Kristen Lombardi /Center for Public Integrity

The 2,400-acre ExxonMobil petrochemical complex in Baton Rouge, La.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Shirley Bowman noticed the smell after 8 a.m. on June 14, 2012, her 61st birthday. In Baton Rouge, where the petrochemical industry dominates the landscape, foul odors resembling burnt rubber or propane are perennial. But this odor, caustic and potent, seemed especially foul — “like some sort of chemical,” she recalls.

Bowman found her daughter crying over a migraine. Her neighbors experienced headaches, dizziness, nausea. One family reported a toddler son coughing up phlegm; another, an elderly father collapsing on the floor. She soon suspected the cause: A leak of “steam-cracked” naphtha, a liquid mixture of volatile petrochemicals, occurring at the ExxonMobil Baton Rouge petrochemical complex a half mile away.

Four hours earlier, Exxon operators detected an odor in the East area tank field and discovered a “bleeder” valve on Tank 801 dripping naphtha into a sewer. The leaky valve dumped 411 barrels into the underground system, company records filed with the state show. The liquid traveled a mile before pouring into a separator pit, vaporizing along the way, and releasing tens of thousands of pounds of benzene and other toxic chemicals into the air.

What happened that day in Baton Rouge is one thread of a larger story about the often toxic, sometimes invisible releases emanating from oil refineries, chemical plants and other industrial facilities along the chemical corridor of Louisiana and Texas. Those unplanned emissions — known in regulatory parlance as “upsets” — are occurring more often than industry admits or government knows, according to more than 50 interviews with regulators, activists, plant representatives, workers and residents, and an analysis of tens of thousands of records by the Center for Public Integrity.

For many communities, these upsets have evolved into an unseen menace: They disrupt lives, yet the companies are rarely punished. In Texas, where activists have clamored for relief, state officials say enforcement efforts helped reduce the number of incidents by 6 percent; Louisiana officials cite an even steeper decrease, 41 percent since 2008.

Yet those numbers tell only part of the story. The mass of pollution emitted in Texas, the nation’s refinery hub, hit a five-year peak in 2011, the Center found -- so even as the number of reported events dipped, the amount of pollution increased. And, experts say upset releases are consistently underreported.

This hidden pollution can produce harm. Over the last five years, records show, upset events have yielded almost 4 million pounds of toxic air pollutants in Texas alone — the 189 chemicals deemed so harmful to health Congress sought to bring emissions under control two decades ago. That’s 2 percent of all upset emissions.

“These are a major public health threat,” acknowledges Larry Soward, a former commissioner at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, who served on its board from 2003 to 2009.

“Upsets” occur when equipment breaks down or production units are shut off, restarted and repaired; or, as regulations state, when there’s an “unavoidable” accident.

Under law, plant managers must notify officials when accidental releases exceed certain hazardous air thresholds, known in regulations as “reportable quantities.” In Baton Rouge, Exxon did this. Yet the figures it reported kept escalating.

At 5:10 a.m. that day, Exxon supervisors told the state the benzene leak would likely exceed the 10 pound reportable quantity. Within hours, they classified it “level 2,” barricading areas and monitoring the air. According to a call log, company officials found benzene levels “so high” bordering a rail yard, they advised the railroad “not to let anyone go through that area.” By 12:30 p.m., the company was testing 400 workers for exposure to the cancer-causing chemical.

The following day, Exxon reported that benzene emissions totaled 1,364 pounds during the leak’s first three hours. By June 20, it increased the number to 28,688 pounds. In its final report filed 60 days later, Exxon revealed the benzene total was actually 31,022 pounds. State regulators later deemed the leak “preventable,” issuing an enforcement order contending that Exxon “failed to provide notification of a change in the nature and rate of the discharge.”

The company, saying it accurately reported the release, is appealing the state’s order. While plant supervisors acknowledge the “large” leak, they say it didn’t threaten residents. Tests along the fence line showed “no community impact,” their records state; air sampling by state regulators back up the company.

“It was a large number. We regret that number,” says Derek Reese, Exxon Baton Rouge’s environmental manager. “But we believe we did an appropriate response to mitigate the impact.”

That’s little consolation to residents, like Bowman. “Everything seems to stop at that magical gate,” she says, motioning to Exxon’s South Gate adjoining her neighborhood. “But if you live here, you know. Chemicals are let out on you.”

