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In photos taken from above, the collapsed tank at the Nippon Dynawave paper mill in Longview, Washington, looks like a crushed tin can. Capable of holding 900,000 gallons of chemicals, the massive tank was filled to 90 percent capacity when it ruptured on the morning of May 26.
Norman Barlow’s family says he worked as an electrical engineer at the Nippon mill for only three months before the collapsing tank released a wave of toxic fumes and liquid, killing Barlow and 10 other workers. The 58-year-old from Vancouver was already “trying to leave” the job due to “safety concerns” and “how the place was ran,” according to his daughter, Brooke Iverson.
“My dad was really just trying to get out of there as soon as he could,” Iverson said in an interview with KGW. Iverson said the families of the 11 victims deserve answers about how the nation’s latest chemical disaster could have been prevented.
However, the Trump administration has asked Congress to eliminate the only independent federal agency that investigates major chemical accidents while systemically rolling back environmental regulations, including rules designed to protect communities from toxic spills. New suggests a bipartisan majority of voters are increasingly worried about toxic chemicals and want stronger federal protection from air and water pollution, which can increase health care costs.
“Nippon’s time is coming,” Iverson said. “They’re on a clock now — a clock of answers, a clock of what happens now.”
The paper mill is a major employer in Longview, a community now in mourning. The tank contained a toxic byproduct known as “white liquor” that burns human skin on contact. The chemical killed more than 2,000 fish after spilling into local waterways and the Columbia River, but officials have drinking water is safe. It took days for crews to clean up the toxic spill and remove the victims. State and federal investigations are ongoing, leaving neighbors and families to wait for answers.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board opened an investigation and dispatched a team to Longview on May 27, one day after the incident. Congress created the independent federal watchdog in 1990 to hold polluters accountable and recommend safety improvements after major industrial accidents, which are alarmingly common in the United States.
In addition to investigating seven other industrial accidents, the Chemical Safety Board is currently investigating a toxic gas leak on April 22 that killed two workers and injured 19 at a troubled refinery in West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley, an area with a long history of industrial fires, explosions, and chemical spills. The board is also examining an explosion at a Pennsylvania steel plant that killed two workers and injured more than a dozen in August 2025.
However, President Donald Trump’s proposed 2027 federal budget would eliminate the Chemical Safety Board as part of an apparent effort to rid the federal government of civil servants who might resist the president’s ever-shifting political whims. Echoing lobbyists for polluting industries, the White House claims the safety board “duplicates” work done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), producing “unprompted studies” and proposing “regulations” it has no authority to enforce.
Unlike the EPA, the Chemical Safety Board operates independently from the president’s cabinet and political appointees. With an annual budget of about $14 million, the board cannot enforce regulations, but its investigations into fires, spills, explosions, and other accidents result in recommendations for regulators and private companies to make chemical storage and processing safer for workers and surrounding communities.
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Congress rejected the White House’s original proposal to shut down the U.S. Chemical Safety Board by October 2025, but House Republicans are now pushing a budget bill that would cut the watchdog’s funding by 40 percent.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has also taken a sledgehammer to the EPA by firing staff, slashing budgets, and undermining independent scientists studying the effects of toxic pollution on public health. Under EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the agency is systematically weakening federal environmental protections, including rules finalized in 2024 that require industrial polluters to coordinate with local first responders and create risk-management plans for handling dangerous chemicals near residential areas. For example, the EPA is moving to scrap a rule that would have required industrial facilities to use safer (but potentially more expensive) chemicals and technology in some cases.
Ana Parras, executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, called the EPA’s proposed changes “a direct assault on safety and a political gift to polluters,” in a statement on February 19. “For fenceline communities and facility workers, this rollback is a declaration that our lives are deemed acceptable sacrifices,” Parras added.
A nationwide of 2,025 registered voters released on June 3 suggests Trump’s deregulatory agenda is not meeting the expectations of voters after the president promised to deliver the “cleanest air and water on Earth” during his 2024 campaign.
By an 8 to 1 margin, voters across the political spectrum said the EPA should prioritize protecting public health from toxic pollution over reducing regulations — even if it means higher costs. The cost of health care remains a top concern, and 81 percent said the rollback of EPA regulations is shifting the burden of pollution “onto families through medical bills and long-term health consequences.”
“They aren’t buying the idea that rolling back protections makes life more affordable … pollution prevention is part of protecting families from costs they cannot afford,” said John Ray, senior director at YouGov, which conducted the poll, in a call with reporters on June 3.
Based in Washington, Peter Murchie worked at the EPA for 25 years before becoming the senior director of policy at the Environmental Protection Network, which commissioned the new poll. Murchie said both the Chemical Safety Board and EPA play important roles in preventing and responding to chemical disasters, including the deadly “white liquor” spill in Longview.
“EPA has a very important role both in the prevention of accidents like this one and of chemical exposure to workers and the community, and also the response, and you have seen in the reporting that the EPA is on scene with the emergency response folks,” Murchie told reporters on the press call.
The new poll shows that 82 percent of Trump’s notoriously loyal supporters say the president should be tougher on polluters, and 42 percent view Trump’s handling of the EPA less favorably than his overall job performance. Support for strengthening the EPA among all voters has risen from 50 percent in 2024 to 64 percent when the poll was conducted in late April, a few weeks before the deadly spill in Longview. Yet Trump and Zeldin are moving in the exact opposite direction in order to reduce costs and maximize profits for private industry.
“There’s this belief that the left wants more regulations and the right wants less,” Ray said. “But for most people, there is broad-based concern about making sure the government is doing whatever it is supposed to be doing to keep water clean and air clean and food clean and so on.”
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