EvilCorporations.com — Corporate Accountability Project — Sulfuric Acid Industry
⚗️
Eco Services Operations Corp. · EPA Region 6 · 2022–2025
Eco Services Let Toxic Chemical Hazards Slide at Two Plants for Years
A sulfuric acid manufacturer fined $195,000 by the EPA after inspectors found ignored safety warnings, incomplete emergency plans, and repeat failures to protect workers and nearby communities in Texas and Louisiana.
High Severity Violations
2 Facilities Penalized
7 Regulatory Violations
Repeat Findings Over 5 Years
TL;DR
Eco Services Operations Corp., a sulfuric acid manufacturer operating in Baytown, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was caught by EPA inspectors storing and handling some of the most dangerous industrial chemicals on earth, including hydrogen sulfide, anhydrous ammonia, and methyl mercaptan, while ignoring their own safety hazard warnings for years. At the Baton Rouge plant, the company failed to act on process safety findings originally identified in 2017, then downgraded the risk on paper without actually fixing anything. Workers went through chemical process changes without the required training or updated safety procedures. Emergency coordinators in the surrounding communities were never properly informed of the risks next door. These are not paperwork technicalities. They are the exact chain of failures that precedes industrial disasters.
Demand that chemical companies in your community maintain transparent, up-to-date emergency plans and that regulatory agencies have the funding to inspect them regularly.
$195K
Total EPA fines across both facilities
2
Chemical plants penalized (TX and LA)
7
Separate regulatory violations found
5 yrs
Gap between repeat safety warnings at Baton Rouge
21+
Hazardous chemicals on-site across both plants
2022
Year EPA conducted inspections at both plants
Why This Matters
Both facilities operate under EPA’s most stringent Program 3 chemical accident prevention requirements, meaning regulators have determined they pose significant risk of catastrophic accidental releases. The chemicals on-site include substances that can cause death, severe injury, or long-term environmental damage if accidentally released. These are not hypothetical risks. They are the reason these rules exist.
⚠️ The Violations: A Breakdown
Core Allegations
What Eco Services did (and failed to do)
▾
| 01 | At the Baytown, TX facility, one employee was seven months late completing required refresher training on hazardous chemical processes, violating federal safety regulations designed to ensure workers can respond to emergencies. | med |
| 02 | The Baytown facility’s emergency response plan failed to include documentation of proper first aid and medical treatment for accidental chemical exposure, leaving workers without clear guidance in an emergency. | high |
| 03 | At the Baton Rouge, LA facility, three hazard warnings first identified in a 2017 safety analysis were still unresolved in the 2022 analysis. The company logged them as “not feasible” and downgraded the risk rating on paper, with no corrective action taken. | high |
| 04 | Baton Rouge operating procedures directed workers to find safety information in a separate document, which then pointed them to safety data sheets, creating a multi-step scavenger hunt that made critical hazard information effectively inaccessible during operations. | high |
| 05 | Workers at the Baton Rouge plant handled and processed nitroethane, a chemical requiring formal safety documentation, without the required Management of Change procedure ever being created or documented beforehand. | high |
| 06 | Multiple employees at Baton Rouge received training on process changes only after those changes were already implemented, reversing the required sequence and leaving workers unprepared during the most dangerous window. | high |
| 07 | A safety procedure created through the Baton Rouge change management process was never published to the company’s SharePoint site, leaving operators without access to the updated protocols they needed. | med |
| 08 | Compliance audits at Baton Rouge in both 2018 and 2020 produced findings that remained unresolved and repeated in the next cycle, demonstrating a pattern of documenting problems without fixing them. | high |
| 09 | The Baton Rouge facility failed to document annual coordination with local emergency planning organizations in 2020, meaning first responders in the surrounding community may not have known what chemicals they were dealing with or what resources existed at the site. | high |
Public Health and Safety
The chemicals involved and the risks they carry
▾
| 01 | The Baytown plant stores six regulated hazardous substances above threshold quantities, including anhydrous ammonia, methyl mercaptan, and carbon disulfide, each capable of causing mass casualties in an accidental release. | high |
