Plant Where Man Died Can Resume Operating

The Cassia County Commission on Monday voted to continue the special permit needed for resumption of operations at a chemical plant where an April explosion left one worker dead and seven hospitalized.

Commissioners allowed the former Rainbow Farm Products plant south of Burley to again produce the soil fumigant metam sodium even though they agreed that terms of the permit had been violated in connection with the blast.

Commissioner Paul Christensen also criticized plant president Don Dean for saying last week that he did not know whether workers had the required permit to be on top of the tank that blew up.

“I find that to be unacceptable,” Christensen said.

But they also agreed that the plant can be operated safely under certain conditions. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has already approved changes in safety equipment and the plant’s safety director has agreed to serve on the Local Emergency Planning Committee.

During the earlier hearing on the county permit, Dean said experts were still unsure why one of the elements in the chemical process ignited.

He said flammable carbon bisulfide was leaking out of a porthole that was not securely bolted to the tank where the chemical was being mixed with the other two components. It should have been routed to water scrubbers that create an inert gas before it is vented to the atmosphere, he said.

Since the explosion, the company has announced it was changing its name to Sundance Ag, reflecting its ownership by Robert V. Kerley’s Sundance Resources Inc. of Phoenix.

Kerley is also the principal stockholder in Minerec Mining Chemicals, which is currently locked in a legal battle with an Arizona Indian tribe over cleanup deadlines of a mine on the reservation where explosions in 1993 and 1994 sent some 75 people to the hospital for respiratory problems.