EPCRA: What you need to know

Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (SARA Title III): 42 USC 11001 to 11050, and regulations at 40 CFR 300, 40 CFR 350, 40 CFR 355, 40 CFR 370, and 40 CFR 372

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM)

EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT)

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA, or Superfund) was amended in October 1986 to add the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA). SARA Title III is also known as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). The two distinct goals of EPCRA are to encourage and support emergency planning for responding to chemical accidents and to provide local governments and the public with information about the possible chemical hazards in their communities. The major components of EPCRA are:

• Emergency planning,
• Emergency release notification, and
• Community right-to-know reporting.

EPCRA also provides for trade secret claims. Each of the EPCRA components is summarized below and described in detail in other topic sections of Enviro.BLR.com^(r). TABLE I in this section lists EPCRA's components, the corresponding EPCRA statutory section number, the corresponding section of the United State Code (USC), the citation for the EPCRA regulation, and the topic section of Enviro.BLR.com where the component is covered.

EPCRA COMPONENTS

Emergency Planning

EPCRA Sections 301, 302, 303, and 305

EPCRA Sections 301, 302, 303, and 305 outline emergency planning and release notification requirements and define "covered facilities" (facilities that must ...