Dhs Publishes Top Screen Requirements – Flammable Chemicals

Late on Friday, June 8, 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published the guidelines that organizations will need to follow to submit the Top Screen information to the DHS Chemical Security Assessment Tool (CSAT). The information submitted through this secure web site will be used by DHS to determine if the chemical facility is a high-risk facility requiring further regulation under 6 CFR part 27, Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS).

The first people that will be required to submit information to the Top Screen module will be those facilities previously identified by DHS as probably being high-risk facilities. These organizations will be contacted by direct letters from DHS or by a notice being published in the Federal Register.

Two PDF documents show up on the DHS Top Screen instruction page, CSAT Top Screen Questions and CSAT Top Screen Users Manual. While both of these documents are rather long (80 pages and 66 pages respectively), it is obvious that DHS has worked hard to make this data collection effort as painless as possible. Facilities that will be required to submit information to the Top Screen Module will certainly want to print out the Top Screen Questions document and use it to record the information that they will be required to submit. This will help them to collect and organize the information in a way that will be easily accessible when they go online.

To make things easier to enter the necessary data on the chemicals of interest, DHS has taken the 300+ chemicals listed in Appendix A and grouped them into nine groups. Those groups are:

1. Toxic Chemicals.

2. Flammable Chemicals.

3. Explosive Chemicals.

4. Improvised Explosive Device (IEP) Precursor Chemicals.

5. Weapons of Mass Effect (WME) Chemicals.

6. Chemical Weapons/Chemical Weapon Precursor (CW/CWP) Chemicals.

7. Sabotage/Contamination Chemicals.

8. Mission Critical Chemicals.

9. Economically Critical Chemicals.

Each of these nine groups of chemicals will require responses to different kinds of questions based on they types of chemicals. In each category, however, there will be a preliminary list of chemicals from Appendix A for that category, with Yes and No checkbox beside the chemical. The default response will be No. The submitter will check the Yes box only for those chemicals on site or that had been on site within the last 12 months. Subsequent questions will only be asked for those chemicals marked Yes.

When determining how much of a chemical is considered to be on site, the Facility Submitter must take into consideration how much is in storage tanks, other containers, process equipment, and piping and in rail cars, both on site and on sidings immediately adjacent to the site. If there are documented procedures limiting the quantity on site, those can be taken into account. If there are no documented procedures, the maximum quantity possible in the various containers will be used to determine how much may be on site.

The Top Screen guidance introduces another concept that they use to evaluate the hazard associated with chemicals on site, the AHQ (Area of Highest Quantity). The AHQ tries to take into account the fact that if a chemical is distributed over a wide area in a facility it will probably be less of a risk during a terrorist attack, because it will be harder to release all of that chemical. To determine the AHQ you must determine where the largest concentration of the chemical is within a circle of a diameter of 170 feet. Thus, if there were a number of storage tanks on site, but were widely scattered you would use the largest tank or combination of tanks that would be in a single 170 foot diameter circle to determine the AHQ amount.

There are 89 chemical on the Flammable Chemicals list. These chemicals made the list because DHS believes that, if released, they will form a vapor cloud and, if ignited, have the potential for significant acute adverse consequences for human life or health due to explosion and fire. After selecting which flammable chemical(s) the facility has on site at or above the STQ limit the Top Screen will require the Submitter to provide the maximum amount on site and the maximum amount within the AHQ for each chemical identified. No other questions will be asked about flammable chemicals.

This will be a time consuming process to complete all of the Top Screen information, but it will not have to be done at a single sitting. The incomplete information will be saved between multiple sessions. Many facilities will not have to complete the entire 80 page process. There are many places, where depending on the answers to various questions, the Top Screen will notify the Submitter that the facility is not a high-risk facility and no further action is needed under 6 CFR part 27 until something changes at the facility. Some facilities will be told at the end of the submission that they are preliminarily designated a high-risk facility and must complete a Security Vulnerability Assessment (SVA) within 90 days. Most facilities, however, will have to complete the entire Top Screen only to be told that they might be declared a high-risk facility, but that determination will be made after further review at DHS. Those facilities will have to wait for a letter telling them what the preliminary out come will be.