Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez calls for funding chemical safety board

In the wake of a May 26 chemical tank failure at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging mill in Longview that killed 11 workers and injured eight others, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, has urged Congress to restore funding for an independent watchdog agency charged with investigating the root cause of major chemical incidents.

President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget would eliminate funding for the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazardous Investigations Board.

On June 3, the House Appropriations Committee adopted Perez’s amendment to fully fund the board’s $14 million budget in 2027.

Perez told committee members that the chemical safety board’s investigation into the Longview mill incident will go a long way toward helping that community recover.

“This is a close-knit community. This is a profound loss of life, and it’s going to have an impact on workers and families and first responders across Southwest Washington for generations to come,” Perez said. “The people of Longview deserve answers, and across the country, people need to know that we are making sure they have safe jobs. … The CSB plays a critical role in delivering these answers.”

Perez said that under Trump’s proposed budget cuts, the watchdog agency “would be completely unable to conduct the impartial and thorough investigation necessary to provide answers and peace of mind to the people of Longview and to victims of chemical disasters across the country.”

Perez said in a phone interview with The Columbian that she intends to continue her push to fund the independent chemical safety board.

“We’re seeing more of these kinds of incidents and an underinvestment in domestic manufacturing,” Perez said, noting a recent chemical tanker explosion in North Carolina that killed one worker and a cracked chemical tank in Southern California that led to a multiday evacuation order for more than 16,000 residents. “So we’ll continue to keep the pressure up to have the resources that are necessary.”

Perez also said she wants to see trade groups and workers have more say in post-chemical incident investigations.

“The trades need to have their perspective heard throughout the investigation and recommendation process,” she said. “If we want to be a country that makes things — things that are worth having — we need to support the people making them.”

‘Biggest deregulation in U.S. history’

In March 2025, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency would soon implement the “biggest deregulation action in U.S. history” to advance the executive orders Trump signed on the first day of his second term.

Among these actions is a proposal that would drastically alter the Risk Management Program rule then-President Joe Biden implemented in March 2024 to address industrial chemical safety.

Zeldin said in a March 2025 news release announcing the deregulation actions that the 2024 rule makes the nation’s chemical facilities “less safe,” but the chemical safety board strongly disagreed with that assessment.

In a May 6 letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, board chair Steve Owens and board member Sylvia Johnson said the Trump administration’s proposed revisions to the Risk Management Program rule “would be a significant step backwards after more than a decade of safety progress toward preventing catastrophic chemical accidents.”

In their letter, the chemical safety board members hailed the 2024 Biden-era rule for its worker, community and environmental protections. They said the Trump administration’s proposals would rescind a requirement that plant owners and operators evaluate natural hazards at facilities with complex chemical processes.

“These events often provide little warning, and predicting their severity is difficult,” they wrote. “To mitigate the effect of chemical incidents due to extreme weather on both facilities and nearby communities, rigorous advanced planning is necessary.”

The Trump administration has decried many regulations meant to make industries and communities more resilient in the face of climate change.

“We are driving a dagger straight to the heart of climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said in the news release announcing his agency’s deregulation actions.

Perez said last week she had not read the proposed revisions to the 2024 Risk Management Program rules but cautioned against a too-narrow focus on environmental protections.

“One of the kind of traps that can happen when talking about environmental regulation is too narrow of a focus on spreadsheet analysis without understanding the full picture of how mill infrastructure interacts with those chemicals,” Perez said. “My hope is that … the people making these rules have lived experience and skin in the game.”

Next steps

Perez said she will continue to work to get more funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments to ensure that the full $14 million funding for the chemical safety board remains in the Senate’s version of the bill.

She also is focused on training programs for future mill workers across Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.

“There used to be a lot more millwrights, more machinists, more instrumentation people,” Perez said. “Where is that skill set going to come from? I’m continuing to invest in trade schools and to make sure those are well-paid jobs.”

On the topic of industrial deregulation, Perez said she wants to “strike the right balance.”

“We can’t keep losing mills to red states,” she said. “We have attrition from blue states to red states to foreign countries.”

Asked how 3rd District residents might support the Longview community, Perez encouraged her constituents to support the products produced at the Nippon Dynawave mill.

“Use paper and cardboard,” she said. “Use paper bags, milk in paper cartons, and support our local, natural economy.”

Perez said she and her mother are both making quilts for Longview families impacted by the mill tragedy.

“They are in need of support,” she said. “There is a long road ahead for these families.”