Accidental Release Prevention Requirements: Risk Management Programs Under the Clean Air Act; Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention

What it does

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) is proposing to amend its Risk Management Program (RMP) regulations by making several proposed changes to the 2024 Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention (SCCAP) rule. The proposed revisions include changes to provisions relating to safer technology and alternatives analyses, information availability, third-party audits, employee participation, community and emergency responder notification, stationary source siting, natural hazards, power loss, declined recommendations documentation, emergency response exercises, process safety information (PSI) and recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices (RAGAGEP), deregistration form information collection, hot work permit retention, and the retail facility definition. These proposed amendments seek to improve chemical process safety by avoiding duplicative requirements, realigning RMP requirements with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) requirements, and eliminating unnecessary burdens placed on facilities where there is not specific data available to show that the current RMP standards would reduce or have reduced the number of accidental releases.

The Environmental Protection Agency's summary, as published in the Federal Register.

What it would change

1 part of Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations:

40 CFR 68

Before this

No earlier Federal Register document under regulation identifier 2050-AH37 since Jan. 1, 2025.

Since then:

• April 2, 2026 Proposed rule; extension of comment period. Accidental Release Prevention Requirements: Risk Management Programs Under the Clean Air Act; Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention; Extension of Comment Period

What happens next and when

Comments must be received on or before April 10, 2026. Comments on the information collection provisions of the proposed rule under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) must be received by the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OMB-OIRA) on or before March 26, 2026. Please refer to the PRA section under "Statutory and Executive Order Reviews" in this preamble for specific instructions.

The agency's dates, word for word.

Check it yourself

• The document in the Federal Register
• Docket EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-0313 on Regulations.gov
• Title 40 on eCFR

The record as published

Source: the Federal Register (public domain). The document in the Federal Register