Massive explosion in Waco area Fertilizer plant

[CountDeMoney]

The differences between this thread and others I've come across where the people actually know what they're talking about are pretty interesting.

That we know what we're talking about when we can all agree that Texas can be pretty fucking stupid sometimes?  That's no great achievement. 

[sbr]

At least we can be sure they won't go crawling to the Feds to deal with the mess the under-insured and under-regulated plant made, right?

  Gee I am stunned.

[Neil]

He's a United States Senator.  Of course he has no honour or principles.

[MadBurgerMaker]

That we know what we're talking about when we can all agree that Texas can be pretty fucking stupid sometimes?  That's no great achievement. 

No, that you don't know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to the regulatory bodies that deal with these places.  The regulations in Texas are similar or better than most other states, it seems.

It's also interesting how this and animals fucking are the topics Aggies seem to be most able to handle really well.  One of the threads I'm talking about, one on SA, aside from the standard LOLZ TEXAS moron posts like yours, has an Aggie in it who, when faced with football stuff, turns into a frothing retard, but also happens to be an environmental engineer working in the state who is quite familiar with the state regulatory body and is actually providing some good information about how the shit works.  He still probably has a grode jar in his closet though.

E:  He also noted that there are apparently a lot of federal and state level inspectors who are dumb and suck terribly at their jobs.  This is not surprising.

[mongers]

That we know what we're talking about when we can all agree that Texas can be pretty fucking stupid sometimes?  That's no great achievement. 

No, that you don't know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to the regulatory bodies that deal with these places.  The regulations in Texas are similar or better than most other states, it seems.

It's also interesting how this and animals fucking are the topics Aggies seem to be most able to handle really well.  One of the threads I'm talking about, one on SA, aside from the standard LOLZ TEXAS moron posts like yours, has an Aggie in it who, when faced with football stuff, turns into a frothing retard, but also happens to be an environmental engineer working in the state who is quite familiar with the state regulatory body and is actually providing some good information about how the shit works.  He still probably has a grode jar in his closet though.

Yeah, Texans are probably a lot brighter than they come over, just lots is lost in translation.   

[CountDeMoney]

No, that you don't know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to the regulatory bodies that deal with these places.  The regulations in Texas are similar or better than most other states, it seems.

It's also interesting how this and animals fucking are the topics Aggies seem to be most able to handle really well.  One of the threads I'm talking about, one on SA, aside from the standard LOLZ TEXAS moron posts like yours, has an Aggie in it who, when faced with football stuff, turns into a frothing retard, but also happens to be an environmental engineer working in the state who is quite familiar with the state regulatory body and is actually providing some good information about how the shit works.  He still probably has a grode jar in his closet though.

Then I suppose all those tremendous mechanisms of governmental oversight and their rich history of Texan regulatory law are lucky that there's one less fertilizer factory to worry about.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Then I suppose all those tremendous mechanisms of governmental oversight and their rich history of Texan regulatory law are lucky that there's one less fertilizer factory to worry about.

  You're such an idiot.  Go check out the OTT thread here in a second.  I finally took a picture of the Jeep.

[CountDeMoney]

Oh gee, look.  Articles on lax state regulatory control concerns in Texas, from those flaming liberal monsters at Reuters ("Who's that?") and Christian Science Monitor.

(Reuters) - The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded two weeks ago, killing 14 people and injuring about 200, was a repeat target of theft by intruders who tampered with tanks and caused the release of toxic chemicals, police records reviewed by Reuters show.

Police responded to at least 11 reports of burglaries and five separate ammonia leaks at West Fertilizer Co over the past 12 years, according to 911 dispatch logs and criminal offense reports Reuters obtained from the McLennan County Sheriff's office in Waco, Texas through an Open Records Request.

Some of the leaks, including one reported in October 2012, were linked to theft or interference with tank valves.

According to one 2002 crime report, a plant manager told police that intruders were stealing four to five gallons of anhydrous ammonia every three days. The liquid gas can be used to cook methamphetamine, the addictive and illicit stimulant.

In rural areas across the United States, the thriving meth trade has turned storage facilities like West Fertilizer Co and even unattended tanks in farm fields into frequent targets of theft, according to several government and fertilizer industry reports issued over the past 13 years.

