Two months after members of the House of Representatives warned EPA against reinterpreting its authority under Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act to allow it to impose “inherently safer technology” (IST) mandates on chemical storage facilities, several members of the U.S. Senate delivered the same message in July.
Writing to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on July 16, four key Senate lawmakers said that Congress never intended for Section 112(r), also known as the “general duty clause,” to give EPA the authority to force chemical and water treatment facilities to eliminate their inventories of certain hazardous chemicals. Reinterpreting the law to do so now, they wrote, “would be duplicative, confusing, and potentially conflict with” other facility security standards that Congress has enacted in recent years.
Signing the letter were Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee; Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee; David Vitter (R-Lou.), the top Republican on EPW’s Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, and Mary Landrieu (D-Lou.), the chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.
In March, EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council initially raised the specter of mandating IST adoption through Section 112(r). Since that time, the suggestion has been amplified by a number of anti-chemical organizations that have been discouraged by a lack of any recent congressional action on IST mandate legislation. EPA has not yet issued a public response to these requests, but the agency is not expected to make any decision on the matter before the November elections.
In May several Republican members of the House of Representatives similarly wrote to EPA to warn against any reinterpretation of Section 112(r), and House lawmakers have even floated plans to introduce legislation that would block any such action.