US chems welcome alternative site security bill
12 March 2008 21:14 [Source: ICIS news]
WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--US chemical industry officials on Wednesday welcomed a new federal bill that would extend existing antiterrorism security regulations for production sites without imposing safer technology mandates.
Spokesmen for the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said they were pleased that a site security bill, HR-5533, proposed by Representative Albert Wynn (Democrat-Maryland) puts emphasis on security matters rather than environmental criteria.
The bill introduced by Wynn, who chairs the subcommittee on environment and hazardous materials in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, would make permanent the existing Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) now being brought into force by the Department of Homeland Security.
Those regulations establish the first federal authority over security measures at US chemical facilities seen as at high risk for a potential attack by terrorists seeking to cause widespread casualties. Those rules, authorized by a statute passed by Congress in late 2006, are to “sunset” or expire in October 2009, so it is necessary that Congress act soon to extend or replace the regulations.
A separate site security measure approved by the House Homeland Security Committee last week, HR-5577, is viewed by industry as more burdensome because it expressly allows individual states to enact their own, tougher chemical security laws and because it mandates the use of inherently safer technology (IST) as a security measure.
HR-5577, the “Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2008,” would give the department authority to shut down any regulated high-risk chemical facility that refused to implement IST mandates ordered by the department, such as elimination or reduction of specific feedstocks or the use of lower temperatures and pressures in production.
The inherently safer technology mandate in HR-5577 was hailed by environmentalists as an essential element in seeking to reduce the potential off-site consequences of a terrorist attack on a chemical plant.
However, while the bill put forward by Wynn also allows states to regulate chemical site security, it makes no mention of inherently safer technology.
“We are pleased that this [Wynn] bill places greater emphasis on appropriate security measures and less on carrying out the agenda of environmentalists,” said SOCMA president Joe Acker.
“This legislation would eliminate sunset provisions to the existing standards and, importantly, does not include the highly impractical and controversial inherently safer technology provisions,” Acker said.
Marty Durbin, managing director for federal affairs at ACC, also welcomed Wynn’s bill, saying that it avoids a major industry concern over inherently safer technology mandates.
“On Wynn’s bill, we think the regulations now being enforced are effective and need only be extended and made permanent, and this bill does that,” Durbin said. That the bill also allows state legislation in this area is a problem, he said, “but we can live with that”.
Hearings on Wynn’s HR-5533 are expected in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce within a matter of weeks.
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