EPA revises industrial safety regulation

Abstract

The Environmental Protection Agency has reproposed a controversial regulation intended to protect communities, workers, and emergency responders by preventing accidents at chemical plants, refineries, and other facilities that handle large amounts of hazardous and potentially dangerous chemicals. The regulation was issued in the last days of the Obama administration but put on hold last year by incoming EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Pruitt’s rewrite removes several provisions pushed by community and worker advocates. It would rescind accident-prevention provisions that require independent root-cause accident investigations, third-party process audits, and consideration of the use of safer alternative manufacturing technologies, according to an EPA summary. It also removes requirements that would have made some plant-supplied information public and provisions for greater emergency response coordination, citing security concerns. Overall, the changes focus on a 25-year-old provision of the Clean Air Act called the Risk Management Program. RMP covers some 12,500 facilities that, according to EPA,