Officials at DuPont Co.’s chemical plant in Belle, W.Va., said today that they had lifted the voluntary “safety stand-down” implemented at the plant after a series of incident in January.
DuPont had shut down most of the facility’s units and were going through them one by one for safety checks after the incidents, which included a phosgene leak that killed plant worker Danny Fish and a leak of toxic methyl chloride that went undetected for nearly a week.
Here’s the full statement issued today by DuPont spokesman Roger Hess:
We have lifted the voluntary safety stand-down and restarted most of the units that were not involved in any of the recent incidents. We are monitoring each unit closely to ensure continued safe operation. We will continue with the staged resumption of operations as we determine that we can do so safely.
We are continuing our thorough investigation of the three incidents that occurred in January. In addition to the DuPont investigation, state and federal agencies, including the Chemical Safety Board, OSHA, WV DEP and the EPA, are conducting their own investigations. We are cooperating fully with these agencies, as well as with other federal, state and local officials. The investigators are inspecting equipment and reviewing operating procedures, among other safety-focused tasks.
As you may recall, in April 2009, DuPont and Lucite announced plans to shutdown the Sulfuric Acid Recovery (SAR) unit at Belle by March 31, 2010 as part of a settlement agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice and the State of West Virginia.
In light of the current voluntary pause in production and the brief timeline to March 31, the SAR unit will not be restarted. We do not anticipate any job losses as a result of these actions. We expect to place employees assigned to the SAR unit into existing openings at the Belle plant.
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