Last year a fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded and killed 15 people while injuring at least 262 more, at least a fifth of which were serious brain injuries. The resulting court case is now a hot news item for the region and for workers’ comp- but we may not get to see much in the way of documents or related health and safety information.

A judge just approved confidentiality agreements on almost every kind of document for both sides as they prepare to go to trial. It’s not uncommon for some things to be kept confidential but things like public safety or health records are a little more important for the public to know about. Think about the recall on all those GM cars that people were driving around. These kinds of documents- related to safety tests, injuries, emergency plans, etc. might help prevent another explosion at a similar site but now they may never be available to the public.

Some who are against this say that taxpayer money is going to fund the courts where the trials are held so the information should be made public. There are so many players involved and it was of such public interest and affect that it would seem reasonable that the community would want to know what those documents contain.

And if another explosion occurred, the investigators would not be able to use documents from this case to go on and would have to look at fertilizer safety and other similar topics without any help from this case.

Lawsuits are coming from many individuals and the city of West against Adair, the owner of the plant, CF Industries and El Dorado Chemical Co. But those two chemical companies are also suing Adair and the city of West, saying that the firefighters were not properly trained and the facility at Adair did not store ammonium nitrate fertilizer properly.

There have been regulations proposed to prevent another explosion like this but certain Texan lawmakers are against more safety regulations. They worry that small businesses will no longer be able to compete if they have to implement more safety features. Since many who were killed or injured were the emergency responders to the scene, there has been talk of enacting new rules and trainings for volunteer responders as well. The lawmakers against more regulations think that if any more training or rules were placed on fire departments they would have tighter budgets and they would suffer. Currently the state pays for two days of training for fires at ammonium nitrate facilities (like the West plant), but after that the departments are on their own, and since many are volunteer-based they have limited budgets to begin with.

Even if new regulations are put into place it could still be years before companies have to comply.