The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a long-awaited plan to reform the nation's chemical plant safety standards, with a proposal that would require companies to weigh potentially safer alternatives in the design and operation of manufacturing facilities.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials emphasized that their proposal would not force chemical plants to actually adopt "inherently safer technologies," but simply to analyze those technologies and evaluate the feasibility of implementing less-hazardous approaches.
The EPA proposal also includes changes that the agency says would assist local emergency officials in planning for and responding to plant accidents and improve public awareness of chemical hazards in their communities.
"This proposal is a step in the right direction," EPA assistant administrator Mathy Stanislaus said in a blog post promoting the agency effort. "We want to build on the success of leaders in the chemical industry by enhancing their operations to prevent accidents, and we want to make sure that communities are fully prepared for a chemical plant accident, so that first responders, workers, and neighboring community members are protected."
Chemical industry officials were quick to question the EPA effort, with the American Chemistry Council saying the proposed requirements would "create unnecessary and potentially detrimental complexity."
The EPA proposal is a draft rewrite of the agency's "risk management plan" rule that implemented chemical plant safety provisions of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act.
In a press release, EPA said that, "While numerous chemical plants are operated safely, in the last 10 years more than 1,500 accidents were reported" at facilities covered by the rule. "These accidents are responsible for causing nearly 60 deaths, some 17,000 people being injured or seeking medical treatment, almost 500,000 people being evacuated or sheltered-in-place, and costing more than $2 billion in property damages."
Safety advocates have expressed dissatisfaction with the Obama administration's attention to chemical plant safety issues, saying that the response to a series of major fires, explosions and leaks has been disappointing. A coalition of groups has said that the administration was stalling any significant plant safety actions until it's too late in Obama's term to have proposals finalized
In its proposal issued Thursday, the EPA included a long list of major plant incidents - including the 2008 explosion and fire at the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute - and quoted from various U.S. Chemical Safety Board reports that detailed significant safety lapses that led to those incidents. Former CSB Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso, who was pushed out of office by Obama last year - had been publicly pressing for adoption of an approach called the "safety case," in which companies are required to demonstrate through a written report how major safety hazards are to be controlled and risks reduced.
EPA noted that a coalition of citizen groups had petitioned EPA nearly four years ago, in July 2012, to require the adoption of inherently safer technologies where they are feasible. While saying that its proposal would require an analysis of safer alternatives, EPA said it was not requiring those to be adopted by companies.
"The decision to implement such measures must consider the numerous factors related to processes, facilities and society at large. Improper implementation of a seemingly safer alternative may lead to undesired consequences," the agency said.
"While EPA believes that sources should look for additional opportunities to increase safety, we believe that the facility owners or operators are in the best position to identify which changes are feasible to implement for their particular process," EPA said. "This decision should be based on a careful analysis and take into account: the chemicals present and their associated hazards; the operations and process conditions involved; consequences to workers, nearby populations and the environment; and the types of equipment used that are specific to the facility's process. The analysis may consider the potential to shift risk between populations, locations, environmental media (air, water land), etc."
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.