Appellate judges have scrapped former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's rule delaying by almost two years implementation of Obama-era facility safety requirements after finding the delay made a “mockery” of Clean Air Act mandates, the latest in a string of legal losses for the agency in suits filed over Pruitt delays of Obama EPA policies.
September 16, 2026
Democratic lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to withdraw a proposed rule seeking to scrap most requirements of an Obama-era final rule strengthening EPA's facility accident prevention program, arguing the rollback would increase facility risks that disproportionately harm minority and low-income communities.
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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that first responders may not have adequate information to help minimize their safety risks when responding to incidents at chemical facilities, backing Democrats' recent calls to include data sharing provisions included in a now-stalled Obama-era EPA rule in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) chemical facility safety program.
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White House officials reviewing EPA's draft proposal gutting the Obama-era update to the agency's facility accident prevention program sought to bolster the basis for the agency's rollback, backing industry arguments that the update was unnecessary and that rolling it back would provide added benefits by improving facility safety.
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A proposed EPA settlement requiring a Missouri-based agricultural products company to perform third-party audits to prevent facility accidents undermines the Trump administration's roll back of equivalent Obama-era policies in the agency's Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule, environmentalists say.
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EPA is extending by several weeks its deadline for public input on the Trump administration's proposed rule scaling back the Obama-era update to the agency's facility accident prevention program to allow input on data EPA recently added to a public docket after environmentalists noted it was missing and requested additional time for comment.
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The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is urging a federal court to reject environmentalists' suit seeking to require a rule mandating facilities report their accidental releases, charging, among other things, that the plaintiffs lack standing, though CSB says that if the court requires such a rule it may be “difficult” given administration plans to kill the agency.
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EPA is faulting environmentalists' claims that a recent ruling vacating a highway agency's penalty delay backs their suit seeking to scrap the Trump administration's delay of an Obama-era update to EPA's facility safety program, arguing that the Clean Air Act grants EPA authority to set rules' effective dates, and that it sought input prior to issuing the delay.
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As the Trump administration works to roll back the Obama-era rule strengthening EPA's facility accident prevention program, House Democrats are seeking to codify portions of the rule in pending legislation renewing the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) facility security program and incorporate some of its provisions into any future DHS program.
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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is urging lawmakers to bolster chemical information sharing between facilities and communities even as EPA is proposing to scrap some of the provisions of the Obama-era final rule updating its facility accident prevention program that would bolster such sharing of facility data.
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