Communicating Under Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act Amendments

Regulations under Section 112(r) of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments require fixed facilities having threshold quantities of materials on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of regulated substances to disclose to the general public the expected offsite consequences of worst-case accidental chemical releases. This paper describes the communication practices of small firms in Delaware and New Jersey and the practical problems these facilities might encounter complying with the proposed rule. The paper reports an interesting difference between the apprehension voiced by small firms required to report worst-case release information and the public's apparent lack of interest in such information. Unlike the difficulty expected by small firms in calculating and communicating worst-case chemical release information, this paper includes some observations on the ability of large chemical firms to comply with the proposed requirements.     

The Role of Hazardousness and Regulatory Practice in the Accidental Release of Chemicals at U.S. Industrial Facilities

This article presents the results of an analysis of the accident history data reported under section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act Amendments. These data provide a fairly complete record of the consequences of reportable accidental releases occurring during the time frame 1995-1999 in the U.S. chemical industry and covering 77 toxic and 63 flammable substances subject to the provisions of section 112(r). As such, these results are of fundamental interest to the affected communities, regulators, and insurers, as well as to owners and managers in the chemical industry. The results show the statistical associations between accident frequency and severity and a number of characteristics of reporting facilities, including their size, the hazardousness of the processes and chemicals inventoried, and the regulatory programs (in addition to section 112(r)) to which these facilities are subject. The results are interpreted in light of economic drivers of protective activity and regulatory priorities for monitoring and enforcement.     

The Role of the Community in the Implementation of the EPA's Rule on Risk Management Programs for Chemical Accidental Release Prevention

Regulations under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) include requirements for preventing accidental chemical releases. Section 112(r) of the CAAA, the Accidental Release Provisions, requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement regulations for preventing accidental releases to the air of regulated substances and to minimize the consequences of releases that do occur. The regulations require regulated facilities to have in place the structural elements of a sound process safety program, and to practice, document, and communicate the elements of their program. The rule requires also that registered facilities calculate and make available worst case accidental chemical release information. The rule does not set a level of risk that a facility must achieve after it takes the required compliance steps, the level of risk a community must accept, the limit of consequences the community might suffer from a worst case chemical release, nor the specific actions a community must take in its response plan. These are issues that local communities and local officials must decide. Because the regulation involves the community in many unsettled risk issues the Wharton School initiated a project within the City Philadelphia to evaluate the proposition that productive dialogue on the implementation of the Rule and resolution of unsettled risk issues can take place in advance of a crisis occasioned by a major accidental release. This paper describes the steps taken by Wharton to bring together various stakeholders in the community to explore the implementation of the rule and the reaction of those stakeholders to be involved in such a process. It outlines some principal choices communities will have to make in order to implement 112(r) and explains some of the dilemmas associated with these choices. It describes the stakeholder-based implementation effort being undertaken in Philadelphia in the hope that others may benefit from what has been learned there.     

Tiered Chemical Testing: A Value of Information Approach

In December 2000 the EPA initiated the Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program (VCCEP) by asking manufacturers to voluntarily sponsor toxicological testing in a tiered process for 23 chemicals selected for the pilot phase. The tiered nature of the VCCEP pilot program creates the need for clearly defined criteria for determining when information is sufficient to assess the potential risks to children. This raises questions about how to determine the "adequacy" of the existing information and assess the need to undertake efforts to reduce uncertainty (through further testing). This article applies a value of information analysis approach to determine adequacy by modeling how toxicological and exposure data collected through the VCCEP may be used to inform risk management decisions. The analysis demonstrates the importance of information about the exposure level and control costs in making decisions regarding further toxicological testing. This article accounts for the cost of delaying control action and identifies the optimal testing strategy for a constrained decisionmaker who, absent applicable human data, cannot regulate without bioassay data on a specific chemical. It also quantifies the differences in optimal testing strategy for three decision criteria: maximizing societal net benefits, ensuring maximum exposure control while net benefits are positive (i.e., benefits outweigh costs), and controlling to the maximum extent technologically feasible while the lifetime risk of cancer exceeds a specific level of risk. Finally, this article shows the large differences that exist in net benefits between the three criteria for the range of exposure levels where the optimal actions differ.     

