Biden Said He Wants to 'Modernize Regulatory Review.' The EPA's Chemical Disaster Rule is a Great Place to Start.
The Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently seeking public input on its efforts to revamp an important Clean Air Act program called the Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule for facilities that produce, store, or use large amounts of dangerous chemicals. It is meant to prevent catastrophes — like the 2017 Arkema explosion in Crosby, Texas — which not only put human lives and health in danger (especially for the communities of color that are disproportionately overrepresented in the shadows of these facilities), but also cause costly disruption for local economies.
My CPR colleagues contributed to a timely new policy brief explaining how the EPA must be particularly attentive to the new and unique threats posed by climate change as it goes about revamping its RMP rule to prevent "double disasters" that will become increasingly common unless chemical facilities are forced to take preventative action. They presented the findings of the brief at a recent listening session that the EPA conducted as part of its input-gathering efforts, and they also submitted the document in response to the agency's call for written comments.
I joined them by submitting a second set of written comments that provided specific feedback for how the EPA …
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