Washington—The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) on April 19 offered testimony at a public hearing of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in support of EPA’s recent request (GM April 14, p. 1) to extend the effective date of its revised Risk Management Program (RMP) rule from June 19, 2017, to Feb. 19. 2019. “We believe the additional time provided by this administrative process will allow EPA to make necessary improvements to the rule,” TFI said.
TFI cited numerous reasons for its support of the extension, saying the extra time is need to “address several petitions for reconsideration and then propose rule changes responsive to the concerns in the petitions; remedy the rushed rulemaking process apparently designed to facilitate completion of a final rule before the transition to a new administration, failing to adequately address interagency and industry concerns; consult more actively with the regulated community regarding some significant changes to the program; consider the security implications associated with publicly sharing sensitive facility-specific information; reconsider the additional responsibilities imposed on Local Emergency Planning Committees to determine whether they are unnecessarily burdensome and difficult to implement; examine further the merits of expanded incident investigation obligations; rethink the obligations to conduct a safer alternatives analysis, as the requirements were ill-conceived and are not workable in their current form; and remove obligations to use an independent third party for audits following a facility incident.”
EPA is accepting written comments on the proposed delay until May 19.