As the Pump Handle noted earlier this week, OSHA submitted its draft final rule on construction cranes and derricks to OMB on Friday of last week. It’s good news that the process is now moving along.
The cranes and derricks rule has been a long saga, and it was one of the case studies in our report last year on the costs of regulatory delay.
By OSHA’s estimates, 89 people are killed and 263 are injured each year in construction crane incidents. The existing safety standards for the use of cranes, derricks, and other heavy machinery at construction sites are now almost 40 years old and are in dire need of updating to account for changes in technology and construction practices. Beginning in the mid-1990s, industry itself began petitioning OSHA for stronger and more comprehensive regulations, and in 2004 a committee of industry, labor, and government representatives reached agreement on a draft proposed rule. That’s the rule that is now a bit closer to finally becoming a reality.
The rule requires operators, inspectors, and assembly and disassembly workers to be certified, and it also helps account for many of the technological changes that have occurred since 1971. OSHA estimates that the new rule could cut the death and injury rate by more than half.
The regulatory delay in the cranes rule has had a cost in human lives. It's long past time we got this one right.
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Ben Somberg | April 16, 2010
As the Pump Handle noted earlier this week, OSHA submitted its draft final rule on construction cranes and derricks to OMB on Friday of last week. It’s good news that the process is now moving along. The cranes and derricks rule has been a long saga, and it was one of the case studies in […]
Matthew Freeman | April 16, 2010
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is upset with the way administrative law works. On Thursday they released their annual report on the costs of regulations. I hesitate to dignify it with pixels, but here goes. CEI has a problem with agency rulemaking altogether: Congress should answer for the compliance costs (and benefits) of federal regulations. Requiring […]
Alice Kaswan | April 15, 2010
In “Minding the Climate Gap: What’s at Stake if California’s Climate Law Isn’t Done Right and Right Away,” released Wednesday, researchers from several California universities have correlated the relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and associated co-pollutants in several California industries. The results demonstrate that California’s climate law, AB 32, enacted in 2006, could help […]
Ben Somberg | April 15, 2010
Senator Frank Lautenberg today released the “Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 ” — a bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act. Representatives Rush and Waxman released a discussion draft of related legislation in the House. Here are reactions from Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Working Group, Natural Resources Defence Council, and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Familes […]
William Funk | April 13, 2010
Informal rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act was, as the late Kenneth Culp Davis opined, “one of the greatest inventions of modern government.” It not only decreased the procedural requirements (and therefore the overhead) of “formal” rulemaking, but it also broadened the universe of persons able to participate in the informal proceeding to the public […]
Celeste Monforton | April 12, 2010
Cross-posted from The Pump Handle. Last month, the US Dept of Labor (DOL) and MSHA were celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. Their proclamations said: “…this law represents a watershed moment in the improvement of occupational health and safety in the United States. It was the precursor to the […]
Ben Somberg | April 9, 2010
CPR President Rena Steinzor (former director of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic) and Robert Kuehn, president of the Clinical Legal Education Association, have a post over at ACSBlog putting the recent attack on the independence of the Maryland clinic into the context of other such moves across the country. The Maryland legislature recently […]
Daniel Farber | April 9, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. When I sat down to write this blog posting, I started by going through my environmental law casebook and noting down the cases in which Justice Stevens had written the majority opinion or a major dissent. When I got done, I was startled by the central role Justice Stevens had played […]
Yee Huang | April 9, 2010
In preparing CPR’s recent white paper, Failing the Bay: Clean Water Act Enforcement in Maryland Falling Short, we conducted interviews with sixteen stakeholders across Maryland to assess MDE’s enforcement program as it operates on the ground. Collectively the stakeholders have decades of experience with enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as […]