Steve,

You gave a great answer and hopefully I can help to provide some clarification to fully & completely answer Dr. Murphy’s questions. 

Dr. Murphy - The same chemical is regulated under multiple statutes, depending upon where the chemical is in commerce, for example during transportation it would be regulated by DOT, upon receipt & use by OSHA and upon disposal by EPA.  But to clarify Steve’s response, both storage and release have different quantities and reporting requirements.  The specifics may be helped by considering the historical context of which law was enacted and what motivated that law.  You can learn significantly more of the intent of each law by reading each laws preamble (that will take some time – I know from experience!)  But, please let me summarize by stating that the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) was passed after the Bhopal, India incident (involving methyl isocyanate reaction following a simple operator error), while recognizing that the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), a.k.a. Superfund, followed Love Canal.  EPCRA included the lists of Toxic Chemicals (Section 313) and Extremely Hazardous Substances (Section 302), while CERCLA included hazardous substances and even the Clean Air Act got into play with section 112(r), for the regulated chemicals for accidental release prevention. 

The bottom line is that, depending upon the chemicals you have on-site, you will have to know the regulatory reporting requirements for storage and potential spills.  These are different scenarios that require different planning, response and reporting requirements and you need to know, track and potentially limit each of them. 

As a previous Local Emergency Planning Commission (LEPC) Chairperson, may I make a suggestion? 

Please invite them (the local LEPC) in to inspect, recommend, plan and most importantly.. for you to build the relationships necessary to effectively respond during an emergency response.  My personal experience has been that the time spent building those relationships is significantly more cost effective than paying for a clean-up/response handled incorrectly…  Or the negative publicity of exposing community or the public to a hazard that you should have known or been aware of. 

Are identifying the different regulatory levels that the same chemical must be managed to difficult?  Absolutely.  Is the coordination a lot more paperwork?  Absolutely!

But those costs in dollars, time and effort are cheap in the long run.

The part of the original post that I received was do the storage requirements apply to storage and/or release.  Hopefully, I have clarified that they apply to more than both. 

To put this whole answer into perspective…

I’m an old Boy Scout, our motto was “always be prepared” and I can’t think of a better situation where attempting to implement these multitude of laws that the old Boy Scout motto should be applied.

I hope this helped,

BruceV

There are two locations and definitions for RQs:

1.      40 CFR 302.4: TABLE 302.4—LIST OF HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES AND REPORTABLE QUANTITIES

RQ therein being defined as:

“Reportable quantity (‘‘RQ’’) means that quantity, as set forth in this part, the release of which requires notification pursuant to this part;…”

2.      49 CFR 172.101: TABLE 1 TO APPENDIX A—HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES OTHER THAN RADIONUCLIDES

Where, if you are shipping a hazardous material you will see that shipping the RQ of that substance in a single container causes that shipment to be a “Hazardous Substance”. On the shippers’ declaration, you would list that material with “RQ” annotated in the HM column.

Note: You would report storage of a “Threshold Quantity” of a hazardous chemical for EPCRA reporting requirements under SARA Title III. The threshold quantity for chloroform is 10,000 lbs. You can confirm that by searching the “Consolidated List lf Lists” available for download at http://www2.epa.gov/epcra/consolidated-list-lists. The big table is presented in two sort orders—first by CAS then by IUPAC or common name.

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