Attorneys general from 14 states filed a lawsuit January 29 against the EPA over its rescission of some Obama-era amendments to the Risk Management Program that applies to facilities that manufacture or handle certain high-risk chemicals. These rules apply not only to chemical plants but to RMP-covered terminals.
When the EPA finalized the rule last year, it said the regulations would continue to address security concerns while reducing unnecessary costs and better aligning the standards with worker safety rules.
The rule had eliminated or eased some major pieces of the Obama-era rule, including requirements that plant owners consider safer alternatives to various technologies, get third-party audits to check for compliance with accident prevention rules, conduct “root cause” analyses after incidents and disclose certain information to the community about operations.
The states (New York, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, as well as Washington, D.C., and the city of Philadelphia) join a coalition of environmental groups that announced last year it was suing the Trump Administration over the rollback.