By Carrie Antlfinger
The Associated Press
MILWAUKEE — As he left the funeral of one of three colleagues killed in a warehouse explosion believed to have been sparked by a propane leak, Rick Pollak was shocked to learn that inspections of propane tanks and pipes aren’t required by law.
“It’s surprising,” said Rick Pollak, 52, after services for co-worker Curtis Lane. “I think in light of this tragedy they should start enacting something. But what, I’m not sure.”
An examination of federal, state and city laws by The Associated Press found that guidelines covering propane tanks and pipes nationwide don’t require inspections or tests by any government agency once they’re installed, no matter how old.
“That’s amazing, especially because it’s terribly flammable,” said state Rep. Pedro Colon, a Democrat who represents the district where the explosion occurred. “I guess we are going to have to go and create the rule, because if we didn’t do it before the explosion, we should do it now.”
The blast Wednesday at Falk Corp. killed three employees and injured nearly four dozen others. Workers were testing a backup propane system that is more than 30 years old.
Efforts to regulate propane on the federal level failed in the 1990s when Congress passed a law preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring propane facilities to come up with risk management plans.
Without federal oversight, regulation is left to the states, which have adopted variations of guidelines set by the National Fire Protection Association. States also delegate responsibility in some cases to municipalities.
Ted Lemoff, a principal gases engineer at the association, said those rules cover installation of tanks and pipes but there is no requirement for governmental agencies to re-inspect or retest those used for propane and other liquefied petroleum gases _ even if they date back to World War II.
Companies must maintain them, and workers who fill the tanks are required to check them, Lemoff said. Problems are usually detected when someone smells propane, checks the propane level or notices dead vegetation killed by leaking gas.
The association is open to amending its guidelines, he said. “Normally they don’t go and look for what might go wrong, but they react to incidents that they become aware of,” Lemoff said.
Jeffrey Remsik, a spokesman for Falk Corp’s mechanical contractor, said his workers were observing the annual operational test just before the blast when they smelled and saw liquid propane coming from underground.
The city of Milwaukee used to inspect propane tanks — but not pipes — every three years, said Todd Weiler, spokesman for the city Department of Neighborhood Services. But that stopped in 1999 when the city changed its practices to match state regulations.
State Department of Commerce spokesman Tony Hozeny said the state has never required inspections of propane tanks after installation.
In 1999, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., won passage of legislation preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring propane facilities to develop risk management plans. With 63 other flammable and 77 toxic materials, the EPA requires facilities to detail their chemicals on site, maintenance schedules, and safety and health procedures.
Inhofe said at the time that he acted to protect small propane dealers and small farmers from the cost of complying with an EPA rule that would have required risk management plans of facilities keeping 10,000 pounds or more of propane in a tank or set of interconnected tanks.
Federal Election Commission records show he received $3,398 in monetary and in-kind contributions from the National Propane Gas Association’s political action committee during the 1999-2000 election cycle.
Robert Baylor, communications director of the National Propane Gas Association, said it fought the EPA because its rules would have duplicated the National Fire Protection Association’s guidelines. The propane association claimed EPA oversight would have cost the industry $1 billion in paperwork and not improved safety.
“If you are going to spend a billion dollars to improve safety, spend it on something that is going to be meaningful,” Baylor said.
Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental group, said the guidelines devised by the fire association aren’t adequate. He also called Inhofe’s law “foolhardy.”
“The industry sued to be exempt from safety requirements, and then Senator Inhofe jumped in and gave them a special deal,” he said. “And now you have a disaster as a possible consequence that ought to be investigated.”
After being questioned by the AP, Inhofe, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, expressed sympathy for the Milwaukee blast victims and lashed back at O’Donnell.
O’Donnell “is apparently making wild accusations that a bill that I wrote, that passed the Senate and was signed into law by President Clinton back in 1999, is somehow responsible,” he said. “This claim is simply untrue, despicable and trivializes the losses of those who suffered and died in the explosion.”
Associated Press writers Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee and Frederic J. Frommer in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.