Multicriteria Decision Analysis: A Comprehensive Decision Approach for Management of Contaminated Sediments

Contaminated sediments and other sites present a difficult challenge for environmental decisionmakers. They are typically slow to recover or attenuate naturally, may involve multiple regulatory agencies and stakeholder groups, and engender multiple toxicological and ecotoxicological risks. While environmental decision-making strategies over the last several decades have evolved into increasingly more sophisticated, information-intensive, and complex approaches, there remains considerable dissatisfaction among business, industry, and the public with existing management strategies. Consequently, contaminated sediments and materials are the subject of intense technology development, such as beneficial reuse or in situ treatment. However, current decision analysis approaches, such as comparative risk assessment, benefit-cost analysis, and life cycle assessment, do not offer a comprehensive approach for incorporating the varied types of information and multiple stakeholder and public views that must typically be brought to bear when new technologies are under consideration. Alternatively, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) offers a scientifically sound decision framework for management of contaminated materials or sites where stakeholder participation is of crucial concern and criteria such as economics, environmental impacts, safety, and risk cannot be easily condensed into simple monetary expressions. This article brings together a multidisciplinary review of existing decision-making approaches at regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe and synthesizes state-of-the-art research in MCDA methods applicable to the assessment of contaminated sediment management technologies. Additionally, it tests an MCDA approach for coupling expert judgment and stakeholder values in a hypothetical contaminated sediments management case study wherein MCDA is used as a tool for testing stakeholder responses to and improving expert assessment of innovative contaminated sediments technologies.     

A Social Decision Analysis of the Earthquake Safety Problem: The Case of Existing Los Angeles Buildings

In this paper we propose a framework for conducting a decision analysis for a societal problem such as earthquake safety. The application deals with the formulation and evaluation of alternative policies for the seismic safety problem faced by the city of Los Angeles with regard to its old masonry buildings. A social decision analysis compares the costs and benefits of the alternative policies from the viewpoints of the impacted constituents. The emphasis is on identifying acceptable policy that considers the interests of the impacted constituents and provides incentives for their cooperation. Alternatives ranging from strict regulation to free market are examined. In order to evaluate the trade-offs between additional cost and savings in lives, a direct willingness-to-pay and an economic approach, based on property value differential, are used. Recommendations range from strict regulation for the residential and critical buildings (schools, hospitals, fire stations, etc.) to simply informing the occupants (in the case of commercial and industrial buildings) of the risks involved.     

The Value of Improved National Exposure Information for Perchloroethylene (Perc): A Case Study for Dry Cleaners

Opportunities to improve our information about risk continue to arise and lead decision makers to indirectly address the issue of the value of improved information through resource allocation decisions. Statistical decision analysis techniques provide an analytical framework for valuing information explicitly in the context of regulatory decision making. This paper provides estimates of the value of improved national estimates of perchloroethylene (perc) exposure from U.S. dry cleaners in the context of EPA's recently promulgated National Emissions Standard for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) with emphasis on exposure information. Consistent with the NESHAP decision, we relied on EPA's technology and economic assessments. In this first cut analysis, estimates of the exposures of workers, consumers of dry cleaning services, and the general public are probabilistically characterized to reflect uncertainty about exposure and potency. We consider the net benefits of the different control options by assessing the associated changes in the total annual population risks and valuing them in monetary terms, with no constraints placed on maximum individual risks. The results suggest that the expected value of perfect information (EVPI) about potency exceeds the EVPI about exposure. Sensitivity analyses demonstrate how the choices of the valuation parameters and distributions used to characterize uncertainty in the model affect the estimates of the value of information.     

A Methodology for Risk Analysis Based on Hybrid Bayesian Networks: Application to the Regasification System of Liquefied Natural Gas Onboard a Floating Storage and Regasification Unit

This article presents an iterative six‐step risk analysis methodology based on hybrid Bayesian networks (BNs). In typical risk analysis, systems are usually modeled as discrete and Boolean variables with constant failure rates via fault trees. Nevertheless, in many cases, it is not possible to perform an efficient analysis using only discrete and Boolean variables. The approach put forward by the proposed methodology makes use of BNs and incorporates recent developments that facilitate the use of continuous variables whose values may have any probability distributions. Thus, this approach makes the methodology particularly useful in cases where the available data for quantification of hazardous events probabilities are scarce or nonexistent, there is dependence among events, or when nonbinary events are involved. The methodology is applied to the risk analysis of a regasification system of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on board an FSRU (floating, storage, and regasification unit). LNG is becoming an important energy source option and the world's capacity to produce LNG is surging. Large reserves of natural gas exist worldwide, particularly in areas where the resources exceed the demand. Thus, this natural gas is liquefied for shipping and the storage and regasification process usually occurs at onshore plants. However, a new option for LNG storage and regasification has been proposed: the FSRU. As very few FSRUs have been put into operation, relevant failure data on FSRU systems are scarce. The results show the usefulness of the proposed methodology for cases where the risk analysis must be performed under considerable uncertainty.