The cause of the April 17 blast at the plant in the town of West is still being probed, and investigators have offered no evidence that security breaches contributed to the deadly incident. There also is no indication that the explosion had anything to do with the theft of materials for drug making. Anhydrous ammonia has been ruled out as a cause because the four storage tanks remained intact after the blast, said Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the Texas Fire Marshal's Office.

MANY LEADS

Investigators are pursuing about 100 leads, including a call to an arson hotline and a tip that there had been a fire on the property earlier on the day of the explosion, according to Moreno. Authorities have not said whether either tip was credible. About 80 investigators from various state and federal agencies are contributing to the probe. They hope to determine by May 10 what caused the explosion, Texas Fire Marshal Chris Connealy said at a state legislative hearing on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), one of several state and federal agencies that monitor security at chemical plants, declined to answer questions about the breaches of security at West Fertilizer Co. State investigators also declined to comment.

Thefts of anhydrous ammonia are common in McLennan County, where burglars siphon fertilizer from trailer tanks into five-gallon propane containers, said McLennan County Chief Deputy Sheriff Matt Cawthon, who took up the position in January.

After reviewing crime reports from the past 12 years and speaking to deputies who responded to some of the break-ins, Cawthon said security was clearly lax at the plant.

The perimeter was not fenced, and the facility had no burglar alarms or security guards, he said. "It was a hometown-like situation. Everybody trusts everybody."

Chemical safety experts said the recurrent security breaches at West Fertilizer are troubling because they suggest vulnerability to theft, leaks, fires or explosions. Apart from anhydrous ammonia, the company stored tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be used in bomb-making. No thefts of that substance were reported to police.

"Regardless of what triggered this specific event, the fact that there were lots of burglaries and that they were after ammonia clearly shows this plant was vulnerable to unwanted intruders or even a terrorist attack," said Sam Mannan, a chemical process safety expert at Texas A&M University, who has advised Dow Chemical and others on chemical security.

NEW LAW

Owners of West Fertilizer, responding through a representative, declined to answer questions about specific instances of theft or the level of security at the plant. The company has encouraged its employees to share "all they know" with investigators, said Daniel Keeney, a spokesman for the company.

The current owners of West Fertilizer are Donald Adair, 83, and Wanda Adair, 78, who bought it in 2004. Calls to a number listed for previous owner Emil Plasek were not returned.

In a 2006 permit application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the company reported it would protect ammonia tanks against theft or tampering and conduct daily equipment inspections. A TCEQ spokesman would not comment about security measures. He said the agency's responsibility is to regulate emissions from the plant, not to oversee security.

Documents from the Texas Department of State Health Services show the West plant was storing 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia in 2012. Ammonium nitrate was among the ingredients in the bomb used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people.

After that bombing, Congress passed a law requiring facilities that store large amounts of the chemical to report to the DHS and work with the agency to ensure proper security measures are in place to keep it out of criminal hands and protect against such attacks.

West Fertilizer did not report to DHS, despite storing hundreds of times more ammonium nitrate than the amount that would require it do so. Companies are required to report if they store at least 2,000 pounds of fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate, or 400 pounds of the substance when it's combined with combustible material.

A 2005 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study identified hundreds of cases in 16 states where anhydrous ammonia was stolen for use in meth production. Some illegal labs mix anhydrous ammonia with ephedrine or pseudoephedrine and sodium or lithium to make methamphetamine, the U.S. Department of Justice reported in 2001.

In dozens of instances, the CDC said, the thefts by meth makers siphoning ammonia from tanks caused injuries or forced evacuations because gas was released into the environment. However, cases of ammonia theft have become less frequent since 2006, when new laws restricted the sale of pseudoephedrine, which is found in some common cold drug remedies, according to The Fertilizer Institute, an industry association.

Police records show West Fertilizer began complaining of repeated thefts from the facility in June 2001, when burglars stole 150 pounds of anhydrous ammonia from storage tanks three nights in a row. Nearly a year later, a plant manager told police that thieves were siphoning four-to-five gallons of the liquefied fertilizer every three days.

