Ross Eisenberg

Vice President

Energy and Resources Policy

Leading Innovation. Creating Opportunity. Pursuing Progress.

733 10 th Street, NW • Suite 700 • Washington, DC 20001 • P 202.637. 3173 • F 202

. 637

. 3182 • www.nam.org October 2 9 , 2014

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Attention Doc ket ID EPA

- HQ

- OEM

- 2014

- 0328 EPA Docket Center, U.S. EPA

Mailcode: 2822

- 1 T 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20460

Re: Request for Information; Revisions to the EPA’s Risk Management Program Regulations

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the nation’s largest manufacturing trade association representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector and in all 50 states, submits the following comments in response to the Environmenta l Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Request for Information (RFI) of potential revisions to its Risk Management Program (RMP) regulations.

The safety and security of facilities, employees, and communities is paramount to the NAM and its members. NAM members pr udently engage in risk management planning and invest in security and believe that fostering continued information sharing between

manufacturers and fed eral, state and local officials is critical to ensuring facility safety now and

in the future

. The se public

- private partnerships are currently providing the foundation for developing and implementing coordinated protection strategies that will ultimately prove most effective. That said, it is important that in formation submitted to the government be properly safeguarded to ensure against release to the public. Such releases of information could undermine the very security that any information sharing is seeking to enable.

Along with voluntary measures to ensu re the safety of their facilities, manufacturers comply with a suite of regulatory programs administered by several federal agencies includ ing the EPA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), t he U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Each of these agencies has their own regulatory programs that require operators to examine their operations and make them as safe

and secure a s possible.

EPA must proceed with extreme caution as it considers expanding its own regulatory programs, such as the RMP program. Many of the categories of substances EPA lists in its RFI are already regulated by a different regulatory program and inclu sion in the RMP program would only add costs, confusion and inefficiencies with little or no improvement to facility site security. In response to EPA’s RFI, the NAM offers two examples where expansion of the RMP program may be inappropriate.1. Inherently Safer Technologies

EPA states that based on feedback from this RFI it may consider proposing a federal requirement to assess or implement so

- called Inherently Safer Technologies (IST). To date, the EPA has long held that IST requirements would not produce additional benefits beyond those that already exist in the current RMP program structure. 1 The NAM encourages the EPA to maintain this practice. As the NAM and 12 other trade associations noted in a January 23, 2014

letter to the President of the United S tates and the Interagency Working Group on Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security:

Inherently safer approaches to manufacturing processes have been and will continue to be considered by facilities as a matter of course, and the facility
operator s

— not the government

— are in the best position to understand the full ramifications of implementing IST. No one regulatory program or government agency can properly address the broad range of factors such as risk shifting, technical efficacy, cost, and prod uct quality that a facility must consider and address when choosing appropriate safety and security measures, much less all

of the different site

- specific scenarios for the approximately 12,000 facilities that could be impacted by an IST requirement under the RMP. In addition, decisions by government officials to require alternatives could impose new risks, such as more hazardous materials in transportation, if facilities must reduce inv entories of

certain substances. 2

2. Combustible Dusts

EPA inquires as to whether adding “other” categories of substances such as combustible

dusts to the RMP program would be appropriate. The NAM highlights this as an example in which such an action could result in regulatory duplication and conflict with OSH A, which is already engaged in the rulemaking process on this issue. Further, EPA should evaluate existing safety management programs for combustible dust, such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 68, a Standard on Explosion Protection by De flagration Venting and consider exclusions from potential RMP requirements for facilities that are in compliance with

such NFPA standards.

The safe operation of facilities and preventing future disasters like that in West, Texas in April 2013, is an interest shared by manufacturers, government and the general public. While there is a role for regulations in promoting this interest, unnecessar y or duplicative polices can actually make facilities less safe by diverting resources away from programs that are mos t important to ensuring facility security. Where substances and processes are already regulated or in the process of being regulated by ot her agencies, the NAM encourages the EPA to avoid unnecessarily adding layers of new regulations. Government working productively with regulated industries will always produce the best results.

1 Federal Register Volume 61, Number 120, FR Doc o: 96

- 14957 (Thursday, June 20, 1996): Pages 31668

- 31730, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR

- 1996

- 06

- 20/html/96

- 14597.htm

2 Multi

- association letter to the President of the United States and Interagency Working Group. January 23, 2014. http://documents.nam.org/erp/Association_Letter_to_the_Working_Group_0123.pdfThe NAM appreciates the opportunity to comment on this impo rtant matter.

Sincerely,

Ross Eisenberg