A chemical company stored hundreds of thousands of pounds of corrosive, toxic, and volatile hazardous substances in Houston, Texas, and did not update a single federally required safety plan for nearly thirteen years.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What Thirteen Years of Silence Actually Means

Univar Solutions operates a wholesale chemical distribution facility at 777 Brisbane Street in Houston, Texas. The company stores, repackages, and distributes industrial chemical raw materials for a living. Those materials include hydrochloric acid, a deeply corrosive substance that volatilizes in open air and burns lung tissue on contact; ammonium hydroxide, a toxic compound that causes severe respiratory damage when inhaled; and cyclohexylamine, a flammable and toxic chemical that can ignite and release poisonous vapors. These are not abstract industrial inputs. These are substances that, if released in an uncontrolled environment, can kill people within minutes of exposure.

Federal law does not ask much of companies like Univar Solutions. It does not ask them to eliminate all risk. It asks them to think about it, write it down, check their work every five years, and test the containers holding the dangerous material on a basic maintenance schedule. Univar Solutions failed to do even that. The company’s own internal operating standards manual specified that hydrochloric acid totes should be retested every 30 months. The EPA found that testing was overdue by 37 months, meaning Univar Solutions blew past its own self-imposed deadline by more than three years and still kept those containers in service, storing acid that can destroy human tissue and corrode structural materials in seconds.

The federally required Risk Management Plan, known as an RMP, exists for a specific purpose: to force companies to assess worst-case scenarios, document emergency response protocols, and give regulators a real-time picture of what dangerous chemicals are sitting where and in what quantities. Univar Solutions submitted its last RMP update in September 2010, and then went silent. For nearly thirteen years, from October 2010 to May 2023, the company updated nothing. During those thirteen years, the surrounding Houston community had no verified assurance that Univar Solutions had evaluated whether its operations posed a catastrophic hazard. The EPA’s inspection in August 2024 is the reason we know any of this. Without that inspection, the silence might have continued.

The 2020 and 2023 compliance audits are perhaps the most damning detail in the entire document. Univar Solutions conducted these audits. The audits identified deficiencies, which means the company’s own internal process found problems and wrote them down. Then the company failed to document appropriate responses to those findings, and failed to document that the deficiencies had ever been corrected. This is negligence layered on top of negligence. The company held a mirror up to its own failures twice and then looked away both times, letting identified problems sit unresolved while hazardous chemicals continued to sit in containers of uncertain integrity, steps away from the residential and industrial neighborhoods of Southeast Houston.

Legal Receipts: The Documents Don’t Lie

Verbatim From the Federal Record

On the General Duty Clause Violation

“Respondent failed to take steps to design and maintain a safe facility taking necessary steps to prevent releases. Respondent stores drums and totes of hydrochloric acid and although Respondent’s operating standards manual states the totes should be retested every 30 months; testing was overdue by 37 months.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Section E, Paragraph 63

On the 13-Year RMP Gap

“Respondent failed to review and submit an updated RMP at least once every five years from the date of its most recent update in September 2010. Respondent did not resubmit its RMP from October 2010 to May 2023.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Section E, Paragraph 60

On Audit Findings Left Unresolved — Twice

“Respondent failed to determine and document an appropriate response to each of the findings of the compliance audit, and document which deficiencies had been corrected in their October 2020 and June 2023 compliance audit.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Section E, Paragraph 57

On Hazard Review Failures for Multiple Chemicals

“Respondent failed to document results of the 2023 hazard review for hydrochloric acid, cyclohexylamine, and 2021 hazard review for ammonium hydroxide, and to ensure the problems identified were resolved in a timely manner.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Section E, Paragraph 48

On the Nature of the Chemicals Stored

“Hydrochloric acid (36%) is an extremely hazardous substance within the meaning of Section 112(r)(1) of the Act, 42 U.S.C. 7412(r)(1), due to its toxic and corrosive characteristics and propensity to volatilize in ambient air.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Section D, Paragraph 36

Societal Impact: Who Actually Pays the Price

Public Health: A Neighborhood as a Risk Calculator

The facility sits at 777 Brisbane Street in Houston, Texas, inside one of the most industrially dense and economically vulnerable metropolitan areas in the country. The specific chemicals stored at Univar Solutions’ facility are not theoretical hazards. The EPA’s own statutory language, drawn from the Clean Air Act, defines these substances as things that “in the case of an accidental release, are known to cause or may reasonably be anticipated to cause death, injury, or serious adverse effects to human health or the environment.” That is not advocacy language. That is the legal standard written into federal law.

