By Mike Tony
For HDMedia
The Nitro industrial facility where a violent chemical reaction left two workers dead and resulted in at least 19 more people being transported from the site or seeking medical evaluation Wednesday has a lengthy history of chemical incidents, relaxed regulations and hundreds of pounds of emissions of the corrosive, toxic acid that officials say resulted in the deadly reaction.
What Kanawha County officials called a “violent chemical reaction” of the flammable, highly toxic gas hydrogen sulfide at Catalyst Refiners’ 1580 Nitro Ave. S. facility reported to Metro 911 just after 9:30 a.m. Wednesday followed a 2013 incident involving the same acid that left two workers injured, another chemical spill the following month, a 2018 federal workplace safety violation and years of air emissions of the acid: nitric acid, which is toxic after inhalation exposure.
Kanawha County Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman at a Wednesday news conference said that during decommissioning work, an explosion and leak occurred as nitric acid and another substance were being mixed in a pump area.
At the same news conference Wednesday, Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango said preliminary information indicated the site was in the process of shutting down its operations, with cleaning and decontamination activities underway in preparation for the closure of the site.
Sigman said seven emergency service workers were transported from the incident site within what he called a “warehouse-sized building” where silver is recovered from other chemical processes.
Officials had not identified those left dead or injured by the incident as of Thursday afternoon.
By 10 a.m., a shelter-in-place advisory was issued for those living and working within a 1-mile radius of the plant, which included West Virginia State University. W.Va. 25 was shut down between the university and its intersection with Goff Mountain Road. By 2:20 p.m., the shelter-in-place order was lifted, although W.Va. 25 in the vicinity of the plant remained closed until around 4:30 p.m., when the shelter-in-place was lifted for the last area affected by the order.
Plant management did not respond to a request for comment.
The facility is controlled by Ames Goldsmith Corp., a South Glens Falls, New York-headquartered advanced precious metals manufacturing company.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s office on Thursday announced air sampling would be conducted both at the facility and in surrounding areas, with existing monitoring stations being “closely watched for any unusual changes.”
DEP environmental enforcement teams have launched an investigation into the facility, Morrisey’s office said Thursday, adding that the review would examine the cause of the incident as well as facility compliance with state and federal regulations.
Morrisey, who has consistently fought to weaken environmental health protections as governor and former three-term attorney general, said his administration is “taking a thorough, coordinated approach to monitoring this situation and holding all responsible parties accountable.”
A DEP spokesperson said Thursday the DEP’s role has been to provide technical assistance, including the use of field gas monitors, to screen for hydrogen sulfide near the incident site, as well as the fence line and downwind areas. The spokesperson said the agency conducted the monitoring alongside Institute Volunteer Fire Department.
The independent, nonregulatory United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which investigates industrial chemical incidents but lacks enforcement power, on Thursday announced it was opening an investigation into the fatal chemical release.
“We are opening an investigation into this tragic incident to determine how it happened and identify ways to help prevent something like this from happening again,” CSB chairperson Steve Owens said in a statement.
DEP backed off on pollution source ruling after incidents
An August 2025 DEP compliance monitoring report for the facility noted that it was “in full swing, busy with one of their larger orders of the month,” with “the recent jobs they’ve received hav[ing] become larger.”
The report was authored by an inspector, Bronwyn Harrison, who recalled not detecting any objectional odors while reviewing the exhaust pipes for a scrubber, baghouses and filter locations at the facility.
“Photos weren’t allowed inside of the facility, but everything we viewed was in working order, operating as intended,” Harrison wrote.
In August 2013, two workers were injured and transported to a hospital after a nitric acid spill at the Catalyst Refiners site prompted employee evacuations.
A September 2013 DEP inspection report stated that an inspection light fell into a reactor containing approximately 100 gallons of nitric acid, causing about 75 gallons of the acid to bubble over a vessel top onto a concrete floor as large amounts of heat and hydrogen gas evolved. The employees suffered minor acid burns and the floor was damaged, according to the report.
The Aug. 24, 2013, spill prompted an unannounced DEP site visit four days later at which then-Catalyst Refiners catalyst operations president Scott Schmidt said the facility was doubled in size two or three years earlier because business was growing, with operations expanding to 24 hours per day, seven days per week, according to the report.
The DEP informed Schmidt a permit determination should be submitted to its Division of Air Quality for plant equipment expansion shown by Schmidt, per the report.