Upsets plague plants, communities
The hazards extend far beyond Baton Rouge. In Texas and Louisiana, the vast number of plastics, power and gas plants provide an on-the-ground case study of a national problem.

Data collected by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, TCEQ, offer a rare window into this pollution peril; the state agency requires companies to report events online within 24 hours, as well as annual totals.

From 2007-11, just over 2,400 of the largest facilities across Texas spewed almost 180 million pounds of upset emissions, contamination on top of the 14.8 billion pounds of routine air emissions in that time. Nearly half the facilities experienced at least one event in that period, pumping out sulfur dioxide and other smog-inducing pollutants. The greatest concentration came in 2011: 58.1 million pounds.

The 20 biggest offenders — oil refineries and natural-gas plants in Kermit, Beaumont, Corpus Christi and beyond — account for more than half of all such emissions in Texas.

“It’s a lot of stuff,” says Neil Carman, a former state air pollution inspector who investigated upset events. Carman now heads the air program for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star chapter, which has filed several citizen lawsuits targeting illegal emissions.

Industry portrays the discharges as an inevitable — and overwhelmingly harmless — byproduct of manufacturing. Regulators have encouraged this casual attitude, some experts say.

For decades, critics say, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state regulatory agencies have effectively ignored the emissions. Officials don’t count upset events in facility permits and compliance records, notes Kelly Haragan of the environmental law clinic at the University of Texas-Austin, because they “aren’t supposed to happen.” In August 2004, Haragan penned a 215-page report showing how easily facilities could get away with releasing more pollution than allowed by the federal Clean Air Act.

At times, she says, “It’s like having a whole other plant no one is even acknowledging.”

These incidents skirt normal pollution controls, instead venting into the atmosphere through flares and leaks. Plants can have scores of events a year, giving off a constant cloud of invisible pollution.

“A big dose of toxins are coming out of these facilities,” says Soward, the former TCEQ official, who now works for Air Alliance Houston, “and into fence line communities.”

The health effects are harder to measure; little research exists on the threat to residents. But recently, Dr. Mark D’Andrea, an oncologist at the University of Texas Cancer Center, began tracking 4,000 residents exposed to the poster child of all upsets — the “40-day Release” at the BP refinery, in Texas City, which belched 514,795 pounds of benzene and 20 other pollutants throughout the spring of 2010. Earlier this year, D’Andrea unveiled preliminary data showing the residents have “significantly higher” white-blood cell and platelet counts than their Houston counterparts. The data suggests BP’s release may have increased their risk of developing such cancers as leukemia, the doctor says.

In a statement, BP says it does “not believe any negative health impacts resulted from” its 40-day release. “To our knowledge, the University Cancer Centers’ pilot study does not support a claim for any plaintiff alleging injury from that flaring and has no relevance to those claims,” the company wrote, referring to pending litigation filed by 47,830 residents and workers against BP alleging health ailments caused by the release. D’Andrea has not been hired as an expert witness for either side in the case, but has testified in pre-trial discovery.

‘An invisible poison’
In Baytown, Texas, about 250 miles from Baton Rouge, ExxonMobil operates the nation’s largest petrochemical complex, replete with an oil refinery and two chemical plants. The mass of stacks, tanks and pipes spans 3,400 acres on Houston’s ship channel, looming over blue-collar neighborhoods nestled in its shadow. In Harris County, a manufacturer’s Mecca, Exxon’s refinery tops all 155 upset emitters, spitting out 3.8 million pounds’ worth from 2007 to 2011. 

Here, residents describe fiery flares that have rattled windows, belched black smoke and cast a sooty substance on the ground. At times, they’ve unleashed a thunderous boom, “like an Air Force fighter jet,” says Shae Cotter, who lived across a highway from the complex. He remembers the sound jolting him from sleep at 3 a.m. Occasionally, he videotaped flares aglow like celestial globes, flames ballooning toward his home.

Read the full report by The Center for Public Integrity

The Exxon complex ranks among the state’s biggest upset emitters involving carcinogens and noxious gases. Top chemicals include hydrochloric acid, 1,3-butadiene and benzene, toxins that can trigger skin irritations, respiratory problems, neurological disorders and gastro-intestinal diseases.

In a statement, ExxonMobil Baytown says it has worked with regulators to “greatly” reduce emissions. “We are proud of the overall reductions we have made,” the company wrote. Since 2000, Exxon notes, it has decreased total emissions at the Baytown complex by more than 50 percent. The company declined to provide similar statistics for the facility’s upset emissions. “ExxonMobil is committed to continuously improving the environmental performance of our Baytown Complex,” the company said.

