The Trump administration has moved to rewrite rules designed to prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities across the country.
The Environmental Protection Agency filed a motion in federal court on Thursday pulling back the safety regulations, introduced last year under former president Joe Biden. The rules, which took effect in May, require sites that handle hazardous chemicals to adopt new safeguards including explicit measures to prepare for storms, floods and other climate-related risks.
They also require some facilities to scrutinize their use of particularly dangerous chemicals and switch to safer alternatives as well as to share more information with neighbors and emergency responders. In addition, facilities that have suffered prior accidents also must undergo independent audits.
President Trump’s E.P.A. intends to rewrite those rules, the agency said in a filing with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. That essentially makes moot a legal challenge launched last year by a group of Republican Attorneys-General, as well as the chemicals industry, which argued that the rules imposed undue burdens on companies with little safety benefit.
The American Chemistry Council, a main industry group and participant in the legal challenge, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earthjustice, a nonprofit law group that sued the first Trump organization more than 200 times in support of environmental rules, condemned the move. “Chemical explosions force entire neighborhoods to evacuate. First responders have died rushing into disasters they weren’t warned about,” said Adam Kron, an attorney at the advocacy organization. “Workers have suffered burns, lung damage, and worse, all because companies cut corners to save money.”
The move comes as the Trump administration has embarked on a broad dismantling of climate and environmental policy across the federal government. The E.P.A. did not detail in its filing the specifics of its planned rewrite, and Molly Vaseliou, an agency spokeswoman, said the agency would not have comment beyond the filing. While the rule took effect last May, some requirements were to be phased in over several years, which means some of the practices it requires might not yet be in place.
In a letter sent to the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, in January, industry groups including the American Chemistry Council asked for a reconsideration of many of the rules’ main components. “The facilities affected by this program are vital components of the U.S. economy, supporting millions of jobs, driving innovation and maintaining our global competitiveness,” the groups said. “It is imperative that E.P.A. take immediate action to fix critical areas of this rule.”
They also asked the agency to immediately shut down a public data tool that had allowed communities to look up details of local sites that store hazardous chemicals, including information on past accidents.
The planned rewrite is the latest in a prolonged policy tussle over strengthening what is known as the Risk Management Program. First introduced in 1996, the RMP regulates nearly 12,000 facilities that handle hazardous chemicals, including factories, wholesalers, oil refineries, natural gas plants, wastewater treatment plants and fertilizer distributors.
Many of those facilities are critical infrastructure, but also a risk to nearby communities, storing large quantities of highly hazardous substances like chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and vinyl chloride.
More than 130 million people live within three miles of sites that handle hazardous chemicals that were covered by the Biden-era rule, the E.P.A. has estimated. A 2020 Congressional Research Service report said that a “worst-case scenario” accident at any of 2,000 of the most hazardous sites could endanger 100,000 people or more.
Former President Barack Obama tried to strengthen the rules after a deadly 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas killed 15 people and injured more than 160. The first Trump administration halted the tougher requirements before they took effect. President Biden then reintroduced tougher rules in 2021, and finalized them last year.