Randy Plemons, who was chief deputy sheriff during the years when the thefts occurred, declined to discuss specifics of his agency's response to the repeated break-ins.

"Whenever we were notified of the burglaries and thefts we responded to those," he said. "I can't speak to every offense."

Company owners downplayed security risks in documents submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2006, saying thefts had dropped to zero over the preceding 20 months as meth makers now had found a substitute for anhydrous ammonia available at garden nurseries or major retailers.

VERY STRONG ODOR

Yet burglars and trespassers continued to target the facility. Following a series of break-ins in late 2008 and early 2009, including one where a trespasser visited pornographic websites on a secretary's computer, police told plant manager Ted Uptmore - who has worked at the company for decades -- to install a surveillance system. Later documents show the company complied. Uptmore did not respond to phone calls seeking comment for this story.

The last record of tampering was in October 2012, when a 911 caller reported an odor "so strong it can burn your eyes." The firm dispatched Cody Dragoo, an employee often sent after hours to shut leaking valves and look into break-ins. That night, he shut off the valve but reported it had been tampered with.

Two weeks ago, Dragoo, 50, was among those killed in the blast while responding to the fire.

Fertilizer plant blast: How lax security hints at regulatory gaps in Texas

The Texas fertilizer plant, targeted for years by thieves who wanted anhydrous ammonia to produce drugs, reportedly had no fence, alarms, or guards. Yet state regulators raised few security concerns before the deadly blast.

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer
Christian Science Monitor / May 5, 2013

During testimony before a Texas House committee last week, state regulators did not disclose knowing that thieves had for years exploited lackadaisical security to infiltrate the chemical storage areas of the West Fertilizer Co., which vanished in a massive explosion on April 17.

But plant security is just one of several areas of minimal or absent government oversight that have come to light since the explosion. Fifteen people died and dozens of structures were destroyed when a tank of ammonium nitrate blew up as firefighters tried to douse a fire at the plant.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has steadfastly asserted that the state's pro-business, anti-regulation attitude is not to blame for the explosion or its aftermath. But as a House committee began to ask questions this week of key regulators, no one from the state's major oversight agencies – which included the state chemist, as well as heads of the department of public safety, insurance commission, and environmental quality – mentioned the plant's long record of theft problems, an issue reported in a Reuters exclusive Friday.

The omission points to one of several potential regulatory gaps in how states and the federal government oversee volatile compounds stored near homes and schools, in particular whether laws are strong enough to allow inspectors to force industries like fertilizer plants to beef up costly security and fire suppression equipment on their premises.

"I guess [Texas state regulators] don't want people to know there's no security," says Glenn Smith, the Austin-based author of "The Politics of Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction."

"The problem is, there are 44 other facilities like this scattered around the state," he says, "and if you listen to the agencies with jurisdiction, none of those [sites] are protected to the degree they should be, and that shouldn't stand. This shouldn't even be a political issue."

With an investigation ongoing at the 15-acre explosion site, there's no information so far to suggest the fire that led to the explosion was related to a security breach.

Moreover, thieves in the past had targeted the plant's anhydrous ammonia tanks, which remained intact after the explosion. Anhydrous ammonia can be used as an ingredient in the illicit cooking of methamphetamines, and thieves across the country target both larger facilities and smaller farm storage tanks, according to government researchers.

Plant officials have said that on several occasions thieves caused air-borne releases from the plant after twisting off valves to get to the anhydrous ammonia.

What exploded in West was up to 542,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, the same fertilizer component used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1996. The West explosion registered a 2.1 on the Richter scale.

But McLennan County Chief Deputy Sheriff Matt Cawthon told Reuters that security at the plant was lax, meaning there were no perimeter fence, no burglar alarms, and no security guards. "Everybody trusts everybody," he explained.

Growing concerns about the requirements of physical security at such plants is magnified by the resistance among appointed state regulators to release information about where hazardous materials are stored, fearing such details could get into terrorist hands, critics say. State agencies have resisted local newspapers' demands for more information on such sites, citing an obscure "confidential information" law.