Since December, the Baytown facility has set off a wave of upset emissions. One, triggered by a tripped compressor in the refinery’s Booster Station Four, pumped out 114,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide in 18 hours. It was the 20^th upset recorded there by company reports.

“Exxon is emitting all of these day after day,” says resident Marilyn Kingman. “Anybody who lives in the Baytown area is suffering.”

Smells drive some homeowners inside. Stuart Halpryn, whose house sits a quarter mile from Exxon, says he tried to adapt to the odors, along with the runny noses and allergy-like symptoms that he believes the odors caused. That changed in February 2009, when he says a valve leak at the refinery sickened his family. His four children suffered from such severe indigestion, he says, they missed school for a week. Later, he learned from reading Exxon’s report the leak had unleashed 17,432 pounds of six different toxic chemicals.

“Nobody really understands what’s being dumped on them,” says Halpryn, who moved his family to Kentucky in June. “It’s an invisible kind of poison that’s being rained down.”

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrity.org. 

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Firefighters try to protect homes during the second day of the Springs Fire in Ventura County, Calif., an May 3.

WASHINGTON - Shrinking budgets mean fewer firefighters will be available this summer even as unusually dry weather has increased the risk of fire in much of the West, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warned Monday.

"As a result of sequester and across-the-board cuts we will have about 500 fewer firefighters at the Forest Service than we would otherwise have," said Vilsack.

Cuts known as sequestration are forcing government agencies to reduce spending. They went into effect on March 1 after a gridlocked Congress failed to resolve fiscal fights and find an alternative to the sequestration.

The Forest Service relied on 10,500 firefighters during last year's fire season.

With 48 percent of the continental United States under moderate to exceptional drought conditions and an insect blight having weakened western forests, the risk of fire is high as summer approaches, said Vilsack, who oversees the Forest Service.

"That is a prescription for very serious conditions," he said.

Vilsack spoke with Interior Department Secretary Sally Jewell in a conference call organized from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Uncommonly dry forests in Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Washington state are full of woody fuel, officials said on the call.

California, too, is expected to be hard-hit. Nearly 850 wildfires had flared up in the state through the end of last month, far more than usual during the first four months of the year, officials say.

Vilsack and Jewell said the persistently hot, dry weather in some parts of the country was a reminder of the challenge that climate change poses.

"The twelve hottest years on record have been in the last fifteen years and that has been particularly true in the West," Jewell said.

Heavy rains have spared eastern states from serious fires so far, said Jeremy Sullens of the fire center, "but it is a different story out West where you have had severe drought conditions for quite some time now."

About 70,000 communities are situated on the fringes of wilderness across the country and so are particularly vulnerable, officials said.

More terrain was scorched by fires last year than at any time since 1960, Vilsack said, and this summer is likely to be comparable.

-- Reuters

Related story: 'Long, hot, incendiary summer': Early wildfires bode ill for California

Macneill Lyons / AP file

An image provided by Yellowstone National Park, Mont., shows a gray wolf in the wild.

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Federal wildlife officials have drafted plans to lift protections for gray wolves across the Lower 48 states, a move that could end a decades-long recovery effort that has restored the animals but only in parts of their historic range.

The draft U.S. Department of Interior rule obtained by The Associated Press contends that roughly 5,000 wolves now living in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes are enough to prevent the species' extinction. The agency says having gray wolves elsewhere — such as the West Coast, parts of New England and the Southern Rockies — is unnecessary for their long-term survival.

A small population of Mexican wolves in the Southwest would continue to receive federal protections, as a distinct subspecies of the gray wolf.

The document was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday the rule was under internal review and would be subject to public comment before a final decision is made.

If the rule is enacted, it would transfer control of wolves to state wildlife agencies by removing them from the federal list of endangered species.

Wildlife advocates warn that could effectively halt the species' expansion, which has stirred a backlash from agricultural groups and some hunters upset by wolf attacks on livestock and big game herds such as elk.

Some biologists have argued wolves will continue spreading regardless of their legal status. The animals are prolific breeders, known to journey hundreds of miles in search of new territory. They were wiped out across most of the U.S. early last century following a government sponsored poisoning and trapping campaign.

