Good grief, the plant has been there for decades. Before so many rules and regulations. Probably long before the town expanded out there and built the school and nursing home. The only problem they’ve had with the regs was a few years ago and they fixed that problem. Blame the town for growing why don’t you. Blame the people for building a town along a major highway and railroad. Oh no, they built their schools right by the RR tracks!!! What if a kid wandered onto them! Oh no, there’s a major highway running right by people’s houses!!! Have you bothered looking at a map to see the layout of the town? There’s open fields behind it and it’s about the last building in town. It’s a little nothing spot in the road that grew up between I-35 and the railroad in the 1800s with farm land all around. There is absolutely nothing there for tourists to stop for except their annual single weekend Westfest celebration and to grab some kolaches.
If people from other areas traveled through many parts of Texas they would see many small towns just like West, Texas. There is a set of railroad tracks and everything else just sort of sprung up around them. When most of these towns were occupied and being built, there were no rules which is probably one of the reasons why the people built there.
There is also a set of relatively busy railroad tracks running through Houston, part of which is very close to River Oaks and the Galleria. Pricey homes and upscale businesses. After you live there a while you don’t even notice the sound of the trains and they have all co-existed for a very long time.
FYI
Documents obtained by the Dallas Morning News indicate that regulators didn't issue a permit for the facility until after it was already in use, and that they were well aware of its proximity to homes and a school. Columnist Tod Robberson writes that the incident should be a wake-up call to cities to zone dangerous businesses more carefully. "Someone needs to be called to account," he writes.