Our communities have the right to know when they are at risk of exposure to dangerous substances from accidental releases such as, but not limited to, chlorine, ammonia, hydrochloric acid, and sulfur dioxide. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agrees. In 1986 EPA created the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) to help communities plan for just such emergencies. EPCRA requires that federal, state, and local governments, Indian tribes, and industries be prepared for hazardous chemical emergencies. It also requires facilities to follow all recordkeeping requirements and report the storage, use, and release of hazardous chemicals to federal, state, and local governments.
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Environmental,
EHS,
EPA,
Hazcom
Many readers will know that political and legal regulatory developments have lagged the technical developments in hydraulic fracturing and other enhanced oil and gas recovery techniques – “fracking.” Some jurisdictions focus on the jobs and taxes that result from resource extraction, while others focus on the potential environmental hazards. As 2015 begins, we find California and New York – which typically agree on significant environmental policy questions – adopting opposite responses.
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Within the U.S., most chemical safety requirements are imposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For example, OSHA (or delegated state agencies) administers a Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard, while EPA (or delegated state agencies) administers the Accidental Release Prevention (ARP) regulation. In addition to these sets of regulators, however, Congress has created a national agency to conduct independent investigations of major chemical accidents, and to issue accident-specific findings and specific or general recommendations for improved chemical handling and regulation. This agency’s formal name is the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board—which usually refers to itself as the Chemical Safety Board or CSB.
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Federal and state laws govern “hazardous wastes”—the federal law is commonly called RCRA, after the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976. However, RCRA itself was enacted as an expansion of the prior Solid Waste Disposal Act (SWDA) of 1965, and requirements for both solid and hazardous wastes have been revised many times in recent decades. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these requirements nationally, delegating many provisions to individual states that qualify for authorization to assume regulatory roles.
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Strategic planners around the world are preparing “climate change adaptation plans,” designed to identify their organization’s key activities and missions, evaluate how climate change might affect them, and develop organizational changes designed to anticipate and adapt in ways that preserve the organization’s performance. On October 31, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its own Climate Change Adaptation Plan. EPA’s divisions (Water, Air and Radiation, etc.) and 10 regional offices also issued plans covering their activities. These Plans provides a collective model for multi-level organizational plans, and also tell organizations in the US what help to expect from EPA when they plan for their own adaptations to climate change.
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Important Clean Air Act (CAA) elements direct the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). Unlike the conventional pollutants associated with regional problems such as smog or acid rain, HAPs represent a list of 187 specific air toxics that can be harmful in low concentrations in much smaller areas. HAPs are subject to tighter controls and lower permitting thresholds.
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mact
The Clean Water Act (CWA), as amended after the Exxon Valdez spill by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, imposes oil spill planning requirements on onshore and offshore facilities involved in the handling and transport of oil. These facilities may be required to prepare and implement a Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) Plan (and perhaps a more detailed Facility Response Plan). During 2001-2011, EPA adopted a series of significant changes to its SPCC Plan regulations, requiring compliance by most facilities no later than November 10, 2011.
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Underground Storage Tanks
In August 2013, President Obama issued an Executive Order directing federal regulatory agencies to review specified regulatory programs that are designed to prevent catastrophic releases of toxics: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Chemical Process Safety Management Standard (PSM); Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Accidental Release Prevention (ARP) program and Emergency Planning and Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) program; and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program (I blogged about the EO here, OSHA’s consideration of PSM changes here, and about one of the agencies’ joint reports on progress here). EPA has just issued a request for information on the possible revisions to ARP requirements, which are described below.
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Did you know that if all the oil from American do-it-yourself oil changers were recycled, it would be enough motor oil for more than 50 million cars a year? Wow! Imagine how much foreign oil that would eliminate.
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Transportation
Since the US Supreme Court affirmed in 2007 that the Clean Air Act (CAA) provides the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), EPA has pursued a growing set of regulatory initiatives. In each, EPA has attempted to fit GHGs into statutory and regulatory programs originally designed for more conventional pollutants – and the entities it targets have sued the agency claiming the stretch to GHGs exceeds EPA’s authority. Each court decision has adjusted the contours of EPA’s CAA authority, legitimizing some stretches and vacating others.
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