a fire truck went down her one-way street announcing that a shelter-in-place order had taken effect and to shut all doors and windows. Nye, then 16, sheltered in place like she had been taught in school, but the duct tape she put up to cover the cracks around the door and windows didn’t work. The smell infiltrated her house. An explosion at the Institute chemical plant then owned by former French chemical company Rhône-Poulenc killed one worker and injured two others who were in a unit for the insecticide methomyl. It was Aug. 18, 1993 — nearly nine years after a leak of highly toxic methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed thousands of people and caused permanent disabilities or premature death for many thousands more. “My life was forever changed,” recalled Nye, who became a chemical safety advocate and is now federal policy director for Coming Clean, a chemical industry-focused environmental health nonprofit.

In christening a new office of environmental justice, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan proclaimed on Sept. 24 that “underserved and overburdened communities are at the forefront of our work.” A stern test of that proclamation began just two days later. On Sept. 26, the EPA held the first of three virtual listening sessions on the Biden administration’s proposal to strengthen its chemical disaster rule. Many safety measures were gutted by the Trump administration’s EPA, which was run by coal and chemical industry lobbyists. During the Trump administration, polluters were relieved of the need to tell the public what chemicals they store, to conduct analyses of safer technologies, to seek third-party audits after accidents, or conduct root-cause analyses of any underlying, systemic reasons an accident occurred.