1 Teleconference Meeting between EPA and American Chemistry Council (ACC) to discuss RMP accident data used in RMP Proposed Rule April 7, 2016 10:00 am to 10:40 am EDT Participants:

ACC: Bill Erny, Martha Moore, Carol H aase , Amy Man z EPA, Office of Emergency Management, Washington, DC: Jim Belke, Patricia Gioffre, Kathy Franklin, Beth Bosecker

ACC: Why did EPA use the period 2004

- 2013 for accident analysis in the RMP proposed rule Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA)?

EPA: This was exp lained in the RI A: EPA was looking for a long enough period to reflect several RMP cycles because some of the data is reported in time cycles. Analysis for the rule started in mid

- 2015 so much of the 2015 accident data was not available. Also there is a time lag for accident data to show up although accidents are supposed to be reported within 6 months. EPA has found that many submitters wait until the next 5

- year reporting cycle to include new accidents. We knew the 2014 accident data would probably no t be complete , so this year was not included. EPA also added to the docket a CD that has the full non

- OCA (off

- site consequence analysis) RMP database file that can be used with database software such as Microsoft Access
, if people want more information t han what was provided in the Excel spreadsheet containing the ten

- year accident dat a. The CD will have all accidents reported up to the time in March 2016 when the RMP data was downloaded onto the CD.

ACC: The Excel spreadsheet is missing some data such as chemical names and quantities. Can that be obtained from the RMP full data CD ?

EPA: Yes.

ACC: ACC finds the RMP accident data compilation in the Excel spreadsheet very useful and plans other analysis using it. Does EPA have any other plans to make t his data more available?

EPA: EPA has no plans to make it more available. A few years ago, EPA had explored the possibility of making the RMP data more easily accessible to the public, but received feedback from some stakeholders about potential securi ty concerns

. Currently, state and local officials that meet the definition of covered persons can get access to the data via the EPA central data exchange. The general public may access the data in Federal Reading rooms and via FOIA requests (non

- OCA ver sion). ACC: ACC may want to re

- engage EPA on this issue in the future.

ACC: Is there any quality assurance done for the RMP data?

EP A: The data is entered by the facility electronically and the RMP eSubmit software contains basic validation process tha t prevent some errors. For example, the lat itude /long itude of the2 facility must be within the bounds of the county , l etters cannot be entered where a numerical answer is required , if the OCA changes by more than a factor of 2, the user gets a warning

mess age , etc . The software has various validation messages and warnings that can be triggered by erroneous or suspect dat a entries

. Other than th ese validation process es , which all occur as the facility enters the data, EPA does not alter the dat a. However, if some questionable data is later found during an EPA review , EPA has the Regional staff follow up with the facility about th ose dat a, and correct or resubmit the data as needed.

ACC: Can the companies update the RMP data?

EPA: Yes, the submi tter and certifier can partially amend or completely resubmit the RMP dat a.
ACC: There are about 2 2 91 accidents in the Excel spreadsheet, but the RIA uses only a subset of 1517. How did EPA get the 1517 number?

EPA: Some accident were report ed with no i mpacts (death, injuries, property, off

- site impacts). EPA used only the accident data with reported impacts (those are required to be reported) and view the others as voluntary submissions. It could be that some of those voluntary submissions could be val id (may have been accidents with impacts, but i mpacts not reported) , but EPA decided to be conservative and omit them for purposes of analysis for the rule. You can total the number of accidents in the Excel spreadsheet with zeros reported in all the impa ct fields to see how many of those exist. ACC: We just totaled them and it looks like 774 have neither on

- site nor off

- site impacts.

ACC: Is there a way to gauge the severity of the accidents?

EPA: No. There is no severity data element, but one can look at hospitalizations vs. medical treatment for the off

- site impacts. The on

- site injuries have no such differentiation. The property damage estimates can be evaluated by the dollar value reported.

ACC: One accident, the Chevron refinery incident, shows 14,000 hospitalized. Is that correct?

EPA: That accident statistic is considered to be an outlier. This accident involve d a large smoke plume and many people reported to the hospital complaining of respiratory problems from smoke inhalation. Most were looked at and released. This particular accident and its impact is mentioned in the RI A.

ACC: Does the full

- dat a CD show the number of processes?

EPA: Yes, every section of the Risk Management Plan is available on the CD except the sensitive data from t he Off

- site Consequence Analysis. Each process has its own ID number.

ACC: Has EPA done any analysis based on number of processes?

EPA: Yes, for some provisions in the proposed rule, we have estimates costs based on number of processes. For example, fo r the Safer Technology and Alternatives Analysis (STAA) was costed out based on number of processes for industry sectors. Also the number of processes was3 considered for general categorization when estimating cost of third party audits, such as the comple x industry sector was assumed to have an average of four processes.

ACC: Did the analysis for the RIA use on

- site damages reported?

EPA: Yes, that information was probably aggregated nationwide by industry sector in the RIA and also probably used in the small business cost chapter

- would need to check the RIA to be sure. The property damage data was also used in the benefits chapter of the RIA to look at the range of costs for possible benefits from the rule.

ACC: Has root cause analysis been done for t he accidents?

EPA: There is nothing in the RMP database currently for root causes. If an accident occurs, this is a trigger for an EPA inspection and EPA may take a hard look at the circumstances of the accident, but would not necessarily do a root cause analysis or as rigorous investigation as the Chemical Safety Board would undertake.

ACC: In the Technical Background Document in the docket, how are the incident rates calculated?

EPA: The calculation was simply the number of accidents divided by number of facil i ties in a particular industry sector and this was viewed as the propensity for occurrence of accidents within that industry. Data was displayed in order of accident frequency which shows a clear demarcation of accident frequency between various i ndustries. EPA also looked at the complexity of each industry when deciding to apply the STAA provisions because we considered that more complex industr ies would be more likely to have greater opportunities to implement STAA measures. The RIA looked at various alternatives, including requiring implementation of STAA and costs could be considerable with some alternative approaches.

EPA: The RMP eSubmit User Manual is available on our website. It explains the meaning and intention of each RMP data element and might help you better interpret the RMP data on the CD.