| 02 | The Baton Rouge plant stores more than 20 regulated hazardous substances above threshold quantities, including hydrogen sulfide, formaldehyde, and toluene diisocyanate, a chemical linked to occupational asthma and lung damage. | high |
| 03 | Both plants are subject to EPA’s Program 3 requirements, the highest-risk tier under the Clean Air Act’s chemical accident prevention rules, because regulators have determined their processes pose significant danger to surrounding communities. | high |
| 04 | The incomplete emergency response plan at Baytown meant workers exposed to toxic chemicals would not have had access to documented first aid or emergency medical treatment procedures when seconds count most. | high |
| 05 | By failing to coordinate with local emergency planners in 2020, Eco Services left Baton Rouge first responders potentially unaware of the quantities and hazards of chemicals stored at the facility, compromising community-wide emergency preparedness. | high |
Worker Safety Failures
How Eco Services left its own employees exposed
▾
| 01 | Workers operating hazardous chemical processes were sent to handle new procedures and chemicals without the training required by federal law, exposing them to risks they had not been prepared to manage. | high |
| 02 | Operating procedures at Baton Rouge failed to clearly state what to do if a worker was physically exposed to or inhaled a hazardous chemical, instead pointing them to a chain of documents that made immediate response guidance effectively unreachable. | high |
| 03 | At minimum one Baytown worker was operating a high-risk chemical process seven months past the date they should have completed their mandatory safety refresher, meaning their knowledge of current procedures was out of date. | med |
| 04 | Updated safety procedures created following process changes were not reliably published or distributed to operators, meaning workers could not access the most current instructions for hazardous tasks. | med |
Accountability Failures
Repeat violations, weak penalties, no individual consequences
▾
| 01 | The $195,000 total penalty represents a fraction of the maximum $472,901 per violation the EPA is authorized to impose under the Clean Air Act, meaning Eco Services paid far less than the law allows for conduct affecting community safety. | med |
| 02 | No individual executives, managers, or supervisors faced personal accountability. The penalty lands entirely on the corporate entity, leaving those who made decisions to ignore safety warnings untouched. | high |
| 03 | Eco Services neither admitted nor denied the specific factual allegations in both consent agreements, resolving serious chemical safety violations without any official acknowledgment of wrongdoing. | med |
| 04 | The gap between the 2022 EPA inspections and the 2025 resolution of the enforcement actions gave the company three years between discovery and formal consequence, during which safety improvements were not legally compelled. | med |
| 05 | The Baton Rouge penalty of $155,000 was assessed after considering the company’s compliance history and “good faith efforts to comply,” a framing that obscures the fact that safety hazards were identified and left unaddressed for five years. | med |
🕐 Timeline of Events
2017
Baton Rouge facility conducts an Oleum Logistics Process Hazard Analysis, identifying at least three safety recommendations that require follow-up action.
2018
Baton Rouge compliance audit identifies findings requiring corrective action. Deficiencies are not resolved before the next audit cycle.
2020
Second compliance audit at Baton Rouge again identifies unresolved findings from the 2018 audit, confirming a pattern of repeat violations. The facility also fails to document annual emergency coordination with local planners this year.
Apr 2022
EPA conducts a three-day inspection of the Baytown, TX facility (April 26-28), finding violations related to employee refresher training and emergency response documentation.
Aug 2022
EPA inspects the Baton Rouge, LA facility (August 30 to September 1), uncovering five separate regulatory violations including repeat hazard analysis failures, missing change management documentation, and inadequate operating procedures.
2022
The 2022 Baton Rouge Oleum Logistics Process Hazard Analysis repeats the same three findings from 2017. The company marks them as “not feasible” and downgrades the associated risk ratings without taking corrective action.
May 2024
EPA issues formal Notice letters to Eco Services for both facilities, officially notifying the company of the alleged violations.
Jun 2024
Representatives of Eco Services and EPA meet to discuss the Notice letters and alleged violations at both facilities.
2025
EPA Region 6 issues Consent Agreements and Final Orders for both facilities. Eco Services agrees to pay $40,000 for the Baytown violations and $155,000 for the Baton Rouge violations, totaling $195,000.
