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REPORTS REQUIRED SAFETY • CSB’S FUTURE IS UNDER THREAT DUE TO BUDGET CUTS BUT IT IS PRESSING AHEAD WITH ITS RULEMAKING ON CHEMICAL INCIDENT REPORTING THE US CHEMICAL Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is a comparatively small agency by federal standards but it packs a big punch. Its FY 2019 budget was only $12m, supporting a staff of 47, but it has still come into the line of fire of a presidential administration eager to cut costs, especially in terms of bureaucracy that it finds burdensome to industry. Despite the threat of imminent closure, CSB is pressing ahead with its programmes and has sought a budget of $13.14m for the FY 2020 year, including a one-time request of $400,000 for services and equipment to support the new Chemical Incident Reporting Rule initiative.
For those operating in high-hazard chemical industry sectors, it is the new incident reporting rule that could have the biggest impact. A notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) was published on 12 December 2019, with comments due by 13 January 2020. In the preamble to the NPRM, CSB notes that its enabling statute, enacted in 1990, provided for the Board to “establish by regulation requirements binding on persons for reporting accidental releases into the ambient air”. To date, that provision has not been fulfilled. Indeed, there have been a number of remarks made on this lack of action since CSB started work in 1998. In 2004, for
instance, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Inspector General said in a report: “The CSB needs to refine its mechanism for learning of chemical incidents and it should publish a regulation describing how the CSB will receive the notifications it needs.” Another reminder was made by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2008, which included a call for CSB to fulfil its statutory obligation. Work started on the rule the next year, in response to the GAO report, with CSB issuing an advance NPRM in June. This outlined four potential approaches to accident release reporting, seeking a consensus on how best to move forward. In particular, CSB was eager to hear industry’s opinions on how other federal, state or local rules might provide an appropriate model for its reporting requirement; whether CSB or the National Response Center (NRC) should be the first point of contact; what information should be reported and how soon; and if there should be a distinction between high-consequence incidents and other events. CSB received 27 comments on the ANPRM. On 4 February 2019, a US District Court judge ordered CSB to issue a rule within 12 months. NOW FOR THE RULE CSB proposes to add a new part 1604 to title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations, requiring an owner or operator to notify CSB promptly of any accidental release within the Board’s investigative jurisdiction. “Accidental release” is, in this rule, defined as “an unanticipated emission of a regulated substance or other extremely hazardous substance into the ambient air from a stationary source”, which is taken from other existing regulations. However, CSB notes, there is no statutory definition of “ambient air” and, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses it to mean the atmosphere outside buildings, CSB is also interested in what happens inside structures.
CSB DOES A LOT OF SAFETY-CRITICAL WORK AT A SMALL PRICE BUT NEEDS RAPID ACCESS TO INCIDENT REPORTS IF IT IS TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT WORK TO THE BEST OF ITS ABILITY
HCB MONTHLY | APRIL 2020
