Illinois Fertilizer & Chemical Association
Supply · Service · Stewardship

Ammonia Update: Illinois Rules and PSM Status

We expect that the changes to the Illinois anhydrous ammonia rules will be adopted on June 14 and effective on July 1, 2016.  Many of the more significant provisions of the rule that require installation of new equipment has an effective date of December 31, 2020.  For an overview of the significant changes in the proposed rule, click here.  Many of the requirements in the Illinois regulations will help you also assure compliance with the OSHA Process Safety Management regulations which are still set to go into effect on October 1, 2016.  There are efforts in federal court and on Capitol Hill to change the PSM applicability to ag retailers or require OSHA to undergo rulemaking before enforcing the rules, but as of today as of today, the safe thing to say is that the PSM regulations will become effective on October 1.  With that being said, we advise our members to become familiar with the elements of PSM and there's no better way to do that than to visit the Asmark Institute's PSM/RMP on-line tools which are available free of charge at https://www.asmark.org/myPSM/    If you have questions about your ammonia operations, please call our office at 309.827.2774 and ask for John Rebholz.