A final rule was published in the Federal Register December 3 officially announcing that the 2017 amendments to the 1996 Risk Management Program (RMP) Rule are now in effect. In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated EPA’s rule delaying the implementation of the 2017 amendments, citing it violated a Clean Air Act requirement limiting the delay of rules to three months. The first compliance date from the 2017 rule was meant to go into effect March 14, 2018. It is not yet known how EPA might enforce this requirement.
EPA is still in the process of developing a replacement rule, which was proposed on May 30 of this year and would reverse many of the 2017 rule’s amendments. In particular, the proposed rule would rescind requirements related to third-party audits, incident investigations, and information availability, among other provisions. EPA also proposed to modify amendments relating to local emergency coordination and emergency exercises, as well as change the compliance dates for those provisions. AMWA generally supported the proposed revisions in comments submitted to EPA on August 22.