"The reality is there's plenty of chemical plants out in the open that terrorists can strike if they really want to do this," says Erik Loomis, a historian at the University of Rhode Island who has followed the aftermath in West.

Since the deadly blast, several potential breakdowns have emerged in how Texas oversaw the West plant, even though the plant had been inspected by a variety of federal and state agencies, as recently as February 2012.

• The plant had been cited by at least one federal agency for the failure to have a proper emergency plan, for which it paid a $5,000 fine after correcting the problems and reporting that a short venting of gas was a worst-case scenario at the plant.

• While industries are required by federal law passed after the Oklahoma City bombing to report the storage of major amounts of ammonium nitrate, the West plant never did.

• Texas regulations put most of the onus for safety and planning on local emergency planning committees and the local fire marshal, prompting Nim Kidd, head of the state Office of Emergency Management, to recommend in his testimony to the Texas House committee Wednesday that concerned citizens "go talk to your fire chief, your mayor, or your county judge. That's how planning works in Texas." One problem: Unlike most Texas counties, West doesn't have a fire marshal.

• Texas Insurance Commissioner Elizabeth Kitzman testified that the insurance policy for the West Fertilizer Co. bore "no relationship to the amount of risk that was involved," suggesting that insurance requirement reform could goose the marketplace to play a bigger role in forcing plants to update their safety and security protocols. The plant was insured for $1 million in liability and the explosion caused as much as $100 million in damage, Fox News Latino reported on Saturday.

Yet on Friday, the revelations of theft problems at the plant struck at another potential regulatory weakness: the fact that state regulators acknowledge that their primary role is to ensure fairness in the marketplace, not necessarily harp on problems like security or storage.

Asked by legislators on Wednesday whether the Office of the State Chemist would notify authorities if investigators saw problems with security, State Chemist Tim Herrman said, "There aren't any provisions in the law that really require a certain means of storing chemicals, but ... if we saw that there had been vandalism, theft, or that the perimeter had been breached, or that inventory records had discrepancies, it's very common for us to contact law enforcement officials." Mr. Herrman, however, did not explicitly tell legislators that his office had noticed anything amiss with the West plant's security.

The security problems, it turns out, had appeared in other regulatory paperwork with the state. In 2006 the plant's owners reported to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that problems with thefts had ended, though more thefts were reported as late as October 2012, according to Reuters. The company has claimed it installed security cameras on the property.

Since the explosion, critics around the country have lambasted the state of Texas for its perceived lax regulation. The issue has played especially large in California, a perennial rival of Texas for economic development, where regulations are more onerous for businesses.

Governor Perry lashed out this week at an editorial cartoonist from California who juxtaposed Perry's assertion that Texas' low regulatory requirements have helped the Texas economy "explode" with an image of a massive explosion in West, embellished with the word "Boom."

The cartoon was published after Perry denied that the state regulatory system was to blame for what happened in West. But lawmakers are clearly facing pressure to get to the bottom of the state's role in what happened.

"We're inundated with the whys and whos, and we're trying to clarify what role the state has at each individual level," said state Rep. Joe Pickett, an El Paso Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee. "We're trying to unravel how it happened, and how the state took the plant at its word that there was no chance of a fire or accident there."

US Sen. Barbara Boxer of California said this week that the Senate will also hold hearings on the West disaster, commenting that, "It is critical that we find out how this happened ... [and] look at how the laws on the books are being enforced and whether there is a need to strengthen them."

The push to investigate and possibly tweak regulations in Texas after West, however, may be complicated by the fact that the chief victims, the residents of West, have largely sympathized with the plant owner. Many residents saw the plant as simply a part of the natural risk of living in rural areas, though Mr. Smith, the Austin author, argues that, "I don't think there's any attitude in West that, 'Oh, we're willing to pay this price for the state not regulating fertilizer plants;' I don't think it can go that far."

In the case of West, what University of Rhode Island's Professor Loomis calls a natural American tendency to sympathize with or even be intimidated by industry appeared in a 2002 complaint against the fertilizer plant, in which a concerned resident wrote that, "Particles are falling like snow around town. People are afraid to complain."

