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EPA Describes RMP Submission Data |
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15,000 RMP’s Submitted One of the very first estimates by the EPA was that 140,000 RMP’s would be submitted. In May 1996 this was finalized to 66,000 as the final RMP rule was issued. Flammables used as fuel (last minute revision) removed about half of those leaving a final estimate of about 36,000 according to Carole Macko, communications team leader at the EPA. As of late September, only about 15,000 RMP’s had been received at EPA according to Craig Matthiessen, engineer with the CEPPO at EPA. The largest segment was 4,000 RMP’s from Farm Supply Wholesalers with water suppliers coming in second with about 2,000 RMP’s. About 3000 RMP’s listed flammable Worst Case Scenarios. Why the Discrepancy? Carole Macko believes that the lower number is due to a number of factors. Perhaps the best reason of all is that many facilities found that they could reduce or eliminated the use of some of the listed chemicals. Then, there may be some facilities that despite the best efforts of the EPA, states and trade associations – do not know that they had to submit RMP’s. The enforcement division at the EPA will be seeking out more information on that group. There may even be some sites that chose to ignore the requirement. Bill Finan reported that some of the original EPA estimates may be in error. One Midwest area had facilities reporting so that they were over 100 percent of the original EPA estimates. Site Non-Specific WCS SummaryCraig Matthiessen presented (196K PDF File) detailed statistics at the Center for Chemical Process Safety conference in San Francisco in September. It includes all the statistics that engineers love to analyze. Like 35% of flammable worst case scenarios (WCS) impacted 0 population. That means industrial sites, farms, waterways, etc. On the other hand, almost 40% of chemical WCS impacted from 1 to 1000 people. AcuSafe is a presentation of AcuTech Consulting, ©2002, All Rights Reserved |