InterviewUS chem safety board to expand

21 August 2008 22:53  [Source: ICIS news]

By Joe Kamalick

 

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) said on Thursday it plans to open its first regional office in Denver, Colorado, early next year and is considering a second additional investigative field office in Houston, Texas, in 2010.

 

CSB Chairman John Bresland said the independent agency has begun recruiting efforts in Denver and plans to have five or six staff in place there early in 2009.  One current CSB investigator already lives in the Denver area and will aid the expansion effort there, he said.

 

Bresland said the safety board plans to ask Congress for additional funding for fiscal year 2010 to support the Denver regional office and to establish a Houston operation as well. 

 

He said he envisions that the Denver office and the anticipated Houston regional office will each host a five- or six-person investigative team to cover the US Northwest and Southwest areas.

 

The US Southwest is home to about 60% of the country’s chemical manufacturing capacity.  The country’s refining sector also is heavily concentrated along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf coasts.

 

Bresland said the board did not yet know how much additional funding might be needed, but he thinks Congress will approve a larger budget for the safety agency.

 

“We’ve had some discussions already with Congress, and they are encouraging us to do more investigations, and to do that we need to hire more people,” he said.  “We hope they will increase our budget to allow us to do that.”

 

For fiscal year 2009 the CSB requested a budget of $10.6m (€7.2m), an increase from its current fiscal year funding of $9.2m.

 

Opening regional offices in Denver and Houston likely will mean the safety board’s total staff complement will climb from its current 38 personnel to as much as 50 staffers in 2010, Bresland said.

 

In addition to having two investigative teams based in the West and Southwest close to chemical industry concentrations, opening regional offices in Oklahoma and Texas may aid recruiting for the agency, he said.

 

“We have found it somewhat hard to hire the sort of chemists, chemical engineers and mechanical engineers that we need to staff our investigative teams if we ask them to come here to the Washington, DC, area,” Bresland said.

 

“We’ve had people turn us down because of the Washington location,” he said, “because of the cost of living here, the commuting times.”

 

The CSB is an independent federal agency chartered by Congress to investigate the causes of major chemicals-related accidents - those involving loss of life, serious facility damage or significant environmental consequences - and communicate results and lessons learned to the industry.

 

Those interested in applying for the investigative positions anticipated for Denver and Houston can obtain detailed information at the board’s website.

 

($1 = €0.68)

 

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By: Joe Kamalick
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