The Senate environment panel has approved President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), clearing the path for her Senate confirmation, though a key GOP senator continues to urge the White House to fill other current and pending vacancies to ensure CSB can continue its incident investigation and other functions.
OSHA this week unveiled a new voluntary alliance with three major poultry sector trade associations in a bid to allay safety concerns over Agriculture Department (USDA) efforts to ease line speed requirements at processing plants, though labor advocates are strongly criticizing USDA’s actions and calling for stepped-up OSHA scrutiny.
House lawmakers appear poised to resume their efforts to renew the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) chemical facility safety program when they return from their recess, though it is unclear whether their past pledges to seek a bipartisan deal on the issue will bear fruit.
A government watchdog group is petitioning EPA to phase out the use of hydrogen fluoride (HF) at oil refining facilities under its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and Clean Air Act (CAA) authorities, the latest in a series of actions to curb the use of the highly corrosive substance following several “near miss” incidents.
EPA is claiming immunity from dozens of pending tort claims over its role in a 2015 wastewater spill because its employees went through OSHA’s training program for hazardous-waste handling, teeing up a district court ruling on how much training federal employees must receive to protect their agencies from liability should a disaster occur.
As expected, EPA has formally declined to create new Clean Water Act (CWA) requirements to prevent or contain industrial chemical spills, dismissing calls from state emergency responders and environmentalists, who argued a rule is mandated by law and needed in the wake of a 2014 spill that closed the drinking water system in Charleston, WV.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is dropping its appeal of a federal district court’s order for the board to issue by February a final rule requiring accidental release reporting from chemical facilities, reaffirming the board’s plan released this spring to comply with the order’s timeline.
AUSTIN, TX -- A top EPA waste official is vowing that the agency will soon send for White House pre-publication review its final rule to undo Obama-era changes that tightened facility safety risk management plan (RMP) requirements, a surprise move refuting environmentalists’ suggestions that the rollback was “dead in the water."
A House panel voted June 19 along party lines to approve Democratic legislation renewing and strengthening the Department of Homeland Security’s chemical facility safety program, though lawmakers pledged to continue working to reach a bipartisan deal before the program expires next year.
A Senate panel is gearing up for a new round of debate on reauthorizing the Department of Homeland Security’s Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, but senators signaled during a June 4 roundtable that while they agree on the need for a long-term extension, they remain divided over how much flexibility to provide.