&EPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of Solid Waste
and Emergency Response
(5104)
EPA 550-F-04-002
March 2004
www.epa.gov/emergencies
Changes to the Chemical Accident
Prevention Rule (Risk Management
Program) in 2004
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently published revisions to the reporting
requirements of the Chemical Accident Prevention Rule under Clean Air Act section 112(r).
Under the rule, covered facilities must submit risk management plans (RMPs) to EPA
describing their chemical accident prevention programs. The revised rule removes the
requirement for facilities to describe their offsite consequence analysis (OCA) in the executive
summary of RMPs, adds several new data elements to RMPs, and requires more timely
reporting of significant accidents and changes in emergency contact information. Thisfactsheet
provides a summary of these changes. It is important that owners, operators, plant managers,
and others responsible for RMP implementation review this information.
BACKGROUND
Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act (CAA)
requires EPA to promulgate regulations
for the prevention and mitigation of
accidental releases of extremely
hazardous substances. Under this
section, EPA established a list of
regulated substances and thresholds and
issued the Chemical Accident Prevention
regulations. The goals of this program
are to prevent accidental releases of
chemicals that could cause serious harm
to human health or the environment and
to reduce the severity of releases that
may occur. Covered facilities are required
to develop and implement a risk
management program that includes a
five-year accident history, an offsite
consequence analysis, an accident
prevention program, and an emergency
response program. Companies must also
submit to EPA a risk management plan
(RMP) describing the source's risk
management program. The original
deadline for submitting RMPs was June
21, 1999. Since then, approximately
15,000 RMPs have been submitted.
The chemical accident prevention
regulations also require full updates and
resubmissions of RMPs at least once
every five years. Certain process and
other changes as specified in the Update
section of the Chemical Accident
Prevention regulation (40 CFR68.190)
may require a facility to fully update and
resubmit its RMP prior to the five-year
anniversary of an RMP. The five-year
anniversary date is reset whenever
companies fully update and resubmit their
RMPs.
Most facilities submitted their initial RMPs
by the original June 21, 1999 deadline
and have not resubmitted their RMPs
since. Therefore, the majority of facilities
will need to fully update and resubmit
their RMPs to EPA by June 21, 2004.
All facilities are required to include the
new data elements in their RMPs by June
21, 2004, whether they are filing an
updated RMP by that date or not.
Facilities filing a fully updated RMP by
June 21, 2004 will be able to add the new
information as part of their update.
Facilities not filing a full update by that
date will add the information to their
RMPs through a correction.
This factsheet provides additional
information about the reporting deadlines
and the recent changes to the RMP
reporting requirements.
Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Program
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Page 2
OVERVIEW OF CHANGES TO RMP REPORTING
EPA recently amended the Chemical Accident
Prevention rule to:
(1) Require that information on reportable chemical
accidents be added to the RMP within six months of the
date of the accident;
(2) Require that changes to emergency contact
information be reported within one month;
(3) Remove the requirement to include a brief
description of the off-site consequence analysis (OCA)
in the RMP executive summary; and
(4) Add three RMP data elements.
EPA also amended the RMP*Submit format to expand
the list of possible accident causes to include
uncontrolled chemical reactions.
As part of this rulemaking, EPA also clarified that the
five-year deadline for updating RMPs that were
originally filed early (i.e., submitted before June 21,
1999), is June 21, 2004. Facilities that filed early may
have received correspondence indicating an earlier due
date. However, EPA's interpretation of the regulations
is that RMPs initially due on June 21, 1999 must be
updated by June 21, 2004, not before.
This clarification does not affect the five-year
anniversary for facilities that updated their RMPs as a
result of any process or other changes, as required
under the Updates section of the regulation (40 CFR
68.190). For companies that submitted their initial
RMPs after June 21, 1999, or have resubmitted since
their initial submission, the five-year anniversary date is
calculated as five years from the postmark date of their
latest submission.
The following sections discuss the recent changes to
RMP reporting in more detail.
More Timely Accident Reporting
Previously, facilities that had an accident meeting the
criteria for inclusion in the five-year accident history
section of their RMPs (section 6) could wait until they
updated their RMPs to include information about that
accident. Since RMPs may be updated as infrequently
as every five years, EPA now requires facilities that
have a reportable accident to revise section 6 of their
RMPs to include information about the accident within
six months of the accident's occurrence. Facilities
reporting under Programs 2 and 3 must also revise the
incident investigation information in their RMPs
(reported as part of their Prevention Program
Information, section 7 or 8 of the RMP). Specifically,
these facilities must revise: (1) the date of investigation
(40 CFR 68.1700) to reflect the date of the
investigation of the accident being included in the five-
year history; and (2) the expected date of completion of
any changes due to that accident investigation (40 CFR
68.175(1)), and submit a corrected RMP within six
months of the date of the accident.
