That company (GKN Aerospace) was recently fined $900k by California for various violations dating to 2020 (including instances of incomplete records and missing permits). To be clear my intent isn't to single them out. I cynically assume at least some amount of that behavior to be par for the course with US chemical companies.
I think this is an example where it might have been reasonable for the taxpayers to foot a bill to facilitate their relocation 20 or 30 years ago.
It's par for the course of many US companies and likely others outside the US. I have been in a lot of manufacturing/industrial facilities and find a lot of machismo coupled with greedy asshole bosses/owners/managers. You wind up with corporate culture of "keep your head down, do as your told, don't question, and get paid."
It leads to a normalization of deviance where you end up with resentful workers who don't give a shit. Then when things go wrong, management can then easily blame them for their crappy work ethic and fire them. Then hire a new person to demoralize in exchange for money. It's a scam really.
The only way to curb that behavior is to hold people responsible but we seem to be incapable of doing that because the people who need to be held responsible have too much money and power.
Why is a tank this large of a chemical that can have runaway thermal reaction allowed in an area 500ft from residential areas? Why is this chemical allowed in an area that is considered light manufacturing?
Because the tank was there first and morons came later on and said they wanted to build housing, the land was cheap and no zoning was in place to prevent someone from building housing there.
Zoning saves lives.