On May 17, 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) released a proposed revision to the Risk Management Program (“RMP”) rule following its reconsideration of the Obama era revisions. The proposal strips out much of those additions. According to the Rule Fact Sheet, the reconsidered rule will maintain consistency with the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations’ (“OSHA”) Process Safety Management (“PSM”) regulation, address safety concerns raised in petitions, will reduce compliance cost, and revise compliance dates. Specifically, the proposed rule will rescind many prior changes including:
- Requirements for third-party audits;
- Safer technology and alternatives analysis;
- Incident investigation root cause analysis; and most other minor changes to keep RMP consistent with PSM;
- Most of the added requirements related to public information availability; and
- Supervisor training requirements.
A public hearing is planned for June 14, 2018 and the rule will have a 60 day comment period. For more information, click here.
Stay tuned as more analysis will follow in the coming weeks.