The fires at the recently burned BioLab facility are out, paralyzing large parts of metro Atlanta, but the fallout is just beginning.

Affected Georgians are demanding answers, and attorneys have already filed class action lawsuits against BioLab, and a petition calling for BioLab’s closure is making the rounds.

As reports have shown, the recent disaster was just the latest in a series of mistakes at the plant, and in what is sure to infuriate taxpayers, the local government provided BioLab with grants to expand its operations. This is just the latest example of how government is bad at picking winners and losers.

For those who have not been following the BioLab disaster closely, in the early morning of Sunday, September 29, “a fire started on the roof of a BioLab facility in Conyers, Georgia. The fire reignited when water from a defective sprinkler head ‘came into contact with a water-reactive chemical and produced a plume,'” USA Today reported.

What followed was a huge chemical fire, belching out unnatural-looking smoke. The plume stretched for a mile and could be seen from many miles away. Very quickly, chlorine and other chemicals saturated the air as a noxious cloud loomed over Rockdale County and began spreading across the metropolitan area. To the credit of the emergency services, they acted quickly, but the fire was beyond their immediate control.

Officials issued evacuation orders for about 17,000 residents, opened at least three shelters for evacuees and recommended shelter for 90,000 others. They were instructed to keep their doors and windows closed and not to use the air conditioning, so they not only worried about their well-being but also felt uncomfortable. Poison control has since received hundreds of calls related to chlorine fumes.

Even when the fire was extinguished, chemical reactions continued on site, releasing more fumes into the area. Initially this was limited to much of the metro area east of Atlanta, but then the winds shifted and the noxious fumes spread westward. As a result of this change, countless Atlanteans have since witnessed a chlorine mist, which has an unmistakable odor. It could be years before we know the full economic and health impacts of the fire.

BioLab has been a staple of Conyers since 1973, and the scale of this fire is apparently unmatched by anything in the company’s past. However, it has a worrying track record, and since the 2000s the company has faced significant criticism – and with good reason.

“Authorities responded to incidents at the Conyers plant in 2020, 2016 and 2004, when roads were closed, businesses were evacuated and residents were ordered to shelter in place,” according to The Atlanta Journal Constitution. The 2020 incident was so serious that officials closed a portion of Interstate 20 for nearly six hours. Additionally, 11Alive News has discovered “more than a dozen violations reported by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) at the BioLab facility in Conyers, most of which are ‘serious’.” 11Alive also noted: “The EPA reported violations of the Clean Air Act. from BioLab in April 2022 and May 2024. In March 2022, the company was also notified of non-compliance with the Clean Water Act.”

Given all this, you would think that the government would have stepped in to address this behavior, but corrective action has apparently been insufficient. Worse still, the government decided to subsidize BioLab. In 2019, BioLab broke ground on a new 25,000-square-foot warehouse on campus, but such construction is expensive, although it becomes much more affordable if the government offers tax breaks.

“The Rockdale County government and the Conyers Rockdale Economic Development Council have provided incentives for the project in the form of county property tax reductions over ten years on a sliding scale basis. School taxes were not reduced for the project,” The Rockdale Newton Citizen wrote in 2019.

As I wrote before, I am generally not very fond of subsidies. Governments are bad at picking winners and losers, and taxpayers often don’t get a good return on their investment. Rather, they appear to be charity deals that benefit well-connected companies. Sometimes they reward companies with questionable histories.

Although accidents can and will happen at any company, it seems that the government is also responsible for the consequences of BioLab. As a proponent of free markets and limited government, I believe that government has become far too big, but it still has an important role to play. When it has broad regulatory powers, the government bears a greater responsibility for ensuring good corporate behavior.

After repeated BioLab incidents, regulators failed to adequately prevent recurrences, and the local government even went so far as to reward the company with tax incentives. I fully appreciate everyone’s frustration with this disaster, but remember that the government helped create it.