As Families Mourn Tank Rupture Deaths, Congresswoman Aims to Reverse Oversight Cuts

Capital Beat

Washington, DC (WorkersCompensation.com) – as families in Longview, Wash. grieve the loss of 11 employees in a chemical spill, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s has introduced an amendment would reverse President Donald Trump's proposed cuts to the federal agency responsible for investigating the spill’s cause.

On May 26, the white liquor tank imploded at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging paper mill. The incident is still under investigation, officials said. White liquor is a mix of caustic chemical compounds that help to break down the wood so pulp can be extracted in the manufacture of paper.

White liquor is primarily composed of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide. Because of its high pH, exposure can result in catastrophic chemical burns and severe respiratory or ocular irritation.

Officials were called to the mill at 7:20 a.m., just as workers were getting their assignments for the day. Fire officials said a tank holding 600,000 gallons of white liquor exploded.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, the federal agency that oversees and investigates workplace chemical spills, said it had opened an investigation after the tank ruptured. Ultimately the spill killed 11 workers and injured several more. The mill remains largely shut down as the site cleanup continues. Authorities have not provided any explanation for the cause of the rupture.

“The thing that’s really clear to me, from the conversations I’m having, is that families and workers deserve answers,” said Gluesenkamp Perez. “They need to know what happened here, and that in the future someone will be looking out for them, so they make it home safe every night. The CSB is an important part of that, and they need the resources to do their job properly.”

But funding for the CSB was cut in Trump’s 2027 budget, with the recommendation that the agency’s responsibilities shifted to OSHA and the EPA. According to the CSB’s records, it has completed three investigations and launched two more, not including the one at Nippon Dynawave. All but one of the five incidents resulted in deaths.

The move comes as the country has seen a number of chemical incidents.

In addition to the Nippon plant, other chemical incidents have occurred including one this  past month, when a body shop employee in Maryland Heights, Mo., was injured in a fire that officials think was started by cleaning chemicals.

Gluesenkamp Perez’s amendment would add more than $5 million to fully fund the CSB. The law maker said the House Appropriations Committee had adopted the amendment.

It’s not the first time the Trump administration has tried to eliminate the agency’s funding. A House version of the 2026 budget would have funded the CSB at $8.2 million, but the Senate later increased that amount to $14 million. The cuts, and the move to eliminate the agency, are part of “the Administration's plans to streamline functions across government."

Under the Gluesenkamp Perez amendment, the CSB budget would remain flat at $14 million for the upcoming budget.

Advocates said the agency provided more expertise than the agencies the Trump Administration wants its investigations to be absorbed by.

“Congress showed excellent judgement in saving the CSB from the White House’s efforts to kill it,’ David Michaels, a former administrator with OSHA, and an environmental and occupational health researcher at George Washington University, said. “CSB provides a tremendously important service to American industry, workers and the public. After explosions, fires or chemical releases, CSB investigates and tries to determine the root causes of what are often catastrophic events in order to prevent future ones from occurring.”

Michaels said the agency’s findings have led to major safety improvements across many industries and have likely prevented events that would have killed or injured large numbers of people.

Those protections are important for worker safety,  Gluesenkamp Perez said.

“If we want to be a country that makes things — things that are worth having — we need to support the people making them,” she said.

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