Hydrochloric acid, when released into ambient air, volatilizes immediately, meaning it transforms into a toxic airborne plume that can travel across city blocks. The EPA’s document notes its “propensity to volatilize in ambient air” as a key reason for its classification as an extremely hazardous substance. Ammonium hydroxide and cyclohexylamine carry their own acute toxic risks. Each substance is stored at the Houston facility in quantities exceeding federal threshold levels, quantities that trigger mandatory emergency response planning precisely because a single uncontrolled release could require mass evacuation and overwhelm local emergency services.

The containers holding hydrochloric acid at this facility were overdue for integrity testing by 37 months when federal inspectors arrived in August 2024. Container integrity testing exists for one reason: to verify that the vessel holding the chemical has not degraded to a point where it might fail. Skipping that test for over three years beyond schedule is a direct, documented increase in the probability of a toxic release event. The people who would breathe that release are the workers inside the facility and the residents and workers in the surrounding neighborhoods of Southeast Houston, many of whom had no idea this risk existed next door.

Economic Inequality: The Fine Confirms the Hierarchy

The EPA assessed a civil penalty of $298,872.22 ($298,872.22 — roughly equal to what six average American workers earn in an entire year combined). The statutory maximum penalty available to the EPA for violations like these is up to $59,114 per day of violation, up to a total ceiling of $472,901 per individual violation. Univar Solutions faced multiple separate violations spanning years. The final penalty represents a negotiated settlement that, in the EPA’s own words, considered “the size of the business, the economic impact of the penalty on the business, Respondent’s full compliance history and good faith efforts to comply.” In plain English: the company’s ability to pay influenced how much it was charged.

Univar Solutions USA LLC is a subsidiary of a global chemical distribution giant. The penalty amount does not meaningfully sting a corporation operating at this scale. A company that generates substantial revenue from the handling and distribution of hazardous industrial chemicals paid the equivalent of a minor operational disruption to resolve thirteen years of documented safety failures. The communities surrounding its Houston facility received no compensation, no notification, and no remediation. The EPA’s fine goes to the federal government, not to the neighborhood.

The economic structure of enforcement like this is a form of subsidy. When the cost of compliance exceeds the cost of a fine paid after getting caught, rational corporate actors will sometimes choose noncompliance. The numbers here are illustrative: thirteen years of skipped safety reviews against a sub-$300,000 settlement. The penalty the EPA could have assessed, at maximum daily rates across multiple multi-year violations, would have been dramatically higher. What the community lost was any meaningful financial stake in the outcome of this enforcement action.

What Now: Where to Push

The People Who Signed the Deal

The settlement was signed on the company’s behalf by Ryan Barker, Senior EHSQ Manager at Univar Solutions. The company’s contact listed in the federal record is Tommy Cole at Univar Solutions USA LLC, 777 Brisbane Street, Houston, Texas 77061-5044. The EPA side was signed by the Director of the Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 6.

Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 6, Dallas — direct enforcer on this action
• EPA Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division — ongoing oversight body for CAA Section 112(r) compliance
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — the General Duty Clause expressly ties chemical facility safety obligations to OSHA standards
• Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) — state-level environmental regulator with concurrent authority over facilities in Texas
• City of Houston Office of Emergency Management — local body that would coordinate response to any toxic chemical release at this facility

What You Can Actually Do

Regulatory fines without community accountability are not justice. They are a cost of doing business. The only force that has ever changed corporate behavior at scale is organized, sustained, public pressure applied directly and locally. Show up. Demand records. Document everything.