USEPA Risk Management Program

The remaining Sections e.xainine tluce important topics as tliey relate to the subject title of tliis book. Section 2.7 reviews the details of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency s (USEPA s) Risk Management Program while Section 2.8 provides information on the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). The chapter continues with a short Section (2.9) on potential environmental violations and then concludes with a Section (2.10) on tlic Pollution Prevention Act of 1990. 

Developed under tlie Clean Air Acts (CAA s) Section 112(r), tlie Risk Management Program (RMP) rule is designed to reduce tlie risk of accidental releases of acutely toxic, flanunable and explosive substances. USEPA finalized its list of regulated substances (138 chemicals) and defined tlireshold quantities for these chemicals. 

Actually, before the Oklahoma City bombing, the anthrax attacks, and 9/11, OSHA and USEPA had already taken the initial steps to ensure safety and security in chemical production facilities and in other facilities that use, produce, or store listed chemicals. These steps were listed in OSHA s Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard and USEPA s Risk Management Program (RMP). Based on personal experience, having conducted VAs and modified VAs (wastewater) on both water and wastewater systems and having implemented RMP in a major U.S. wastewater system, we have to concur that these initial safety/security steps were quite effective. 

USEPA s Risk Management Program monitors large chemical producers, including petroleum refiners, petrochemical manufacturers, and nitrate-fertilizer manufactur-... 

In addition to the facilities monitored by the Risk Management Program, numerous facilities with smaller quantities of such chemicals can raise homeland security concerns. In particular, the fifteen thousand facilities in the program exclude retail outlets for flammable chemicals used as fuel, which are not required to report to USEPA. The many smaller suppliers, transporters, and consumers of those chemicals may hold sufficient quantities of dangerous materials to cause harm if the materials were released or set on fire. They may also have the information or equipment necessary to make even more dangerous substances. Further, because those smaller potential targets are especially dispersed and potentially more difficult to defend, they may be attractive as terrorist targets (GAO 2004). 

Mitman, G. G., 1999. A Final Report Biological Survey of the Berkeley Pit Lake System. Mine Waste Technology Program Activity IV, Project 10. USEPA National Risk Management Lab, IAG ID DW89938513-01-0. 

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