Washington — May 11 is the new deadline for comment on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed amendments to chemical facility safety provisions under its Risk Management Program rule.
The initial comment deadline was April 10. EPA says the extension is in response to stakeholder requests.
The proposal, published in February, would rescind or amend parts of the Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention rule. That rule revised the RMP rule in 2024 as part of an effort to reduce the frequency of chemical releases.
Proposed changes include those related to:
- Required analysis of safer technologies and chemical alternatives
- Training
- Expanded employee participation requirements
- Required third-party compliance audits and root cause analysis incident investigations for facilities that have experienced incidents
- Sharing information with local first responders
- Community notification
EPA also seeks to scale back stop-work authority for certain processes. Speaking during a March 25 rally in Washington, longtime Pennsylvania energy worker and United Steelworkers union member Dawn Andreoli cautioned against that measure.
“For those who don’t live the job every day, let me explain something: Stop-work authority saves lives. Period,” Andreoli said. “No one knows equipment and environmental changes better than workers on the ground.
“When something goes wrong – pressures rise, alarms acting strange, a valve not responding – you don’t have time to run a risk assessment or ask permission from three levels of management. You need to stop the job or the process immediately because hesitation is how explosions happen. It’s how toxic releases happen and it’s how workers die.”
In its proposal, EPA cites data showing that the number of accidental chemical releases fell to 81 in 2023 from 147 in 2014. The proposed rule would “realign” the RMP rule with OSHA’s standard on process safety management of highly hazardous chemicals (1910.119) and “remove redundant or unnecessary regulatory requirements,” the agency says.
The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers supports EPA’s move. During a March 10 virtual public hearing, Leslie Bellas, vice president of regulatory affairs for AFPM, said the proposal “is not a rollback.” She called it “a course correction” that “strengthens chemical safety by focusing regulatory attention where it belongs: on managing real risk, not managing paperwork.”
The American Chemistry Council also backs the proposed rule, claiming in a press release that it “prioritizes proven approaches to risk reduction.”
During a March 19 public business meeting, Chemical Safety Board Chair Steve Owens said his agency was reviewing the proposal and planned to submit comments.
