October 29 , 2014

Mr. James Belke Office of Emergency Management US Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennslyvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20460

Docket # EPA

- HQ

- OEM

- 2014

- 0328

RE: Request for Information (RFI) on potential regulatory changes to the Risk Management Program (RMP) ( 79 FR 44604 )

Dear M r

. Belke :

Enclosed are the comments of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) in response to the reques t for information issued by EPA on July 31 , 201 4 ( 79 FR 44604 )

. AWWA appreciates the opportunity to comment

.

If you have any questions about these comments, please feel free to contact me or Kevin Morley in our Washington Office.

Yours Sincerely,

Thomas W. Curtis Deputy Executive Director Government Affairs Office 1300 Eye Street NW Suite 701W Washington, DC 20005 T 202.628.8303 F 202.628.2846
www.awwa.org

Headquarters Office 6666 W. Quincy Avenue Denver CO 80235 T 303.794.7711 F 303.347.0804 The Authoritative Resource on Safe Water SM

Page 1 of 7

## Comments of the American Water Works Association

Risk Management Program (RMP), (79 FR 44604 )

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) is an internati onal, nonprofit, scientific and educational society dedicated to the improvement of drinking water quality and supply. Founded in 1881, AWWA is the largest organization of water supply professionals in the world. Our
members hip represent s the full spectrum o f the drinking water community: treatment plant operators and managers, environmental advocates, engineers, scientists, academicians, and others who hold a genuine interest in water supply and public health.

On July 31, 2014 the U.S. EPA published a Federal Register request for information (RFI) on potential regulatory changes to the Risk Management Program (RMP), as authorized by Se ction 112(r) of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The current regulation requires holders of specific quantities of specific chemicals to develop and submit a risk management plan with EPA that address’s action taken to prevent and mitigate off

- site consequences f rom an accidental release of the covered chemical(s).

AWWA has a demonstrated commitment to risk management and process safety per the multiple ANSI standards, manuals of practice, and training resources we provide to the water sector. In
the context of t he Executive Order ( EO ) 13650 Working Group Report, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ( OSHA’s ) RFI for the Process Safety Management ( PSM ) program , and the current EPA RMP RFI, we note an absence of information that might suggest how the
recommended changes will change risk. The safety concerns associated with the facility at the
heart of EO 13650 wa s a compliance issue with existing regulations and does not represent a gap in the existing requirements. Imposing additional regulatory a ctions does not change the risk associated with a facility that fails to comply with the multitude of existing regulatory standards that have not been proven to be inadequate when implement ed appropriately. Rather than more regulation, additional effort i s needed to ensure compliance with existing regulations.

Issues of Specific Concern

RMP Program 3 Designation for All Water Systems

The primary purpose of the RMP regulation is to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to prevent or mitigate potential off

- site consequences from the accidental release of a regulated substance. If EPA decides to pursue a mandate that all drinking wat er facilities subject to RMP in states without a federally

- delegated state

- run OSHA PSM Program, currently in Program

Page 2 of 7Level 2, must be in Program Level 3, this must be justified with a comparative assessment of the accident and compliance history for drink ing water facilities in Program 2 and Program 3. Such analysis should clearly demonstrate that additional benefits, namely lower accident rates and increased compliance, could reasonably be anticipated to justify any rule modification. In the
absence of these data for justification, we believe that such a move would present an
unwarranted burden.

Promoting Inherently Safety Technology (IST)

AWWA

, in 2009

, prepared a decision

- support guide for water and wastewater utilities titled, Selecting Disinfectants in a Security Conscious Environment . The guide describes a step

- by

- step process for evaluating and comparing various disinfection strategies, while taking into consideration the unique operating needs of each utility. Selecting Disinfectants builds on
exi sting water sector engineering standards, manuals of practice, costing tools, and public communication techniques to



###  address disinfection objectives, both statutory and those set by the community served;



###  reflect local circumstances;



###  compare disinfection o ptions consistently;



###  take into account operational, process, and supply

- chain reliability factors; as well as environmental, operator, and community safety considerations;



###  provide transparency in the decision

- making process; and



###  incorporate appropriate ri sk communication within the decision

- making process and the community.

