After a chemical leak at the Ames Goldsmith plant in Kanawha County killed two workers and injured dozens more last month, federal investigators quickly arrived in West Virginia to begin piecing together what went wrong.Now, the federal agency tasked with determining the root cause of the accident could be eliminated. President Trump is proposing to cut funding for the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, a small federal agency that probes chemical disasters and pushes for safety fixes. Worker advocates and former CSB members warn dismantling the agency could leave states like West Virginia — with long histories of deadly industrial chemical incidents — more vulnerable to future disasters.The board has opened investigations into eight chemical incidents in West Virginia since 2008. Maya Nye, federal policy director for the environmental health organization Coming Clean, said before the most recent chemical leak at the Ames Goldsmith plant, the 2008 explosion at the Bayer Crop Science plant in Institute was the deadliest in her recent memory. Two workers were killed in that incident as well.
“These can be prevented,” she said. “Every incident that occurs is 100% preventable.”
