BATON ROUGE (Legal Newsline) — Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has filed a petition urging Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to revise the agency's Risk Management Program Rule.
According to Landry’s office, the Obama administration rule aimed to reduce accidental releases at chemical facilities and improve emergency preparedness at those facilities.
“The 11th hour finalizing of this rule was neither well thought out nor safe,” Landry said. “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, signed by a coalition of 11 states, urges Pruitt to reconsider the rule, expand its review and revise it for a number of reasons. The coalition said the rule will, among other things, burden emergency responders without commensurate benefit and ignore numerous comments submitted by the Department of Homeland Security and state attorneys general.
“For the sake of protecting both public safety and jobs, I hope Administrator Pruitt will honor our request,” Landry said. “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.”
Joining Landry in the petition were chief legal officers from Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.