As outlined in the document Selecting Disinfectants , drinking water utilities must tailor their treatment and distribution processes to comply with multiple regulations (such as the fed eral requirement to use chlorine to achieve certain levels of disinfection), critical variations in source

water characteristics (such as temperature, pH, pathogens, etc.), and other local factors (such as delivery options for disinfectant chemicals, the n eed to maintain reserve supplies in the event of supply interruption, spatial limitations at the plant site, local ambient temperatures that affect the “shelf life” of chemicals and the attendant chemical degradation and breakdown products, etc.

In addit ion, multiple studies 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 have provided information on important factors to be considered regarding the use of bulk hypochlorite and on

- site generation versus gaseous

1 Stanford, B.D., A. Pisarenko, S. Snyder, and G. Gordon (2011). Perchlorate, Bromate, and Chlorate in

Hypochlorite Solutions: Guidelines for Utilities. Journal

- American Water Works Association , 103(6): p. 71

- 83.

Page 3 of 7chlorine. In both instances, if not produced and managed properly, the potential e xists for the introduction of contaminants that might not otherwise be present in systems using gaseous chlorine, namely bromate, perchlorate and chlorate, all of which are regulated or under regulatory review. The findings from these studies have been use d to develop an assessment
model 7 that supports utility management and use of hypochlorite products, since it degrades at varying rates depending on pH, temperature and other storage conditions, to mitigate the potential for elevated levels of certain wate r quality contaminants.

It should be noted that drinking water treatment facilities, unlike other entities regulated by the RMP regulation and PSM Standard, have to manage a critical risk tradeoff when considering
alterna tive disinfection processes

– process safety and public health. That is, balancing process safety risk from the accidental release of a regulated substance that may impact plant personnel and the community immediately adjacent to the treatment facility a nd public health risk
associated with water

- borne diseases that may affect far, far more people in a much larger area.

AWWA has found that options often classified as inherently safer may in fact have impacts that counter other federal initiatives associated with the nation’s transportation systems, energy consumption, and CO 2 emissio ns. The significant findings from this analysis are summarized as
follows: 8

• Energy Consumption

- Use of chlorine gas reduces electric power consumption compared to the other disinfectants. On a supply chain basis, chlorine gas uses 36% less electricity than its best available and most widely used substitute, bulk sodium hypochlorite. The

average power consumption multiple for all disinfectants is more than two times that of chlorine gas on a per capita basis.

2 Stanford, B.D., A.N. Pisarenko, S.A. Snyder, and G. Gordon (2009). Minimizing Perchlorate Fo rmation in

Hypochlorite Solutions, Opflow , 35(10): p. 10

- 13.

3 Snyder, S.A., B.D. Stanford, A.N. Pisarenko, G. Gordon, and M. Asami, (2009). Hypochlorite

-- an Assessment of

Factors That Influence the Formation of Perchlorate and Other Contaminants. AWWA a nd the Water Research Foundation: Denver, CO.

4 Adam, L., Gordon, G. and Pierce, D. (2001) Bleach 2001 Predictive Model, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

AWWA Research Foundation and AWWA.

5 Adam, L.C. and Gordon, G. (1999) Hypochlorite ion decompositio n: Effects of temperature, ionic strength, and

chloride ion. Inorganic Chemistry 38(6), 1299

- 1304.

6 Gordon, G.; Adam, L.; & Bubnis, B., (1994). Minimizing Chlorate Ion Formation in Drinking Water When

Hypochlorite Ion Is the Chlorinating Agent. AWWA Research Foundation, Denver, CO.

7 AWWA (2012). Hypochlorite Assessment Model, www.awwa.org/hypochlorite

8 Morley, K.M., Sloan, J.T. (2012). The complexities of disinfection in the twenty

- first century. Journal

– American

Water Works Association , 104(8), 28, 30

- 32. http://dx.doi.org/10.5942/jawwa.201 2.104.0116

Page 4 of 7• Greenhouse Gas

– Use of chlorine gas reduces per capita greenhouse gas emissions compared to the other disinfectants. Greenhouse gases ar e released in the production of the electricity used to manufacture disinfectants and in the transportation of the products along the supply chain. On a supply chain basis, the use of the best available substitute for chlorine produces over 50% more green house gas. Most of this gap can be attributed to efficiencies in the production of the chlorine and the remainder to efficiencies in the supply chain.

