OTHERS SAY

Ignorance by design

Texas and federal investigations eventually will uncover the extent to which West Fertilizer Co. followed the law regarding the large amounts of highly volatile ammonium nitrate stored on its property. But regardless of what authorities knew, West residents remained clueless-by design-about the extreme dangers they were living next to until an April 17 explosion killed 15 and devastated a 35-block area.

A little-known section of Texas law allows agencies to withhold information they regard as confidential concerning the handling, storage and transportation of extremely hazardous chemicals. Not only can state agencies claim the right under the law to ensure that the public remains in the dark, they can assert the right to not even explain why they won’t release data.

After the West explosion, the Dallas Morning News and other news organizations filed requests for records identifying all entities producing, selling, storing or transferring ammonium nitrate in Texas. The Department of Homeland Security requires anyone possessing more than 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate-the same chemical used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995-to register it; West Fertilizer had up to 540,000 pounds at the plant in its last 2012 report.

The written reply refusing to supply all the information sought by the News bizarrely included a nearly blank page that contained only the heading “Section 552.101-Exception: Confidential Information.” Merely explaining its justification apparently risked revealing the confidential information that Texas A&M AgriLife Research was trying to withhold.

It’s hard to read between the lines of a blank page, but Texas A&M Agri-Life Research almost certainly wants to avoid guiding terrorists to sources of potential weapons of mass destruction. That’s understandable. But in the process of keeping terrorists guessing, the agency suggests that it’s OK to expose the public to untold extreme dangers in our backyards without our knowledge.

Editorial, Pages 12 on 05/02/2013

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