Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act
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| Long title | Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act |
|---|---|
| Acronyms (colloquial) | EPCRA |
| Enacted by | the 99th United States Congress |
| Effective | October 17, 1986 |
| Citations | |
| Public law | 99-499 |
| Statutes at Large | 100 Stat. 1728 |
| Codification | |
| Acts amended | CERCLA |
| Titles amended | 42 |
| U.S.C. sections created | 11001-11050 |
| Legislative history | |
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The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 is a United States federal law passed by the 99th United States Congress located at Title 42, Chapter 116 of the U.S. Code, concerned with emergency response preparedness.
On October 17, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA). This act amended the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund.
A free-standing law, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA) was commonly known as SARA Title III. Its purpose is to encourage and support emergency planning efforts at the state and local levels and to provide the public and local governments with information concerning potential chemical hazards present in their communities.
During the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in a village just South of Bhopal, India released approximately forty tons of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) into the air. Used in the manufacture of pesticides, MIC is a lethal chemical. The gas quickly and silently diffused over the ground and, in the end, killed, by some estimates, upwards to 5,000 people and injured 50,000 more. The only other place in the world that Union Carbide manufactured MIC is at its Institute plant in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia.
A week after the Bhopal accident, on December 11, 1984, Hank Karawan, then plant manager of the Union Carbide's Institute facility, held a press conference at which he expressed his confidence in the safety of the Institute plant's operations:
All of us here at the Institute plant have been deeply saddened by the tragic event in India and we extend our sympathy to all the people in the city of Bhopal. I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a point here this morning. Employees of the Institute plant have been manufacturing MIC in an effective and safe manner for seventeen years. We are extremely proud of that safety record. We are confident in the ability of our trained, dedicated, skilled, and experienced people. We are confident in the equipment that we operate, the safety precautions that we utilize, the monitoring systems that we have, and our plant emergency preparedness.
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