• Transportation

– Use of chlorine gas reduces the total amount of material transported compared to most o ther chemical disinfectants except ozone. Considering all the other disinfectants on a supply chain basis, the alternatives require 30% more material movement at current consumption patterns when compared to chlorine gas on a per capita
served basis. On a unit consumption basis only on

- site generation of hypochlorite and
disinfection with ozone and UV involve less material movement because these technologies require the use of only small amounts of raw materials and secondary
disinfectants.

Because of these risk tradeoffs, critical factors and variables, AWWA has long maintained that
the choice of disinfectant should lie with qualified local officials, who are best acquainted with the specifics of their local situation. In the past, there have been proposals to have the IST decision lie with federal officials. There are more than 52,000 community water systems in the
United S tates. While not all of them would face the suggested IST analysis, we believe making this a federal decision would be unworkable given limited knowledge of local factors that drive
disinfection decisions at individual utilities.

Finally, AWWA is concerned that some Agency enforcement actions have imposed an IST policy. In the case of Fall River, MA, the settlement required by EPA resulted in the utility

pay ing a $5,000 penalty and eliminating the use of chlorine gas at t he facility . The Agency required the utility to install a new sodium hypochlorite process, which required an additional capital investment of approximately $450,000. According to the EPA news release 9 , the
settlement is “ part of EPA’s national effort to ad vance environmental justice by protecting communities such as those around the Fall River facility that are disproportionately impacted by pollution .” This conclusion does not recognize the risk transfer imposed on this community by
EPA. The disinfectant change substitutes a conditional risk for an absolute risk in the form of additional social costs that will be carried by the community to finance the new facility, and ironically the added pollution created from more transportation and electric power gene ration.

9 9 EPA, Newsroom, 10/06/2014, Fall River, Mass. Water Treatment Plant Upgrades Will Make Commu nity Safer under EPA Settlement, accessed 10/26/2014. http://yosemite.epa.gov/OPA/ADMPRESS.NSF/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/0ed2f134c5c0906d85257d6 90068f81a!OpenDocument

Page 5 of 7Emergency Planning and Coordination with Local Emergency Response Authorities

AWWA believes that the requirement for coordination with local emergency responders already represents industry best practices. This is in fact a key principal in ANSI /AWWA G430

- Security Practices for Operations and Management, ANSI/AWWA G440

- Emergency Preparedness Practices, and M15

- Emergency Planning for Water Utilities and well as multiple EPA guidance and training resources provided to the water sector.

The cha llenge typically face by the water sector is a lack of understanding by the emergency management community regarding the critical services provided by drinking water and wastewater utilities, and importantly the cascading consequences associated with a ser vice disruption. This was an obstacle for water utilities during response and recover actions associated with Superstorm Sandy. 10 Information sharing is the most common limitation and would benefit from greater coordination as noted in the EO 13650 Workin g Group Report. AWWA encourages the Agency to examine the flexibility in existing authorities to enhance rapid notification of drinking water utilities of any releases that may have the potential to impact source water and ideally avoid the consequences as sociated incidents like the January 2014 incident in Charleston, WV. This includes facilitating collaboration between the Office of Water and the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response on data germane to source water protection planning, including bu t not limited to EPCRA Tier 2 data.

Third Party Compliance Audit s

The AWWA does not believe that mandating the use of third

- parties for compliance audit s would provide any additional level of objectivity in self

- audits nor alter compliance. While some utilities do utilize third

- parties for compliance audits, we believe that mandating such a process only serves to impose an unnecessary financial burden. Water utilities must be afforded the discretion to choose the compliance audit process that is best suited to their o perational needs . The use of third

- party auditors can be costly and EPA should be prepared to show compelling evidence that such third

- party auditing improves compliance and reduces accidental releases relative to other approaches to conducting audit s

. In addition, as mentioned the RFI, the current regulation requires that “the owner or operator shall certify ” their compliance audit and that “the compliance audit be conducted by at least one person knowledgeable in the process”

– see § 68.58(a) , (b) and 68.79(a) , (b) . We feel that such proper enforcement of such regulatory requirements should abrogate the need for use of a third

party

.

10 AWWA (2012). WARN Superstorm Sandy After

- Action Report

.

Page 6 of 7Lowering the Threshold Quantity for Regulated Substances Currently on the List

AWWA believes that the current thresholds for regulated substances used by the water sector in drinking water treatment are appropriate for managing the potential risk of off

- site consequences and we feel that any consideration of lowering such thresholds must be evidence

- based, tied to
relevant data derived from actual accident histories

.

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