I-Team: Illinois' chemical plant risks underestimated

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Twelve years after an I-Team investigation exposed unprotected chemical plants across metro Chicago, a new report reveals that little has changed. A yearlong investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee has Illinois among the top 10 high-risk states.

The I-Team first reported in 2002 that a doomsday attack on the biggest chemical plants in Chicago would produce a lethal vapor cloud capable of maiming or killing a million people. After 9/11, we found the chemical industry was vulnerable and unprotected.

That dangerous combination is still in place according to a new report by Senate investigators who conclude that the government continues to underestimate the threat, especially from terrorists.

When we obtained the government's "worst case scenario" files in 2002, they revealed that an attack on some Chicago-area plants could sicken or kill as many as 3.5 million people.

Illinois had then- and still has- the most plants in the nation that contain lethal chemicals, the kind of locations that federal authorities have warned since 9/11 should be considered terrorist targets.

Yet government security regulations and inspections have never been adequately tightened, according to the Senate report titled "Chemical insecurity" that charts the same serious safety concerns we documented more than a decade ago. More than three quarters of plant security plans have not been approved, and 99 percent of all U.S. facilities have not had compliance inspections.

Just as we discovered open gates, holes in fences and largely unsecured perimeters at plants after 9/11, the Senate report- based on Homeland Security intelligence- shows that the government's "risk calculations are inaccurate and 'riddled with problems'" and that facility risk formulas are "not scientifically justified or even rational."

Half of the highest risk chemical plants known to Homeland Security officials are in 10 states, including Illinois. But according to congressional investigators, the government is "not reducing our nation's risk to a terrorist attack on U.S. chemical infrastructure"

And "may not (even) know of all dangerous chemical facilities," may be "regulating the wrong facilities" and "failing the facilities considered high risk"

The report concludes that the government has a "massive regulatory burden" on its hands, marked by a "lack of transparency, trust, and interest in collaborating."

It isn't for lack of attention that chemical plants remain exposed. In 2006, Congress passed a terror prevention program that seemed to address many concerns. But the committee report cites inspection delays and industry loopholes that have resulted in little to show for the half-billion dollars spent on trying to protect Americans.