Philadelphia, state join suit against EPA over chemical-safety rules at industrial sites

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

File photo

Philadelphia Energy Solutions' refinery.

January 30, 2020 | 9:10 AM

Kimberly Paynter / WHYY

Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in South Philadelphia. Workers are in the process of neutralizing a highly toxic substance as part of a shut down.

Philadelphia and Pennsylvania sued the Environmental Protection Agency Wednesday in a challenge to the agency’s rollback of an Obama-era chemical safety rule related to industrial facilities like the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery complex.

The city and state joined 13 other states and the District of Columbia in a federal lawsuit that says the new rules violate the Clean Air Act.

Patrick O’Neill, divisional deputy for environmental law for the city, said the EPA wants to reverse a common-sense rule regulating facilities that use highly toxic chemicals.

“We think this is a very important effort and, given what happened at the PES refinery, this is absolutely not the correct time to be rolling back protections for the public and the environment,” O’Neill said.

The EPA’s Risk Management Plan Rule governs public disclosures surrounding the use and accidental release of toxic chemicals, such as the deadly hydrofluoric acid released during the explosion last June at PES, as well as response.

The Obama administration had boosted those rules, but the Trump administration’s EPA announced a rollback of some of those new provisions, including the requirement of industry to assess the use of safer alternatives to chemicals like hydrofluoric acid, as well as the requirement that the EPA conduct an independent investigation into the release.