The Agricultural Retailers Association is strongly urging it membership to contact their local members of Congress regarding Fiscal Year 2017 budgeting about the Occupational Safety and Health Administration attempt to remove the “retail exemption” from the Process Safety Management (PSM) regulation.

 

ARA has termed removal of the exemption as “federal overreach” in putting new regulations on retailers of anhydrous ammonia that are unwarranted after two decades of the exemption being in place, and no obvious reason for removing it other than over reaction to the West Fertilizer explosion of April 2013.

 

Richard Gupton, ARA senior vice president public policy and counsel, explained that ammonium nitrate was the problem at West, Texas. He said, “In fact, the ammonia that was present at the West site had no issues with leaks or tank integrity despite being immediately adjacent to the ammonium nitrate detonation. The West incident in no way justifies imposing PSM on ammonia retail facilities.”

 

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