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From: Daniel Horowitz <0000065ad9dd2b77-dmarc-request**At_Symbol_Here**LISTS.PRINCETON.EDU>
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Greenwire: Court sets deadline for chemical regs
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2019 15:50:16 -0500
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: 00F21B00-AE7E-44CA-955F-800B8C767BB2**At_Symbol_Here**me.com
AIR POLLUTION
Court sets deadline for chemical regs
Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder, E&E News reporter
Published: Tuesday, February 5, 2019
The Chemical Safety Board must issue regulations on reporting requirements for accidental chemical releases into ambient air within the next year, a federal court said yesterday.
The ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is a win for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and three other groups, which argued that the regulations would increase transparency and are long overdue.
"This ruling vindicates a community's basic right to know what chemical insult has been visited upon it," PEER General Counsel Paula Dinerstein said in a statement. "Accidents do not relieve industries of their clean air obligations or their duties to protect both worker and public health."
Such regulations were called for in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, which stated that CSB shall "establish by regulation requirements binding on persons for reporting accidental releases into the ambient air subject to the Board's investigatory jurisdiction," the groups argued.
The agency issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on chemical release reporting in 2009 but took no further action to move the proposal forward.
CSB argued that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to sue the agency and that its inaction was not "unreasonably delayed."
"The court finds neither argument has merit," Judge Amit Mehta wrote in the memorandum opinion for the court.
Joining PEER in the lawsuit were Air Alliance Houston, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities.
The groups filed the lawsuit in 2017 shortly after an Arkema Inc. chemical plant in Houston exploded and caught fire in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
More than a dozen first responders were hospitalized, and seven of them are suing the chemical company, claiming it was grossly negligent in the way it prepared for and responded to the disaster (Energywire, Sept. 8, 2017).
CSB did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
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