💬 Direct Quotes from the Federal Record
QUOTE 1
Ignored hazard warnings, risk downgraded on paper
Core Allegations
“The 2022 Oleum Logistics PHA had 3 repeat findings that were previously identified in the 2017 Oleum Logistics PHA. Recommendations #1-3 were deemed not feasible, and the tracking spreadsheet used indicated that the risk posed prior to undertaking these action items was downgraded to a lower risk, although no action was taken.”
💡 This is the definition of paper compliance: the company changed a number in a spreadsheet to make a hazard look less dangerous, while leaving the actual hazard completely unaddressed for five years.
QUOTE 2
Safety procedures buried in a document maze
Worker Safety Failures
“Each operating procedure stated, ‘safety and health considerations for this operating procedure can be found in ECO SHC 14,’ which in turn referenced safety data sheets, making it cumbersome for employees to reference all necessary information.”
💡 Workers handling toxic chemicals needed to follow a multi-document chain to find basic safety guidance. In an emergency, that kind of structure costs lives.
QUOTE 3
Chemical process change, no documentation created beforehand
Core Allegations
“Respondent should have created an MOC to generate a procedure for the handling and processing of nitroethane. The procedure was created and the actual processing of nitroethane was conducted by operators, however, an MOC was never created or otherwise properly documented beforehand.”
💡 Workers were already handling a chemical that required formal safety documentation before the safety documentation existed. The process went first; worker protection came second, if at all.
QUOTE 4
Training came after the dangerous work had already started
Worker Safety Failures
“There were several instances when training occurred after a process was implemented. Respondent was unable to provide documentation that its employees affected by the process received training for MOC-1.5-BTR-2021022-791.”
💡 Federal regulations require training before process changes, precisely because the period of transition is when accidents are most likely. Eco Services reversed that sequence, repeatedly.
QUOTE 5
Repeat audit failures confirmed pattern of ignoring findings
Accountability Failures
“Respondent was required to determine and document an appropriate response to each of the findings of the compliance audits, and document that deficiencies were corrected. However, there were repeat findings in both the 2018 and 2020 compliance audits.”
💡 The same problems showed up in two consecutive compliance audits at the same facility. This is not an oversight. It is a management choice to accept identified deficiencies rather than fix them.
QUOTE 6
Emergency coordinators left uninformed in 2020
Public Health and Safety
“No documentation was provided to indicate this coordination had been done in 2020.”
💡 Local emergency planning organizations, the people responsible for protecting the surrounding community in a chemical disaster, went without the annual coordination Eco Services was legally required to provide.
QUOTE 7
Baytown emergency plan missing medical response guidance
Worker Safety Failures
“Respondent failed to develop and implement an emergency response program that included proper documentation of first aid and emergency medical treatment, as necessary to treat accidental human exposure.”
💡 In a facility handling chemicals that can kill or permanently injure workers on contact, the company operated without documented first aid procedures for accidental exposure. This is a direct threat to human life.
💬 Commentary
How dangerous are the chemicals at these facilities?
▾
Both plants handle chemicals that regulators have identified as capable of causing death, serious injury, or irreversible environmental damage in an accidental release. The Baton Rouge site alone stores over 20 regulated substances above threshold quantities, including hydrogen sulfide (lethal at concentrations measured in parts per million), formaldehyde (a known carcinogen), anhydrous ammonia, and toluene diisocyanate. These are not incidental byproducts; they are core to the sulfuric acid manufacturing and regeneration process. That is precisely why the EPA’s Risk Management Program rules exist, and precisely why ignoring them is so serious.
What does it mean that the Baton Rouge plant ignored its own 2017 safety findings?
▾
Process Hazard Analysis teams exist specifically to find problems before they become disasters. When a PHA identifies a risk, federal rules require the company to address it or document a legitimate reason why a specific recommendation cannot be implemented. What Eco Services did at Baton Rouge was different: the same three hazards reappeared in the 2022 analysis unaddressed, and the company’s response was to mark them “not feasible” and then downgrade the risk rating in the tracking spreadsheet. The hazard itself was unchanged. Only the number in the spreadsheet changed. This is a textbook example of safety theater: the appearance of compliance without the substance.
