On May 12, 2005, the Department of Homeland Security staged a spectacular joint terrorist preparedness exercise in Romulus, Mich., and the Detroit Metropolitan Airport called “Operation Vigilant State, a Surface to Air Threat Exercise.” Citizens were informed that military aircraft would be flying in and around Metro Detroit and warned not to panic. The daylong event tested the response plans, communications and operability of a host of governmental exercise participants.

“It may look like the real thing,” the press was told.

But when the real thing happened, just three months later, on Aug. 9, Homeland Security was caught unaware.

“It was like an atomic bomb went off,” said Aurora Martin of Romulus. “My son lives next door and came running over. His walls were rattling. The firemen came yelling on loudspeakers and banging on doors telling us all to get the hell out of here.”

Terrorist Plane?

At first, some suspected that a terrorist plane had slammed into “Environmental Quality Resource Recovery,” a Romulus-based chemical plant, resulting in a catastrophic toxic explosion. Orange yellow flames careened into the upper reaches of the sky. Many residents spoke in horror of a “black mushroom cloud” that spread soot, ash and “black-hamburger like” debris over rooftops, yards, churches, bikes and the Roosevelt McGrath Elementary School, which sits a few hundred yards from the facility.

No alarm sounded, but the eight workers at the factory had run frantically off site after hearing a hissing noise from an ammonia tank. The working class community surrounding the factory, totaling about 3,000 households, was given no warning. They were evacuated rapidly to area shelters and not permitted to return for two days.

The explosion had immediate physical health effects. Fifty people, including residents and firefighters, were seen at Oakwood Hospital for burning sensations in their lungs and associated ailments.

According to an Environmental Protection Agency finding, 32 above-ground tanks, some ranging in size up to 15,000 gallons, “were impacted.” Four hundred toxic drums were destroyed.

“I never even knew there was a chemical factory over there,” Martin said.
There was. And now it’s mostly gone.

What is Terror?

Hurricane Katrina, which also occurred in August 2005, justifiably raised questions about governmental preparedness to catastrophes. It caused citizens to rethink the nature of “terrorism,” and to question the government’s abilities to protect “the homeland.”

Just days after the Romulus explosion, on Aug. 15, Congressman John Dingell, D – Mich., requested a full account from government agencies, including the EPA and the Department of Homeland Security, about the chemical hazards and the advance preparations for a disaster by EQ Resource Recovery. He asked whether the plant had been required to file an emergency response plan.

“There has been a need to improve security and safety at the nation’s chemical plants for years,” he said, “Despite my repeated requests and those of other members of Congress, the federal government has made almost no progress toward a comprehensive program for securing chemical facilities across the nation.”

Carolyn Merritt, chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, agrees. She goes so far as to raise the specter of Bhopal, the world’s worst chemical catastrophe, which killed thousands within hours of a poisonous leak from an Indian pesticide plant in 1984.

Merritt told reporter Kristen Hays, “Over and over again, we see companies — even those covered under process safety rules — committing the same kind of management errors, mechanical errors and process errors that set up the facility at Bhopal for the accident.”

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is investigating a number of serious chemical explosions that have impacted neighboring communities. These include 2005 explosions at BP America in Texas City, Texas, and one at the Acetylene Service Company in Perth Amboy, N.J., which killed three workers. It also includes 2004 explosions at Marcus Oil and Chemical in Houston, Texas (felt more than 20 miles from the site), Sterigenics Ethylene Oxide in Ontario, Calif. (rendering the facility unusable) and another at Formosa Plastics in Illiopolis, Ill. (killing five workers and forcing a community evacuation).

For a mother running in tears in the night with her infant from a catastrophic mushroom cloud spewing toxic debris over her head, as happened in Romulus, Mich., in August, it doesn’t matter if the “terrorist” is al-Qaeda or one of the chemical complexes named above.

Off the Radar

Romulus is in Wayne County, Mich. In fiscal year 2004, Wayne County received $23.5 million (which it shared with Detroit) in Homeland Security Grant awards. Romulus directly received $256,818. But these governmental agencies had apparently paid little or no attention to the “Surface to Air Threat” (i.e. a possible pollution plume from the Romulus chemical plant) in their midst on May 12, the day of the exercise.

It’s not as though it wasn’t noticeable to them. Environmental Quality corporation is the nation’s third largest facility that blends toxic wastes for fuels in cement kilns.

In 2002, EQ handled or treated more than 81 million pounds of toxic waste in the Romulus neighborhood, including 13,485 pounds released into the air of the surrounding community. According to the federal government’s own Toxics Release Inventory, the company has a cancer risk score that places it near the 100th percentile as “dirtiest/worst facilities in the U.S.” Two tons of this pollution are recognized carcinogens, with carbon tetrachloride being the top cancer risk.

EQ has been cited 68 times over the past two decades. On May 11 — the day before Operation Vigilant State — an inspection by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality found three violations at EQ, including not storing hazardous waste in the areas specified by its license.

One wonders why this wasn’t alarming enough to draw increased scrutiny by Wayne County officials.

Citizens who can afford it often flee from these insecure areas.

A plumber who lives a few blocks from the Romulus explosion site showed off his car, which had a number of black, gummy patches on it, six weeks after the explosion. “They’ve not come off even after eight car washings,” he said. He worries about the health effects of material like that on his family’s lungs.

“My wife has asthma and complained about throat burning, but we decided not to join the class action lawsuit,” he said. “We’re moving.”

How to Make Toxins Invisible &
Create Illusions of a Safe Homeland

There is often little citizen unrest about potential chemical explosions. One reason many Romulus neighbors may be unaware of the true nature of the Environmental Quality corporation is its signage.

A pretty green yin yang image adorns EQ’s façade and trees shield passer-by from the inner workings. Its Orwellian name, focusing on “quality,” connotes safety, distracting citizens from the yang within the yin, which is “dangerous to your health.” Imagine if “Toxics Central” was the name presented to the public.

Brad van Guilder, an organizer with the Ecology Center, an environmental group located in Ann Arbor, Mich., expresses an even broader concern about the need to eliminate the use of toxic substances in general.

“The EPA has a Toxic Waste reduction program that is based on reducing the use of these toxic materials,” he says.

According to van Guilder, “Allowing a market where this toxic soup is reprocessed as a fuel to be burned so we have to breathe all of this crap, and transporting hazardous waste through a densely populated area and having it sit around in storage in huge quantities as a time bomb, contradicts the goals of the EPA program.”

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Brian McKenna is a medical/environmental anthropologist who teaches at the University of Michigan - Dearborn. He teaches a number of courses there including, “Indians of North America,” and “Doing Anthropology.” He is currently working on a book titled, “We all Live in Company Town USA.”