Washington — Despite being short-staffed, the Chemical Safety Board is “working hard to rebuild and revitalize” the company, Chair Steve Owens stated at an April 27 public enterprise assembly.
Owens highlighted a number of efforts, together with filling staffing vacancies, progress on its investigative backlog and issuing security alerts – the latest masking emergency discharges from strain launch valves.
CSB intends to shut its backlog of investigations by the top of the calendar yr, Owens stated. After issuing an investigation report on an August 2020 chemical launch and hearth in Westlake, LA, CSB, as of April 24, has closed 87% of its investigations, the company web site exhibits.
During the assembly, Steve Klejst, company government director of investigations and suggestions, stated CSB is “in the final stages of the onboarding process” to rent three chemical incident investigators and a supervisor. He added that additional investigator recruitment is ongoing for positions to help the company’s program on unintended launch reporting.
The assembly marked the primary since Catherine J.Ok. Sandoval was sworn in for a five-year time period. By becoming a member of Owens and CSB member Sylvia Johnson, Sandoval returned a quorum to the company. “Kathy has stepped into that role and done it very nicely.”
Among Sandoval’s early duties: talking throughout a digital convention analyzing synthetic intelligence and its potential influence on security within the trade.
Sandoval stated one development the company continues to watch entails what she calls “undersensoring” – when a scarcity of sensors at a facility contributes to incidents.