Why is training workers before process changes, not after, so critical?
▾
In chemical manufacturing, the moment a process changes is precisely when workers are most at risk. Familiar routines are disrupted. New chemicals, equipment configurations, or procedures create unfamiliar hazards. The federal requirement that workers receive training before a change goes live exists because ignorance during that window has killed people in industrial settings repeatedly. At Baton Rouge, Eco Services implemented process changes and only trained workers afterward, meaning employees handled new procedures without the preparation they were legally guaranteed. The fact that this happened multiple times suggests it was a standard operating practice, not a one-time oversight.
Who in the surrounding communities is at risk?
▾
The Baytown facility sits at 3439 Park Street in Baytown, Texas, a city in the Houston Ship Channel industrial corridor with a significant working-class population of roughly 83,000 people. The Baton Rouge facility is located at 1301 Airline Highway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70807, a zip code with a predominantly Black and lower-income population that already bears disproportionate industrial pollution burdens. These are communities that cannot easily relocate away from industrial risk. The failure to coordinate with local emergency planners, to document first aid protocols, and to maintain current safety procedures is not an abstract regulatory matter. It is a failure to protect people who live and work next door to facilities that handle chemicals capable of causing mass casualties.
Is a $195,000 fine enough?
▾
The short answer is no. The EPA is authorized to impose up to $472,901 per violation per day of violation. Even at the lower end of that scale, the fines assessed here represent a small fraction of what the law allows. Eco Services is a large industrial chemical operator with facilities across the country. A $195,000 fine for seven violations at two high-risk facilities, including violations that persisted for five years, does not create a meaningful financial deterrent. When the cost of compliance is weighed against the cost of violations, fines at this level can functionally subsidize non-compliance. Real accountability requires penalties scaled to the size of the operator, mandatory remediation timelines with independent verification, and personal liability for the managers who oversee these decisions.
What does “neither admits nor denies” mean in practice?
▾
When a company “neither admits nor denies” allegations in a consent agreement, it pays the penalty and agrees to comply, but the settlement cannot be used as an admission of wrongdoing in other proceedings. For corporate accountability purposes, this matters because it allows companies to resolve serious violations without creating a public record of confirmed wrongdoing. From the community’s perspective, the violations documented by EPA inspectors remain substantively uncontested. Eco Services did not provide evidence contradicting the findings. The company paid $195,000 rather than challenge them. That is the practical reality, whatever the legal language says.
What can I do to prevent this from happening again?
▾
Start by knowing your right to access information. Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), you can request from your Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) the list of hazardous chemicals stored at facilities in your community and the facility’s emergency response coordination status. Contact your LEPC directly. You can also look up EPA enforcement actions and Risk Management Plans at EPA’s RMP search database at rmp.epa.gov. Support organizations like Earthjustice, the Sierra Club’s environmental justice programs, or local environmental advocacy groups in Louisiana and Texas that monitor industrial pollution. Demand that your elected representatives fund EPA enforcement fully, because inspections like the ones that caught these violations only happen when agencies have the staff and resources to conduct them. And if you live near a chemical facility, know the emergency alert system in your area and participate in community emergency planning meetings, because the companies storing these chemicals are legally required to include you.
How does this connect to broader patterns of industrial harm?
▾
What happened at Eco Services is not unusual. It is representative of how industrial chemical safety compliance often works in practice: companies fulfill the minimum documentation requirements, audits identify gaps, and those gaps are managed administratively rather than structurally addressed. The communities most exposed to these risks are disproportionately low-income and communities of color, a pattern well-documented along the Louisiana industrial corridor known as “Cancer Alley.” The Baton Rouge facility’s location in zip code 70807 is not incidental. Environmental justice research consistently shows that communities with less political power bear a greater share of industrial risk while receiving less regulatory protection. This is the system working as it was built to work, not as an exception.
Eco Services can be reached by calling (281) 691-6501
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