Proposed Buffalo Trace amendment is a threat to public safety in Franklin County

On Nov. 10 Franklin County/City Planning and Zoning Commissioners will vote on Buffalo Trace’s Zoning Code Amendment which exempts Buffalo Trace from the City/County Comprehensive Development Plan building guidelines and allows them and any other distillery to build bourbon warehouses on any 100 acre rural residential or agricultural land they can buy in Franklin County without any restrictions or chance for people to object.

The problem with the amendment is federal and state building/fire codes for bourbon warehouses are MINIMUM requirements and do not address all the safety needs as bourbon warehouse construction moves into urban areas. While local governments can add conditions that are more stringent, if the Buffalo Trace Amendment is passed local jurisdictions will not be able to require any building regulations over and above federal or state building codes.

Much has changed since the first Kentucky State Building Codes for bourbon warehouses were written in 2010. Extreme weather events are more frequent. The warehouses are bigger, hold more alcohol and weigh more. Warehouse are being built closer to urban areas. Current state and federal building/fire codes don’t address these changes. Thankfully, local governments can add more stringent requirements if needed.

For example, bourbon warehouse collapse is a major cause of fire and environmental catastrophes and according to University of Kentucky Geological Survey, they should NOT be built on karst land riddled with sinkholes like Buffalo Trace’s proposed building site in Frankfort. “Structures built above voids (sinkholes) can experience significant settlement and extensive structural damage...cause catastrophic failures of the structure, and endanger the public.” the UK Geological Survey reported.

UK geologists strenuously recommend that engineering tests be completed to locate sinkholes before building on karst land. The Buffalo Trace site will have to support seventeen, 15,500 ton warehouses holding 51 million gallons of highly combustible alcohol on environmentally fragile wetlands, directly adjacent to a 132-home subdivision. Buffalo Trace didn’t do the tests because federal and state regulations didn’t require them. Fortunately, Planning and Zoning could require the tests. (They haven’t yet).

One Buffalo Trace bourbon warehouse is the size of a 7-story football field, weighs 15,500 tons and holds 3 million gallons of highly combustible alcohol. It is not a barn, as Buffalo Trace maintains; it is an incendiary bomb waiting for a lightning strike, a machinery spark or a collapsed warehouse to ignite it. The incidence rate for a bourbon disaster is once every 3.5 years. It’s not a matter of if there will be an environmental catastrophes; its matter of when.

Bourbon warehouse fires are hard to extinguish and contain. One bourbon warehouse burned for three days in Versailles. The fire leaped 100 feet in the air, melted the plastic headlights on the fire engine and took 75 firemen from five counties to contain the blaze. The alcohol spill polluted 85 miles of Glenn’s Creek and the Kentucky River, killing thousands of fish and contaminating drinking water.

If Buffalo Trace’s amendment is passed, Planning and Zoning cannot require any conditions and Buffalo Trace only has to do the VERY MINIMUM federal and state building/fire code requirements. Buffalo Trace has dealt with warehouse fires before. They know firsthand the dangers to the community but evidently aren’t willing to take any responsibility or protective measures beyond the minimal state and federal building codes. My guess is Buffalo Trace figures it’s cheaper to build with MINIMUM code requirements and then pay fines when the environmental catastrophe happens, then forget the cost and risk to its neighbors or the environment.

Margaret Groves is a Franklin County resident.