In an emailed statement, the agency pointed to "robust" populations of the animals in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes as evidence that gray wolf recovery "is one of the world's great conservation successes."

Wolves in those two areas lost protections under the Endangered Species Act over the last two years.

In some states where wolves have recovered, regulated hunting and trapping already has been used to drive down their populations, largely in response to wolf attacks on livestock and big game herds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently reported that wolf numbers dropped significantly last year in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana for the first time since they were reintroduced in the mid-1990s.

Federal officials have said they are monitoring the states' actions, but see no immediate threat to their survival.

In Oregon and Washington, which have small but rapidly growing wolf populations, the animals have remained protected under state laws even after federal protections were lifted in portions of the two states.

Between 1991 and 2011, the federal government spent $102 million on gray wolf recovery programs and state agencies chipped in $15.6 million. Federal spending likely would drop if the proposal to lift protections goes through, while state spending would increase.

John Flesher reported from Traverse City, Mich.

A correction has been made to this article.

The fertilizer storage facility that exploded this week in the town of West, Texas, had informed a state agency in February that it was storing up to 270 tons of ammonium nitrate – the highly explosive chemical compound used in the domestic terror attack on the Oklahoma City federal building.

The company's risk management plan, filed with the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2011, made no mention of ammonium nitrate. (Update: Reuters news agency reported that the EPA does not require disclosure of the ammonium nitrate, but the Department of Homeland Security does require that disclosure, which the company did not do.)

It's not clear whether the ammonium nitrate, which was not initially reported as being present at the site in the wake of Wednesday's massive blast, was responsible for the explosion, or whether volunteer firefighters battling a fire at the facility knew of its presence. Under state law, hazardous chemicals must be disclosed to the community fire department and to the county emergency planning agency, in addition to the state. News reports on Thursday focused on tanks of anhydrous ammonia –a less volatile fertilizer.

Adair Grain, doing business as West Fertilizer Co., told the Texas Department of Health Services on Feb. 26 that it was storing up to 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, along with up to 110,000 pounds of the liquid ammonia, according to the disclosure report. (Read the document provided by the state.) The company's disclosure was first reported Thursday evening by The Los Angeles Times.

The facility in West served primarily as a distribution point for fertilizer to farmers, a retail outfit, not a manufacturing plant, it said in its regulatory filings.

A deadly history
Ammonium nitrate fertilizer was involved in the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, when a container ship exploded in 1947 in Texas City, Texas, killing more than 500 people. It also was combined with fuel and used by Timothy McVeigh in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

Firefighters were trying to put out a blaze at the facility when it exploded on Wednesday evening. An official with the Texas Division of Emergency Management told reporters that he believed ammonium nitrate was one of the chemicals on site, but authorities have not said what chemical was responsible for the tremendous explosion, how much of each chemical was stored at the time or what caused the fire.

Making sure that firefighters know what chemicals are on site is a primary reason for the disclosures such as the one the company made to the state in February. Spokesman Carrie Williams of the Department of Health Services told NBC News that although the state requires registration of hazardous materials to alert emergency planners and the community, the department's role is limited to receiving the reports and making them available to the public. More than 65,000 facilities in Texas submit reports, which are available in the state's Emergency and Chemical Inventory.

West Fertilizer said in its 2011 risk management plan filed with the EPA that its anhydrous ammonia did not pose any threat of fire or explosions.  "The worst-case release scenario would be the release of the total contents of a storage tank released as a gas over 10 minutes," the plan said. Ammonium nitrate isn't listed on the plan, which is described as a five-year update to the EPA. A copy of the plan was posted online by the watchdog group Center for Effective Government.

"Last night’s tragic explosion points to the need for stricter regulations of plants that store and use large quantities of hazardous chemicals," said a statement from Tom O’Connor, executive director of a union safety group, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. "We need a system in which facilities that are inherently dangerous are required to develop detailed disaster prevention plans before they’re allowed to operate."

West Fertilizer is owned by Adair Grain, a small company with only seven or eight employees. The company declined to comment when reached by phone by NBC News.