[CountDeMoney]

The sad thing is, if that fertilizer plant was on the waterfront, it would've been up to its ass in DHS mandated and Coast Guard enforced CFATS and TWIC regulatory demands.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Looks like DHS should have been working on that.  That's not a state agency, in case you've never heard of them.

In a 2006 permit application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the company reported it would protect ammonia tanks against theft or tampering and conduct daily equipment inspections. A TCEQ spokesman would not comment about security measures. He said the agency's responsibility is to regulate emissions from the plant, not to oversee security.

Documents from the Texas Department of State Health Services show the West plant was storing 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia in 2012. Ammonium nitrate was among the ingredients in the bomb used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people.

After that bombing, Congress passed a law requiring facilities that store large amounts of the chemical to report to the DHS and work with the agency to ensure proper security measures are in place to keep it out of criminal hands and protect against such attacks.

West Fertilizer did not report to DHS, despite storing hundreds of times more ammonium nitrate than the amount that would require it do so. Companies are required to report if they store at least 2,000 pounds of fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate, or 400 pounds of the substance when it's combined with combustible material.

They also, according to the article, told the state agency that the thefts had dropped to nothing.  So they didn't notify DHS, and they told the state agency that all was good as far as shit disappearing for meth making.

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah, go ahead and blame the lack of self-reporting on the agency it's supposed to be reported to, Longhorntard.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Yeah, go ahead and blame the lack of self-reporting on the agency it's supposed to be reported to, Longhorntard.

I don't know what you want a state environmental agency to do when it's something between the feds and the company.  Tell them they have to report to DHS?  The feds already did that.

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah, go ahead and blame the lack of self-reporting on the agency it's supposed to be reported to, Longhorntard.

I don't know what you want a state environmental agency to do when it's something between the feds and the company.  Tell them they have to report to DHS?  The feds already did that.

There is more than one state agency in Texas other than EQ involved in safety matters, correct?  Last I read, 8 agencies were involved in last weeks' testimony.

epartment of Public Safety
Texas Division of Emergency Management
Emergency Management Council
Office of the Texas State Chemist
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
Texas Department of Agriculture
Department of State Health Services
Texas State Fire Marshal's Office

Eight state agencies were invited to testify at the House Homeland Security & Public Safety Committee hearing, chaired by state Rep. Joseph Pickett, D-El Paso. As the investigation into the cause of the fire and subsequent explosion is still ongoing, many of the lawmakers questions dealt with fertilizer plant regulation in the state generally, and not whether or not the West disaster could have been avoided.

"The intent of this hearing is to try to shed light on where these facilities are located," Pickett said at the outset. "This will be a learning process for the community at large. Ultimately, this is probably going to be a national issue."

What became clear at today's hearing is that among the several state agencies with oversight of fertilizer plants like West, there is no single agency tasked with safety inspections and coordinating with local governments on emergency response.

The suspected culprit in the explosion is ammonium nitrate, which was stored in large quantities at the West Fertilizer Co. There are 1,105 firms in Texas that store ammonium nitrate, according to testimony today from the Department of Public Safety (DPS), with about 42 fertilizer mixing plants like the one in West.

But since ammonium nitrate isn't considered an "extremely hazardous" chemical by state and federal agencies, plants only have to report to authorities if they have more than 10,000 pounds of it on hand. The state could have stricter reporting requirements if it chose to, according to David Lakey, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). The maximum amount the West Fertilizer plant reported to the state was 270 tons.

And the burden for communities to know where these chemicals are stored, and how to respond to emergencies at facilities that store them, falls on local officials. There are over 14,000 facilities in Texas that self-report having "extremely hazardous substances" on site, according to Lakey of DSHS. Representatives from that agency testified that chlorine and battery acid are the most common hazardous substances near communities, but that they only oversee reporting, not safety.

"How do they [the public] know if there's a facility like this in their area?" asked state Rep. Ron Simmons, R-Carrollton.

"There's no overarching plan to educate people of what's in their areas," replied Steve McCraw, Director of the Department of Public Safety (DPS). Facilities like West are required to share their reports on safety and hazardous chemicals with local officials and emergency planning committees, but that may not always be the case, and those local committees may not always put plans in place to respond to incidents at plants like the one in West.

