Review - ChemLock and DHS Chemicals of Interest

This is part of a series of blog posts looking at the potential for the authorization of CISA’s existing ChemLock program and using it as a voluntary replacement for the now defunct Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. Other posts in this series include:

CFATS is Dead,

Making ChemLock Safety Act Compliant – ChemLock Program Background,

ChemLock and Tiering,

Reader Comment – TSDB Screening for ChemLock,

ChemLock and TSDB Screening,

ChemLock and Risk Based Performance Standards,

ChemLock and Chemical-Terrorism Vulnerability Information,

ChemLock and Information Sharing.

NOTE: Previous articles in this series have been removed from the CFSN Detailed Analysis paywall.

An important component of the CFATS program (possibly the most important part of the risk assessment process) is the DHS Chemicals of Interest (COI) list found in Appendix A of 6 CFR Part 27. The COI list provided a list of chemicals and concentrations that served as a basis for the requirement for chemical facilities to provide an initial Top Screen report. What is frequently forgotten about the COI list is that it also formed an important part of the risk assessment done by DHS to determine whether a facility was considered to be a high-risk facility that would be covered by the CFATS program and to which Tier Level the facility would be assigned.

While the first part of that assessment would not be required by the revamped ChemLock program being suggested by this series of blog posts (the ChemLock program is and would remain voluntary), the risk ranking and tiering would still need to be assigned to facilities seeking the Safety Act certification being proposed in this series of posts.

It seems clear that even with the death of the CFATS program, the DHS chemicals of interest list could form a valuable part of the upgraded ChemLock program being discussed here. Since the ChemLock program would remain a voluntary chemical security program, there would have to be some modifications made to how the rules provided in Appendix A would be applied to the new program. Further discussion is needed.

 

For a more detailed discussion about the COI list could be applied to the upgraded ChemLock program, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/chemlock-and-dhs-chemicals-of-interest - subscription required.