Reader Comment – LEPC’s and CFATS

Yesterday, David Sahm published a comment on my ‘Hydrogen and CFATS’ post. He noted, in part, that: “Hopefully, Local Emergency Planning Committees will take note and sound alarm to their reps in Congress.”  LEPCs were established under the EPA’s Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act regulations and are supposed to be the local agency that oversees emergency planning activities for chemical facilities in a locality (typically county/parish/borough level).

In recent years, CISA, through the Chemical Facility Anit-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) inspectors have been reaching out to local LEPCs as part of their inspection process to ensure that covered facilities have been coordinating with those organizations on emergency response matters. Such coordination between emergency response planners and high-risk chemical facilities should be a cornerstone of both safety and security programs at such facilities.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only government effort that is trying to ensure that chemical facilities are participating in the LEPC process. This is yet another reason that Congress should re-instate the CFATS program as quickly as possible.