Industry and Regulators Working Together in Preventing Accidents

The number and severity of chemical accidents have been greatly reduced in Contra Costa County over the last ten plus years, since the implementation of the California Accidental Release Prevention and the County's Industrial Safety Ordinance programs.  This includes the impact on a facility, the workers at that facility and the community members surrounding the facility.    Contra Costa Health Services is responsible for regulating business that poses a risk to nearby communities from a release of a chemical, or a fire or explosion.  We are also tasked to communicate and educate the public about these risks. The regulated facilities are required to implement a number of prevention programs designed to improve process safety.  Many of these requirements are very specific to the Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), which is much more stringent than OSHA's Process Safety Management and EPA's Risk Management Program and may be the most stringent requirements in the world.  The presentation will show that working with the regulated community the accidents that resulted in the surrounding community seeking medical attention and the injuries or death of employees has been reduced and by doing so has reduced the societal risks.

The presentation will summarize our prevention program requirements and present a review of our incident history.  The presentation will quantify the number and criticality of deficiencies to be corrected from the audits has reduced over time.   The presentation of the paper will include a panel of industry representatives to discuss how they correct the deficiencies to implement a successful process safety program that includes both management support and employee's buy-in.  These efforts included multi-million dollar capital improvements that enhance safe operations of the facility that directly reduces the probability of an accidental release to the nearby community; lessons learned in implementing various prevention programs; training and communications that led to improved safety culture where safety is truly embraced and not seen as a paperwork exercise.  To that extent we have seen process safety elements that have been embraced by the corporation and are implemented at sister sites outside of the county jurisdiction.  We believe that regulatory compliance in process safety directly contributed to making the communities safer.