Hazardous Chemical Disasters Strike as Trump EPA Rolls Back Federal Safety Regulations

Interview with Martha Guzman Aceves, former Region 9 EPA administrator, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

June 3, 2026

On May 21, an overheating chemical tank holding 6,500 gallons of methyl methacrylate at an aerospace facility in Garden Grove, California, triggered mandatory evacuations affecting 50,000 residents across Orange County. The tank was later safely cracked and depressurized, ending the immediate threat, where no one was injured. But five days later, on May 26, another chemical disaster struck when a tank holding 600,000 gallons of a caustic chemical known as “white liquor” exploded at a paper mill in Longview, Washington. Eleven workers were killed at the site.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Martha Guzman Aceves, the former Region 9 administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Biden, which covers California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, three U.S. territories and 148 tribal nations.

She’s currently a volunteer expert with the Environmental Protection Network, made up of hundreds of former EPA staffers from all levels of the agency. Here she talks about the importance of protecting workers and communities from toxic emissions, spills and explosions and her concern that under the Trump administration, safety regulations and inspections are being rolled back.

MARTHA GUZMAN ACEVES: It’s something that many of us don’t often see in our daily world about the risk of many of the chemicals that we depend on as a society. Many of them, oil derivatives that are used in this case for plastics and the other case, the glue that’s used for—it looked like they were making some sort of paper products. So just used throughout all of our economic needs and a reminder of just the importance of having all regulations, not for not having a robust economy, but to having a safe workforce and safe communities. And these are unfortunately very difficult ways to remind ourselves of the importance of these rules. And it’s not about preventing economic activity, it’s about having the balance of having safe jobs and having safe communities and they do not have to be in conflict.

And one of the rules that is currently in debate but is not subject to the facility in Garden Grove—so I want to be clear about that, but there are these risk management plans and the rule-making that the Trump administration is essentially rolling those back. But this facility wasn’t subject to it. So even if we get back to the rules under the Biden administration, this facility still would not have been subject to it because even under us, we were limiting the coverage to … basically, there’s like categories of toxicity and flammability of different chemicals and these different constituents. And this particular one, the methocrylate MMA that this facility (had and) what led to the overheating of that chemical, it wasn’t covered.

I think we really need to approach all of these high risks, whether they’re tier three, tier four, tier two, tier one. I think the current regulations only deal with tier four, which are the most flammable. I think the facility in Washington was covered and it was due to a different chemical, not the one that actually caused the actual combustion there either.

But what we’re looking for with these risk management plans is for facilities across the board because different products are going to get developed and having the approach of whether or not it’s covered is not the approach. The approach should be we accept that these chemicals have a risk and we as an operator, as a company, are going to make sure that we’re doing everything, putting everything in place to manage that risk and to have protections in place that if one system fails, we have a backup.

And what happened in Garden Grove is there was some baseline there of a good system because they were actually tracking the heat of the tank, which alerted. But really had much of the response of U.S. EPA, California’s EPA, the local fire. It is the reason in large part that this facility didn’t end up in a worse situation.

Once again, government worked and it shouldn’t have been required to come in. This was preventable had there been better systems in place. Running drills, having inspections is incredibly, incredibly important. My understanding on the toxic Substance Control Act, those toxic substances, which have a range of different types of inspections, those have dropped 36 percent since last year, since the Trump administration came in. The world of a difference that an inspector coming in, inspectors coming in, it’s not just something they find. It’s that the operator is kind of just refreshing the need to look at all the systems. They’re going to find things more than an inspector would find things, but in preparation for an inspection, most of the time they’re scheduled, frankly. So it really isn’t about a gotcha. The practice of inspecting, the practice of having these plans and doing their own emergency drills is to just catch things that happen.

There was some analysis that found that 58 percent of the tracked enforcement activities were at the historically low levels.

For more information, visit Environmental Protection Network at environmentalprotectionnetwork.org.

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