August 29, 2024Hard-won Updates to the EPA’s Risk Management Program Rule

Blog Post

Maya Nye, PhD, Coming Clean’s Federal Policy Director

In spring 2024, after a multi-year collective advocacy effort, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the “Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention” rule which updated the Risk Management Program (RMP) rule “to further protect vulnerable communities from chemical accidents, especially those living near facilities in industry sectors with high accident rates.”

You can read our high-level summary takeaways here.

Strengthening the RMP rule has been a longstanding priority for the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) and Coming Clean networks as it regulates around 12,000 high-risk facilities that manufacture, use and stockpile highly hazardous chemicals such as those used in agriculture (pesticides, fertilizers and the intermediary chemicals used to make the final product), plastics, waterproofing (PFAS) and other products. Fenceline communities neighboring these facilities are disproportionately Black, Latino, low-income and have low access to healthy foods. These communities are disproportionately impacted not only by chemical emissions from these facilities, but also many non-chemical stressors, including but not limited to low access to healthy foods, and ongoing chemical disasters from these facilities.

Much of our collective advocacy history is documented on our website and on the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters website. (Coming Clean and EJHA are also longtime members of this Coalition.)

EPA’s proposed rule included a number of provisions that our networks supported including requiring:

- - - certain facilities to assess whether they could use safer chemicals and processes
    - all RMP facilities assess for climate-related hazards
    - backup power for existing air monitors
    - certain common-sense emergency response measures
    - increased enforceability, corrective action, and accountability in the rule like stop-work authority and anonymous safety reporting.

EPA agreed to perform a review to update the list of facilities included in the RMP rule. They also signaled that they would make certain RMP data publicly available, and did so when releasing the final rule).

Our comments on the proposed rule were signed by 84 member, ally or partner organizations to our Coming Clean and EJHA networks. They outline recommendations for what a strong rule would look like and encompass decades of collaboration and advocacy among fenceline, grassroots members, partners and allies in the Coming Clean and EJHA networks.

Below are some critical gaps between the final rule and our recommendations:

- - - Expand use, reporting, and assessment of safer chemicals and processes - EPA only required a small number (~12%) of all facilities to assess whether or not safer chemicals or technologies are available. They required even fewer facilities (~5% of all facilities) to use any of these safer alternatives they identified. The changes they implement may not have a significant impact on preventing emissions or chemical disasters needed to protect communities and workers.
    - Expand the list of chemicals and thresholds - EPA did not expand the list of chemicals or reduce thresholds for chemicals that trigger facilities to be regulated under the RMP.
    - Increase information access – EPA did not require that all information and community notifications are available in multilingual format. The final rule does not make it any easier to access information about how far away people could be affected by a worst case incident at the facility.
    - Expand facility coverage - EPA did not expand coverage to the entire facility where only part of it is currently covered under the RMP.
    - Better address hazards from transportation containers - EPA did not finalize language that includes a specified number of hours that a transportation container (like a rail car) can sit on-site detached from the source of power that delivered it to the site before its contents are considered subject to RMP regulation.
    - Improve compliance with the new rules by integrating the RMP into major source facilities’ permits - EPA did not amend the rule to ensure full RMP implementation as part of the Clean Air Act Title V permitting program.
    - Use correct assumptions for incident data - EPA used industry reported data to determine the cost and benefits of the protections in the final rule. This data is incomplete and does not adequately reflect the reality of chemical disasters on the ground to workers, communities on the fenceline and nearby communities.

Within our networks, this advocacy work is being led by the joint EJHA/Coming Clean Hazardous Facilities (HazFac) Team with important support from other network teams and members, partners and allies.

We look forward to future action from EPA to address some of these gaps and will be closely monitoring and holding EPA accountable for the full implementation of this rule.

We also look forward to working together more closely on the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals and addressing the ongoing legacy contamination that results from these RMP and other hazardous facilities.