NACD Advances Legislative Priorities for Chemical Distribution

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) is pleased to announce its legislative priorities for 2013 in the first session of the 113th Congress.

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• Regulatory Overreach – Chemical distributors are subject to numerous agency regulations.  Many of these regulations are necessary and beneficial but some are duplicative, confusing, and overly burdensome to business in relation to their benefits. NACD supports legislation to reform the regulatory process by requiring more thorough cost-benefit analyses on regulatory proposals, ensuring that indirect and cumulative costs on small business are considered, and subjecting major regulations to review. NACD will also work with Congress to protect against improper agency encroachments on regulatory functions already performed by the appropriate agency authority, such as the use of vague provisions like the general duty clause of the Clean Air Act. Finally, more thorough cost-benefit analyses should be required of the Agencies to consider indirect and cumulative costs on chemical distributors.
• Chemical Facility Security – The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) took effect in 2007 and requires high-risk chemical facilities to conduct security vulnerability assessments and implement site security plans (SSPs). NACD supports efforts to make these standards permanent. NACD also urges Congress to adequately fund CFATS. These changes would allow for continued security enhancements and regulatory certainty for both industry and the government.
• Toxic Substances Control Act reform – NACD supports modernizing the current law to improve its workability and improve public confidence in EPA's role as a regulator. We support common sense, risk based reform that maintains the industry's ability to innovate. However, chemical distributors have a unique role in the supply chain between the producers and end-use product manufacturers. Distributors often blend existing chemical components for customers, through processes that do not change molecules or create new chemical reactions. These mixtures frequently reduce chemical potency and increase safety. Changes to the law should recognize that chemical distributors should not be subject to the same burdensome testing or use and exposure data requirements as the manufacturers on either end of the supply chain who are actually creating new chemicals and products. 
• Small Business Impacts – Most chemical distributors are small businesses that are disproportionately impacted by changes in tax, energy and health care policies. As the vital link in the value chain and stable job creators in local economies, NACD will work with Congress to ensure its small business concerns are heard in the debate. Additionally, NACD recognizes that compliance assistance, particularly with small businesses, is the most effective method to ensure compliance and supports agency policies that encourage compliance assistance rather than first using the enforcement hammer.    

NACD and its over 400 member companies are vital to the chemical supply chain providing products to over 750,000 end users. They make a delivery every six seconds while maintaining a safety record that is more than twice as good as all manufacturing combined. NACD members are leaders in health, safety, security, and environmental performance through implementation of Responsible Distribution, established in 1991 as a condition of membership and a third-party verified management practice. For additional information on our members, their safety record or NACD, visit NACD at www.nacd.com.

CONTACT:
Lucinda Schofer
703/527-6223 (NACD)

SOURCE National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD)