This is part of a continuing series of blog posts about the
EPA’s recently published notice
of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for revisions of their Risk Management
Program. Earlier posts in this series include:
Background – Emergency Response Exercises
The current RMP rules do not include any requirements for
the conduct of emergency response exercises. The preamble to this NPRM notes
that the original RMP NPRM (58 FR 54190, 10-20-93; not available on-line) did
include such a requirement, but that it was dropped from the final rule. The preamble notes two
reasons for that removal:
“First, the Agency decided to limit
the emergency response program requirements to the minimum requirements
contained in CAA section 112(r)(7) in order to avoid inconsistency with other
emergency response planning regulations. Second, the Agency indicated that the
additional requirements were already addressed in other Federal regulations and
therefore, sources were already doing them.”
The preamble includes a lengthy discussion
about the reasons for having an effective exercise program. The EPA then concludes
that:
“However, EPA's experience with
implementing the RMP rule over nearly two decades, along with incidents such as
those described above, indicate that many regulated sources do not regularly
conduct emergency exercises that involve local response authorities. The Agency
now believes that adding this provision to the regulation will likely reduce
the severity of some accidents that do occur.”
Exercise Requirement
The NPRM would add a new 40 CFR 68.96
outlining the exercise requirements for Program 2 and Program 3 facilities. Two
general types of exercises are addressed; notification exercises and emergency
response exercises. Both responding and non-responding facilities would be
required to conduct notification exercises; while only responding facilities
would be required to conduct the emergency response exercises.
Notification Exercises
Section
68.96(a) would require all Program 2 and Program 3 facilities to conduct an
annual notification
exercise. The notification exercise “would include contacting the Federal,
Tribal, state, and local public emergency response authorities, and other
external responders that would respond to accidental releases at the source”.
Responding facilities would be able to include their notification exercise in
their emergency response exercise.
Notification exercises would be documented and those records
would be required to be maintained for five years. Those records would be
submitted to local officials {§68.205(b)(6)}
and be made available to the public {§68.210(b)(5)}.
Emergency Response Exercises
The NPRM would require responding facilities to conduct two
different types of emergency response exercises: table top exercises and field
exercises. Table top exercises would be conducted every year (except years when
a field exercise is conducted) and field exercises would be conducted every
five years.
Facilities
would be “required to coordinate with local public emergency response
officials in planning and conducting exercises, and invite local officials to
participate in exercises”. The participation of local officials would not be
required for a successful emergency response exercise.
Table Top Exercises
A table top exercises are defined as “discussion-based
exercises without the actual deployment of response equipment”. A table top
exercise would
include:
• Procedures for informing the
public and the appropriate Federal, state, and local emergency response
agencies about an accidental release;
• Procedures and measures for
emergency response after an accidental release of a regulated substance
including evacuations and medical treatment;
• Identification of facility
emergency response personnel and responsibilities;
• Coordination with local emergency
responders;
• Procedures for the use of emergency response
equipment, and other actions identified in the source's emergency response
plan, as appropriate.
Field Exercise
A field exercise is an emergency response
exercise that actually includes the deployment of emergency response
equipment in accordance with the emergency response plan. They would be
required every five years and within one year of a covered chemical release
incident. A field exercise would include:
• Procedures for informing the
public and the appropriate Federal, state, and local emergency response
agencies about an accidental release;
• Procedures and measures for
emergency response after an accidental release of a regulated substance
including evacuations and medical treatment;
• Communications systems;
• Mobilization of facility
emergency response personnel;
• Coordination with local emergency
responders;
• Equipment deployment, and
• Other actions identified in the
source's emergency response plan, as appropriate.
Commentary
There is an old military adage that no plan survives contact
with the enemy. Things happen that the planners did not foresee or consider in
their planning process. Assumptions made by the planners do not actually pan
out in a real world application. And, of course, the biggest problem is that
actual responses include thousands of tiny details that can never make it into
a plan. This is the reason for conducting exercises.
Having spent 15 years in the US Army and over 20 years in
the chemical industry, I have taken part in a number of exercises, good and
bad. I have also responded to real world incidents in both arenas. I will be
the first to tell you that no real world incident has ever followed an exercise
scenario. On the other hand, incidents where the response had been exercised
(no matter how badly) always went more smoothly with fewer unanticipated
disruptions.
There are three major shortcomings to the exercise program
included in this NPRM. The first is inevitable due to congressional concerns
with unfunded mandates placed upon State and local governments. Any
notification exercise initiated by a covered facility should include at the
very least a written response by the notified local emergency response agencies
to the facility about what actions would have taken place if the notification
had been an actual emergency. The facility could use that information to refine
the prior coordination the facility has made with that agency.
The second major shortcoming is that the number and
frequency of the exercises is totally inadequate, particularly when a plan is
first established. A year between table top exercises provides too much time
for the loss of institutional memory and five years between field exercises
ignores the changes in equipment and processes that normally take place in most
facilities over that time period.
Both of these time period related problems could be resolved
if the regulation recognized smaller level intermediate exercises. For example,
instead of pulling the entire emergency response team in for a table top
exercise, just the supervisory and facility management personnel could conduct
a table top exercise that Army used to call an exercise without troops.
Likewise, you could have table top exercises for just portions of the emergency
response team, like the decon team. This way you could have quarterly table top
exercises while minimizing the disruption to the facility operation. The same
sort of thing could be done with annual field exercises.
The third major shortcoming is again related to Federal
mandates on State and local resources. This new exercise requirement totally
ignores those facilities that opt to be listed as non-responding facilities.
One just needs to consider the example of the West Fertilizer explosion, an
example used throughout this NPRM. That facility was obviously too small to
have a full blown internal emergency response plan, so no exercises would have
been required for that facility.
At a very minimum there should be a requirement for all
non-responding Program 2 and Program 3 facilities to host an on-site annual facility
review exercise where representatives from the LEPC, the local fire department
and other local emergency response agencies are invited to attend a briefing on
the covered processes and the associated off-site consequence analysis (OCA)
data followed by a tour of the facility. To encourage participation by local
agencies, the facility should be required to include reports on the facility review
exercise in the information that they are required to make available to the
public under §68.210(b).
Finally, I am disappointed that the NPRM did not address the
most basic emergency response exercise; the evacuation or shelter-in-place
exercise. This is the industrial equivalent of the old-style school fire drill.
There really should be a monthly requirement to conduct (and document) this
type of exercise for all RMP covered facilities.
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