"Have we done anything to survey the 41 [fertilizer plants] because of what happened in West?" Pickett asked.

W. Nim Kidd, Assistant Director of DPS and Chief of Emergency Management, answered that his agency doesn't do surveys, but local fire chiefs have the authority to go in and inspect those facilities.

"Could you suggest that to them?" Pickett asked, wondering if the agency could do more to encourage local fire officials to conduct inspections and prepare emergency response plans.

"We have done that through all the planning exercises and training that we provide," Kidd said.

Other agencies testified similarly that they weren't in charge of safety or emergency response oversight for a plant like West. "Our job is to facilitate commerce and provide market protection," Tim Herrman, the State Chemist, testified. His inspectors generally look at fertilizer blends and conduct inspections to make sure that they are secure from theft and vandalism, not inspect for safety or improper storage of chemicals. And there are no state requirements for fire barriers or setbacks for facilities like West.

In some cases, a plant or facility will have an emergency response and evacuation plan because of their liability insurance, Eleanor Kitzman, Commissioner of the Texas Department of Insurance, testified. But fertilizer plants aren't required to have insurance, and in the case of the West plant, their liability insurance "had absolutely no relationship to the amount of risk involved here," Kitzman said.

"We don't have a role in how that insurance is administered, or what types of requirements or safety inspections may be involved," Kitzman testified.

Likewise, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) only has limited regulation over plants like West, permitting for dust and air quality from anhydrous ammonia, but not oversight over its ammonium nitrate. TCEQ Commissioner Bryan Shaw told lawmakers that inspections for plants like West are "uncommon" and "complaint-driven."

While the Texas House hearing was short on answers, on Tuesday U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced that the committee would also be leading an investigation into the West disaster and chemical safety laws.

"I cannot rest until we get to the bottom of what caused the disaster in West, Texas and the tragic loss of life," Boxer said in a statement. "It is critical that we find out how this happened." Boxer also released copies of her questions for two federal agencies that had oversight of the plant, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Chemical Safety Board (CSB).

The State Fire Marshal's office said at today's hearing that they expect their investigation into the origin and cause of the fire to be complete by May 10.

No state requirements beyond reporting that may or may not occur.
No state requirements for emergency planning.
No state requirements for site surveys.
No state requirements for barriers or setbacks in residential areas.
No state requirements to carry insurance.
Local responsibility for safety planning goes to the local fire marshal, in a town with no fire marshal.  That's some brilliant small government magic, Texas style.

I think there's a little more at play here than simply blaming DHS for not being reported to, Mimsy. 

Besides, I really don't know why you're being so defensive about this anyway, other than basic home state shitkickery.  It's not like we're discussing Mack Brown NCAA violations or anything.

[MadBurgerMaker]

You're the one posting articles about security, which is what they're supposed to work with DHS for.  Your article up there also notes that the place had been inspected by various state and federal agencies as recently as last year. 

It has also been pointed out, although possibly not here because lol, as far as insurance is concerned, that the lack of minimum insurance levels is certainly not something limited to a single state. 

Also, the Fire Chief/Marshal of West is apparently some guy named George Nors, Sr.  I don't know where the idea came from that they had a fire department without a dude in charge. 

[sbr]

That we know what we're talking about when we can all agree that Texas can be pretty fucking stupid sometimes?  That's no great achievement. 

No, that you don't know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to the regulatory bodies that deal with these places.  The regulations in Texas are similar or better than most other states, it seems.

It's also interesting how this and animals fucking are the topics Aggies seem to be most able to handle really well.  One of the threads I'm talking about, one on SA, aside from the standard LOLZ TEXAS moron posts like yours, has an Aggie in it who, when faced with football stuff, turns into a frothing retard, but also happens to be an environmental engineer working in the state who is quite familiar with the state regulatory body and is actually providing some good information about how the shit works.  He still probably has a grode jar in his closet though.

E:  He also noted that there are apparently a lot of federal and state level inspectors who are dumb and suck terribly at their jobs.  This is not surprising.

That's lovely.  I attended a luncheon at the governor's mansion and overheard a conversation about just shooting at any explosion that got uppity in the state.  So they seemed fine with it.