By Erwin Seba
HOUSTON (Reuters) – A district judge on Monday delayed opening arguments for a criminal trial accusing a U.S. arm of French chemicals company Arkema SA and its executives for their role in toxic fires following a 2017 hurricane, after prosecution lawyers failed to disclose certain evidence.
Arkema Inc, Chief Executive Richard Rowe and the former manager of the Crosby, Texas, plant, Leslie Comardelle, face criminal charges for recklessly releasing toxic emissions as organic peroxides burned during flooding from Hurricane Harvey.
State judge Belinda Hill found the prosecution improperly withheld evidence that might have benefited the defense. The judge issued a continuance for the defense and said she might issue further sanctions against the prosecution for the misconduct.
Pre-trial motions will now start on Wednesday and opening statements on Thursday.
Arkema and another executive, Michael Keough, Arkema’s former vice president of logistics, also face assault charges for failing to disclose the danger to emergency workers posed by pollutants released by the fires.
Many of those exposed to the fumes were emergency responders, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board found in a report on the incident issued in May 2018.
In late August and early September 2017, Harvey dropped five feet (1.5 meters) of rain on the plant in Crosby, 27 miles (43 km) east of Houston, cutting power needed to keep cool organic peroxides used in plastics production. The chemicals can ignite when not keep cool.
During Harvey, workers at the plant moved the peroxides to refrigerated trailers as a last resort to keep them from decomposing and catching fire. But, the peroxides decomposed, heated up and caught fire, forcing the evacuation of 200 people living within a 1-1/2-mile (2.4-km) radius of the plant.
Twenty-one people sought treatment for exposure to fumes from the blaze.
The evacuation ended after officials set fire to the storage trailers to burn all of the peroxides.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Richard Chang)