On Sept. 3, 2013, 10 days after the reported 75-gallon nitric acid spill, an employee improperly filled a 1,200-gallon mixing tank with 60% nitric acid first instead of water and then acid, before adding 50% hydrogen peroxide, causing an estimated 80 gallons out of 250 in the tank to boil over onto an elevated catwalk, according to the DEP report.
There were no injuries, and most of the spilled acid was caught in plastic containers below the catwalk, according to the report. Schmidt reported hiring “a PR consultant to help him in the future,” the DEP report stated.
The DEP initially determined in June 2014 that Catalyst Refiners’ facility met the definition of a “stationary source” of pollution, thus subjecting it to more stringent regulations, because the company discharged or had the potential to emit over 6 pounds per hour and 10 tons per year, or could discharge over 144 pounds per day of any regulated air pollutant.
According to DEP records, that regulated air pollutant was particulate matter, which has been shown to have adverse impacts on respiratory and cardiovascular health through fine particles piercing the lungs and bloodstream. The facility had the potential to emit 7.01 pounds per hour, 30.7 tons per year and 168.2 pounds per day of the pollutant, per DEP records, after installing new pieces of equipment that included eight fiberglass vats and four electric ovens.
But in September 2014, the DEP stated in a permit applicability determination letter to Schmidt that a permit under state legislative rule governing minor stationary sources wouldn’t be required.
The DEP indicated its determination was based on information received in July 2014 indicating an increase in emissions wouldn’t exceed 2 pounds per hour or 5 tons per year of hazardous air pollutants, six pounds per hour or 10 tons per year of any regulated pollutant, or “trigger a substantive requirement of any state or federal air quality regulation.”
In 2000, the DEP had determined that a permit wouldn’t be needed under the same state legislative rule for then-proposed construction of an unloading system for 60% nitric acid, including a 6,000-gallon storage tank for storage of liquid and vapor generation of nitric acid, determining the system wouldn’t exceed hazardous air pollutant limits.
The DEP’s initial facility construction permit application was filed in 1998.
Emission sources listed in the DEP’s August 2025 compliance monitoring report included nitric acid mist from a nitric acid tank and a nitric acid “day tank” that provide that acid to the process, oxide reactors, fiberglass vats and filter carts that produce non-regulated fumes, and a scrubber, vacuum screener and dust collector that produce particulate matter.
More than 22 tons of nitric acid reported at facility on average
Catalyst Refiners’ facility released 1,310 pounds of nitric acid from 2014 through 2024, according to EPA data.
Nitric acid has a choking odor, can exist in gas, vapor, mist, fume and aerosol forms, contributes to acid rain, and produces fumes that may cause immediate irritation of the respiratory tract, pain and shortness of breath, according to research collected by the U.S. National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Recovery may potentially take weeks. Also possible are relapse and death caused by bronchopneumonia or pulmonary fibrosis.
The average and maximum daily amounts of nitric acid at the facility from 2023 through 2025 were 44,900 and 69,040 pounds, respectively, Kanawha Putnam Emergency Planning Committee Administrator Tom Keefer said Thursday, citing data from annual, federally required hazardous chemical inventory reporting forms filed by Catalyst Refiners for the facility.
Neither Keefer nor the West Virginia Emergency Management Division made the latest Tier II Emergency and Hazardous Chemical Inventory form available upon request.
The nitric acid is contained in a storage tank outside the building and open process vats in a process area, with the substance onsite 365 days a year, Keefer reported.
But the facility isn’t subject to the EPA’s Risk Management Program rule that requires facilities that use extremely hazardous substances to develop a Risk Management Plan because chemicals and their quantities included in Catalyst Refiners’ self-reported Tier II forms for 2025 and 2026 don’t trigger applicability thresholds, an EPA spokesperson said Thursday.
The EPA requires that Risk Management Plans identify the potential effects of a chemical accident, steps the facility is taking to prevent an accident and emergency response procedures should an accident happen.
The Trump administration has proposed significantly weakening EPA risk management programming.
The plans have prepared Kanawha County emergency response personnel to train for and respond to chemical emergencies throughout the Kanawha Valley, known as “Chemical Valley” due to its high concentration of chemical facilities and history of deadly industrial incidents.
The CSB released seven final reports on industrial chemical incidents in West Virginia from 2008 through July 2023. Only Texas had more incidents prompting final reports from the CSB during that span, according to a Gazette-Mail review of the reports.
“Understanding what went wrong is essential,” CSB board member Sylvia Johnson said in a statement Thursday, “so that facilities handling hazardous chemicals can operate more safely and responsibly.”
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