EPA Gives Status of RRP Training and Certification Counts at June LEHA Workshop

The Lead and Environmental Hazard Association (LEHA) has been conducting a series of workshops across the country.   I attended the June 22, 2010 workshop held in Marlboro MA.  The workshops bring together representatives from federal, state and local agencies to discuss the RRP rule with interested parties including renovation contractors, lead inspectors and others in the industry providing services and or products related to the RRP.  The workshop was well attended and very informative.   The state of Massachusetts' Department of Occupational Safety (DOS) has taken delegated authority and enforcement of the rule from EPA.  Several representatives from DOS and the state were in attendance and participated in the workshop as panelists.

David Merrick, NARI Government Affairs Committee Chairman, and several others from NARI attended one of the workshops on Friday, July 23 in Baltimore.   Also present at that workshop was the region 3 EPA Regional Lead Enforcement Coordinator, Annie Skidmore.

 
At the meeting EPA's Annie Skidmore brought everyone up-to-date with the latest numbers (as of the June 22nd workshop) from the EPA regarding the RRP.  Thanks to David Merrick for sharing this information with me:

• 411,000 people have completed RRP Certified Renovator training.

• 40,000 firms have completed firm certification with 10-20,000 applications in the pipeline.

• EPA acknowledged that their initial estimate of the number of firms that will need to be certified and the number of workers that will need to be trained was way off the mark.  The EPA now says the 40,000 firms that are certified represent about 20% of the firms that will need to be certified.

• There are a total of 282 Certified Training Providers, many of which travel and train nationally.

• A total of 17,800 training courses have been held.