Greenpeace Targets DuPont Facilities

The environmental group Greenpeace has taken its campaign against industrial use of chlorine to the air, using a giant, green blimp to conduct "citizen inspections" of two DuPont chemical plants along the Delaware River.

The activists' publicity stunt on May 21 was designed to focus attention on the potential risks posed by facilities that use chlorine and other toxic gases and to build support for security legislation that would authorize the federal government to require the use of safer chemicals and processes at some facilities. 

Greenpeace's 135-foot thermal airship, marked with a banner reading "Real Chemical Security Now," flew past DuPont's Edge Moor Plant in Wilmington, Del., where the company uses chlorine in producing titanium dioxide pigments. The blimp also circled around DuPont's sprawling 1,455-acre Chambers Works complex across the river in Deepwater, N.J., where chlorine-based phosgene is used to make polymers.

A terrorist attack or catastrophic accident at the Chamber Works would endanger two million area residents because of the facility's bulk use and storage of chlorine, says Greenpeace Legislative Director Rick Hind, citing federal risk management data.

"Putting up fences and cameras won't protect workers and communities," Hind remarks. "The only foolproof way to safeguard communities from these plants is to use safer, common-sense chemical processes." Eliminating or reducing the use of hazardous chemicals would also make facilities less attractive targets for terrorists, he adds.

But F. Eddie Johnston, sustainability manager for DuPont Titanium Technologies, says that DuPont is always looking for practical ways to reduce or eliminate hazards in its operations and improve efficiency.

"We believe that the process we use today that uses chlorine to make titanium dioxide, for example, is the most efficient process that is available, both in terms of its energy consumption and its waste generation," Johnston says. Converting to the older sulfate process "would be a move in the wrong direction. That's really a nonstarter for us."

The environmental community supports legislation passed by the House of Representatives in November 2009 (H.R. 2868) that authorizes the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to require the highest risk chemical plants to adopt so-called inherently safer technology where feasible to minimize risk. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has said he plans to introduce a similar measure in the Senate shortly.

DuPont and other chemical companies strongly oppose efforts to expand the scope of the current federal facility security law, which Congress passed in October 2006. Johnston argues that because DHS is still in the process of implementing the regulations, an overhaul of the program now would be premature.

"One of our concerns is that while we're implementing the existing regulations, that there would be additional requirements on top of that, before we've had an opportunity to evaluate their effectiveness," Johnston says.