BATON
ROUGE, LA – Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, leading a coalition of 11
states, filed a Petition for Reconsideration with EPA Administrator Scott
Pruitt regarding the Risk Management Program Rule – a last-minute promulgation
by former President Obama to supposedly reduce accidental releases at chemical
facilities and improve emergency response activities for those releases.
“The 11th hour finalizing of this rule was neither
well thought out nor safe,” said Attorney General Landry. “Not only did this
ill-advised decision subject facilities to even more burdensome, duplicative,
and needless regulation; but it also makes all of us more vulnerable to
security threats.”
The petition filed by Attorney General Landry and the
chief legal officers from Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma,
South Carolina, Wisconsin, and West Virginia requests that the EPA reconsider
the Rule, expand its review, and revise it entirely for numerous reasons,
including:
- It creates extensive new
requirements that will burden emergency responders as well as state and
local governments without commensurate benefit.
- It requires unprecedented public
disclosure of facility information that could threaten local communities
and homeland security.
- It requires no screening process
for requesters, nor limitations on the use and/or distribution of the
information
- There is a potential conflict with
the express of implicit restrictions contained in other anti-terrorism
laws.
- It ignores the numerous comments
submitted by State Attorneys General, the Department of Homeland Security,
and other stakeholders regarding public safety and security risks in
requiring unfettered public disclosure of sensitive information.
- It is a deeply flawed approach
that is detrimental to chemical safety and to the safety of communities as
a whole.
“For
the sake of protecting both public safety and jobs, I hope Administrator Pruitt
will honor our request,” added Attorney General Landry. “After all, industries’
resources should be spent on what truly matters: making facilities safe and
secure, not responding to unnecessary and redundant regulation enacted only for
regulation’s sake.”
This petition, comes on the heels of Administrator
Pruitt’s Monday issuance of a three-month stay of the rule. It also follows a
comment letter written by Attorney General Landry and Texas Attorney General
Paxton voicing concerns on the Rule. Administrator Pruitt, then Attorney
General of Oklahoma, authored a letter of support for the Landry-Paxton letter.
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