I have asked for an official interpretation on this question, but until that arrives I will answer this question as I did for a client this week. Here is the scenario:
There is a significant fire in the RMP covered. The fire does NOT cause a release of the EHS, much less get off-site.
However, out of an abundance of caution, the local emergency response agency (Police, Fire, Sherriff, EMA Director) decides, against your input, to issue a shelter-in-place order for several residences. Or let’s say they ask a single homeowner to evacuate their home for an hour until “we are certain it’s safe”…
Do this fire event trigger the following:
- Required RMP Update within 6-months (68.195)
- Public meeting within 90-days (68.210)
The key here is how EPA has defined a “5-year accident”… (emphasis by me)
The owner or operator shall include in the five-year accident history all accidental releases from covered processes that resulted in deaths, injuries, or significant property damage on site, or known offsite deaths, injuries, evacuations, sheltering in place, property damage, or environmental damage.
In the scenario above, I purposefully stated the fire did NOT cause a release of the EHS. And without the release of the EHS, one could argue that this was NOT a 5-year accident history event. However, the local ER managers did issue an order that resulted in … “evacuations, sheltering in place…”. You can almost bet your 401K that those citizens who were impacted by your fire and the ER orders will want to know what the heck happened that “turned their lives upside”.
How about this little twist to our scenario… the fire caused a relief valve to lift and we did have a release of the EHS, even though it was under the Reportable Quantity (not that this matters) and we have no evidence that the EHS made it off-site – would this twist change your mind as to the two (2) requirements listed above?
We have this to consider: (emphasis by me)
Five-Year Accident History for Non-Gas Releases
Pursuant to 40 CFR §68.42(a), the owner or operator of a stationary source subject to the risk management program regulations must document significant accidental releases of regulated substances from a covered process in the five years prior to the submission of an initial or updated risk management plan (RMP). For the five-year accident history, does the owner or operator need to include accidental releases that were only released onto the land or into water?
EPA specifically defines accidental release as an unanticipated emission of a regulated substance or other extremely hazardous substance into the ambient air from a stationary source (§68.3). Therefore, if a regulated substance was released in solid or liquid form to water or land only and the release did not result in a gas release, liquid spill/evaporation, fire, explosion, or uncontrolled/runaway reaction that generated excessive heat, pressure, or harmful reaction products emitted into the ambient air, it would not be considered an accidental release and the owner or operator would not need to include it in the five year-accident histories.
However, one of the criteria that EPA used to establish the list of regulated substances for the risk management program was the likelihood of accidental release to air of the substances, based on the statutory authority for the program in the Clean Air Act. As a result, it is unlikely that a regulated substance covered by the risk management program would only be released to land or water.
Additional information on accident history requirements can be found in Chapter 3 of the General Guidance on Risk Management Programs for Chemical Accident Prevention (40 CFR Part 68) (EPA550-B-04-001), available at the following URL:
https://www.epa.gov/rmp/guidance-facilities-risk-management-programs-rmp