The criteria for determining which accidents must be
included in the five-year accident history are found at 40
CFR 68.42. Guidance on the criteria and the reportable
data elements for the five-year accident history are
found in the General Risk Management Program
Guidance, available on our website at:
(http://yosemite.epa.gov/oswer/ceppoweb.nsf/content/
EPAguidance.htm).
Emergency Contact Information Corrections
In order to ensure that the emergency contact
information is reasonably current, facilities are required
to correct their RMPs to reflect any change in their
emergency contact information within one month of the
change.
Description of OCA No Longer Required in
Executive Summary
Facilities subject to the Chemical Accident Prevention
Rule are required to conduct an analysis of the potential
off-site consequences of hypothetical worst-case and
alternative accidental releases. Under the original rule,
facilities were required to include a brief description of
this analysis in the executive summary of their RMPs.
EPA and federal law enforcement agencies have
become concerned that OCA descriptions in executive
summaries may pose a security risk, so EPA has
revised the rule to remove this requirement. In view of
security concerns, EPA expects that facilities will not
include any OCA data in their executive summaries.
New Data Elements
In addition to those data elements already required in
the RMP, facilities must now also include:
The emergency contact e-mail address (if an e-
mail address exists);
The purpose and type of any submission that
revises or otherwise affects previously filed
RMPs; and
The name, address, and telephone number of
the contractor/consultant who prepared the
RMP (if any).
Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Program
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RMP*Submit Format Revision for Recording
Accident Causes
In RMP*Submit 2004, facilities will be able to indicate,
as part of their five-year accident history, if an accident
involved an uncontrolled or runaway reaction. This
new option was added in response to renewed
concerns over these types of incidents.
WHAT'S NEXT?
We anticipate that the new version of RMP*Submit
(known as RMP*Submit 2004) will be released shortly.
In addition, we expect that the internet-based tool for
correcting the administrative sections of the RMPs on-
line (known as RMP Web Registration Correction) will
be available in May 2004.
REPORTING DEADLINES
The five-year deadline for updating RMPs that were
submitted before or on June 21, 1999, is June 21, 2004.
Most facilities submitted their initial RMPs by the original
June 21, 1999 deadline and have not resubmitted their
RMPs since. Therefore, the majority of facilities will
need to fully update and resubmit their RMPs to EPA by
June 21, 2004. Facilities that have updated their RMPs
as a result of any of the changes specified in 40 CFR
68.190 will have a different anniversary date.
All facilities are required to include the new data
elements in their RMPs by June 21, 2004, whether they
are filing an updated RMP by that date or not. For
facilities filing an updated RMP (also referred to as a
resubmission) by June 21, 2004, they will be able to add
the new information as part of their update. For
resubmissions, facilities will continue to be required to
submit their updated RMPs on diskettes/CDs with
certification letters.
For facilities not filing a full update by that date, they will
be able to add the new data elements to their RMPs
using a new Internet-based tool that EPA is developing.
This tool will allow facilities to make revisions and other
small changes to the administrative sections of the RMP
on-line, eliminating the need to mail diskettes and
certification letters for such corrections. This tool will
not allow corrections of the executive summary entry
within the administrative sections of the RMP, or of any
other data element outside the administrative sections
of the RMP. For any needed changes to those
sections, facilities will continue to be required to submit
their corrections on diskettes/CDs with certification
letters.
Companies should note that the rule revision removes
the requirement to include a brief description of OCA in
the executive summary. Effective as of April 9, 2004
OCA data is no longer required in the executive summary.
April 9, 2004 is also the start date for the new
accident reporting requirement. Any reportable
accident occurring on or after April 9, 2004 must
be included in the five-year accident history section of
the RMP within six months of the accident.
For up-to-date information on the status of these and
other products associated with the RMP program, visit
our "What's New" page. We plan to update this
information on the first of each month to reflect new
developments and product status.
Visit our "What's Next" page:
http://vosemite.epa.qov/oswer/ceppoweb.nsf/content/wh
atsnext.htm
FOR MORE INFORMATION...
Home page: www.epa.gov/emergencies
RCRA, Superfund & EPCRA Call Center:
Phone: (800) 424-9346 or (703) 412-9810
TDD: (800) 553-7672 or (703) 412-3323
Monday - Friday
9:00 am - 5:00 pm Eastern Time
Closed Federal Holidays
Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Program
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