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The EPA recently proposed revisions to strengthen the Risk Management Program (RMP) rule, including enhanced employee participation and transparency for communities on safety decisions. The RMP rule requires industrial facilities with high accident rates to prevent accidental air releases of dangerous chemicals that could cause deaths, injuries, or property and environmental damage or require evacuations […]
In response to the EPA’s request for comments on the Risk Management Program (RMP) regulations and related goals, on June 16, 2021, former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, retired generals Russel Honoré and Randy Manner, former EPA Official Robert Bostock, and former National Security Council and Senate Intelligence Committee staff member […]
Two recent Clean Air Act (CAA) settlements—one in Iowa and the other in Kansas—serve as a reminder for companies to review their risk management plans (RMPs) to ensure compliance with the EPA’s Chemical Accident Prevention requirements.
Facilities subject to Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act—better known as the Risk Management Program (RMP)—won a significant deregulatory victory with the EPA’s issuance of its RMP Reconsideration Rule. The Reconsideration Rule rescinds major portions of the RMP Amendments Rule the Obama EPA issued in January 2017.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its reconsideration of Risk Management Program provisions that were amended in 2017. EPA opted to rescind some of the amended provisions for various reasons and retain or modify other provisions. According to EPA, the latest revisions to the rule “better address potential security risks, reduce unnecessary and ineffective […]
The applicability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP) is reasonably clear, but facilities with chemicals in amounts less than the RMP thresholds are finding themselves in trouble with the EPA because they are overlooking EPA’s General Duty Clause (42 U.S. Code 7412(r)(1)). Several times over the last 6 months the […]
Sorry, no million-dollar fines or penalties in our latest environmental enforcement roundup … but there are still some six-figure ones! These four recent cases cover compliance slip-ups ranging from risk management violations to spill prevention mishaps, and one company faces a half-million dollar fine.
Stating that the Trump EPA cannot use a general provision of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to negate a specific provision of the Act, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated an Agency final rule that sought to delay by 20 months the effective date of the Obama EPA’s […]
In our first environmental enforcement report for August 2018, there were two fines of over $1,000,000. In our second roundup for the month, there’s another one! Of course, there was also a fine for a mere $350, so it’s a wide range. Take a look at six recent cases and the penalties that were doled […]
Our first environmental enforcement report for August 2018 has summaries of five recent cases—and two of them resulted in penalties of over $1,000,000. It’s an ongoing reminder of the importance of environmental compliance to an organization’s bottom line.