CSB Changes Anacortes Meeting

Today the Chemical Safety Board published a notice in the Federal Register (79 FR 3777-3778) changing the purpose of the meeting that they had originally advertised as a meeting to review and approve the staff report on the 2010 fire and explosion at the Anacortes, WA Tesoro Refinery.

A meeting notice published last month indicated that the CSB Staff would present their draft report at a public meeting on January 30^th and after allowing for public comments on the draft, the CSB would publicly consider approving the report.

While the draft staff report has not yet been made publicly available, it was expected to include a ‘safety case’ regulatory scheme for refineries similar to the one that was discussed last week in  Richmond, CA for the Chevron Refinery accident investigation. However, since that staff report was not accepted (yet not rejected either) when two Board Members requested more staff work on investigating some of the negative public comments received on the new regulatory scheme proposal, the Board is not going to attempt to review and vote on accepting the Staff Report on the Tesoro Refinery accident at the scheduled January 30^th meeting.

Instead the Staff will make a public presentation of their draft report and listen to public comments on that presentation. The Draft report will then be posted to the CSB web site and the CSB will accept comments on the proposal for 45 days. After that time they will reschedule a public meeting to  review and vote on accepting the Staffs recommendations.

To see the comments that the CSB received on the safety case issue, click here. To see the CSB responses to those comments, click here.