The company has been the subject of several disciplinary actions from state and federal regulators:

• Last summer, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration fined West Fertilizer $10,000 for safety violations, including planning to transport anhydrous ammonia without adequate security and failing to properly label ammonia tanks. The company paid a reduced fine of $5,250 after agreeing to take corrective action. The fine was reported by several news organizations.
• In 2006, the company was fined $2,300 by the EPA for not having filed a risk management plan, according to the EPA's compliance database. The EPA said it had poor employee training records, failed to document hazards and didn't have a written maintenance program. The EPA said the company corrected the deficiencies and filed an updated plan in 2011 – making no mention of the presence of ammonium nitrate – and was then in compliance with EPA regulations.
• Also in 2006, the state Department of Environmental Quality found that the company was operating without a permit for its two 12,000-gallon tanks for anhydrous ammonia, which is stored as a liquid under high pressure. The state department hadn't known about the tanks until a neighbor complained of a "very bad" smell of ammonia at night. The chemical is used on farms directly as a fertilizer, and can be combined with nitric acid to make ammonium nitrate fertilizer. No state permit for the tanks had been required when the plant was built in 1962, and it was grandfathered in until a 2004 change in state law required even those older plants to have permits.
• State environmental officials received two complaints about the company. One, in 2002, said, "This place is in the northern part of town and every day during the grain harvest season there is a cloud of dust. Particles are falling like snow around town. People are afraid to complain, however this is effecting (sic) neighbors' health with scratchy throats, cough and sneezing." The other was in 2006, and led to the plant getting a permit for its anhydrous ammonia tanks: "Ammonia Smell very bad last night from fertilizer plant, lingered until after they went to bed," it said.

Location is up to zoning rules
The spokeswoman for a trade group, The Fertilizer Institute, said the West plant was not a manufacturing facility but instead a retail distribution point for farmers to buy fertilizers. The spokeswoman, Kathy Mathers, said there are 5,000 to 6,000 such facilities in the U.S. Such facilities must register with the EPA and with state authorities, she said. But any limits on their placement near homes or schools would be limited only by local zoning ordinances, Mathers said.

The county engineer in McLennan County, Texas, in the county seat of Waco, said counties in the state don't have zoning regulations, and neither do most towns. He said he didn't know if the town of West had rules that would have affected this plant. Although some homes were close by when the fertilizer facility opened, a subdivision, schools and a nursing home were built near the plant in subsequent years.

Mathers said Thursday that the most recent fatal accident involving a fertilizer facility in the U.S. was in 1994 in Port Neal, Iowa, where four workers were killed and 18 injured. (Read the EPA investigative report.)

She said the institute's employees on Thursday were "pretty damn mad," because an incident such as this can sully a good industry's reputation. "This industry has ethics," she said. The Fertilizer Institute sponsors training sessions for the industry, in addition to performing the usual support and lobbying functions of a trade group.

The Fertilizer Institute removed from its website on Thursday morning a map of fertilizer production and mining facilities. Mathers said officials did so because people were confusing those facilities with smaller storage and mixing facilities, like West Fertilizer. "We weren't trying to do anything dirty or underhanded," she said. A copy of the map is available here.

The accident is being investigated by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. An article this week from the Center for Public Integrity described how overworked and underfunded that agency is.

Polly DeFrank and Rich Gardella of NBC News contributed reporting.

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This story was originally published on Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:58 AM EDT

An Oklahoma woman was recovering Wednesday from injuries she suffered when the pickup truck she was riding in struck a pack of feral hogs in the road this week — again raising the danger posed by the nation's rapidly growing population of wild pigs.

Carolyn Martin, 63, of Ryan, Okla., was upgraded to serious condition at Oklahoma University Medical Center after initially having been listed as critical, NBC station KFDX of Wichita Falls, Texas, reported.

The state Highway Patrol said the accident occurred Monday night when the driver of the truck swerved to avoid the hogs, who were meandering along U.S. 81 in Waurika, near the Texas border.

Martin's injuries weren't specified. The truck's driver was treated and released from a Waurika hospital.

Feral hogs — which are descended from domestic pigs that once escaped or were set loose in the wild for hunting — have become an increasing concern in Oklahoma and other parts of the southwestern United States.

The Oklahoma Agriculture Department has declared them an "invasive species" whose population density is growing in 77 counties.

"Feral swine have proven their ability to adapt and multiply, and it is unlikely they will ever be eradicated," it says.

Because hogs are among the most intelligent animal species, wild hogs "learn to avoid danger very quickly" and "attempts to control them just make them less susceptible to future control efforts," according to the Texas A&M University Extension Service.

The extension service cited estimates that feral swine cause as much as $1.5 billion in damage to property and crops in the U.S. each year.

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