Around the time that the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant was sneaking its chlorine out in the dead of night, Fred Webber, the ACC's president and CEO, went to the Senate to decry Corzine's bill. Webber -- who raised more than $100,000 for the presidential campaign of then-Gov. George W. Bush as a "pioneer" and who once headed the oft-derided U.S. League of Savings Institutions -- described the legislation as attempting "to remedy theoretical vulnerabilities before we've assessed what and where the actual vulnerabilities are." Webber's protestations notwithstanding, on July 25, 2002, the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works approved Corzine's bill on a unanimous bipartisan vote, 19-0. Next stop was the full Senate.

"I heard from some chemical industry guys right after that," says one Senate staffer with knowledge of the bill. "They were saying, 'Don't be so comfortable with that vote.'"

That summer the ACC significantly increased its lobbying and loosened its wallet, the ACC and its member companies giving out $1.3 million in campaign contributions. Other groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation -- which loathes the EPA, which was to have been given authority over the bill's security measures -- joined in.

"Many people heard from the industry that it was going to be too expensive, or they didn't want to accept these expenses," Corzine says. "That's kind of the unsaid thing in all this."

In September, seven of the nine Republican senators who voted for it circulated a letter to their colleagues disowning the bill they'd passed in the Environment Committee. Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, George Voinovich of Ohio, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Peter Domenici of New Mexico, and Kit Bond of Missouri said that the Corzine bill "misses the mark." They wanted to improve it, they wrote, because "we believe that Congress MUST work together to craft an effective solution to improving the security of our nation's chemical infrastructure." A study on the shanking of the Corzine bill by Common Cause reported that six of the senators plus two others who wrote letters opposing the bill -- Sens. George Allen, R-Va., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala. -- have received more than $850,000 from the ACC and its member companies.

Two Senate Republicans on the Environment Committee, Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., refused to rescind their support for the Corzine bill. Neither returned calls for comment.

Prior to the July vote, some Republicans pushed for modifications the chemical industry favored. They wanted to exempt facilities that complied with the ACC's voluntary guidelines, exclude any role for the EPA, and remove any requirement to pursue what environmentalists call "inherent safety" -- meaning safer alternative chemicals, like the sodium hypochlorite bleach now used at the Blue Plains plant. But in their letter, the seven senators questioned why the EPA would need additional staff to review the vulnerability assessments and response plans, for instance. "I'm not sure that any of those items were ever brought up in committee or in our discussions," the Senate staffer says. "It's sort of an odd letter in that respect. It was never said to us by the EPA -- or anyone else -- that this would be a problem. I mean, the EPA is a huge agency."

The EPA, meanwhile, had its own issues. Sources close to the bill thought that Administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- a former governor of New Jersey more than a little familiar with chemical plant issues and hazards -- was generally supportive of their efforts. An internal EPA draft "proposal for chemical security legislation" from May 16, 2002, obtained by Salon, bears numerous similarities to the Corzine bill. But something changed, and on June 11, documents were prepared for Whitman in case she needed to answer questions as to why EPA had "decided that it will not pursue legislation." On Oct. 3, Whitman and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge wrote to the Washington Post that "voluntary efforts alone are not sufficient to provide the level of assurance Americans deserve." But a story in Chemical and Engineering News four days later reported that "Whitman stated recently that the EPA has opted for a voluntary approach for chemical plants to combat terrorist threats."

"The administration never took a position on the Corzine bill," insists Bob Bostock, assistant EPA administrator for homeland security. "We need legislation to require certain chemical facilities to assess and then address their vulnerabilities to a terrorist attack, and EPA is working with the Department of Homeland Security on coming up with a legislative proposal to send to the Hill."

But why has it taken so damn long? "It's a complicated issue," Bostock says.

But doesn't it seem odd that so much has been done in other areas to enhance security while nothing has been done in this one area with chemical plants? "That's not true," Bostock says, not exactly reassuringly: "There are lots of areas where there hasn't been any legislative action."

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