House Panel Approves Hazmat Safety Bill with Requirement for Wetlines Retrofits

This story appears in the Nov. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.

The House Transportation Committee last week approved a bill that would prohibit the transport of flammable liquids in unprotected product piping on new cargo tankers in two years and in existing tankers by the end of 2025.

Last-minute negotiations on the bill extended the original 2020 deadline by five years. It also added language that will allow the Department of Transportation secretary to approve new “alternative” technologies to retrofit purging equipment and to grant waivers to individual carriers if they are “in the public interest.”

Currently, there is only one company offering purge equipment retrofits, the committee said.

The bill, the Hazardous Transportation Safety Act of 2009, now goes to the full House.

Committee Chairman Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) said on Nov. 19 that he crafted the final amended version of the legislation after a two-hour meeting with Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.).

The legislation has been opposed by both American Trucking Associations and the National Tank Truck Carriers.

“While we continue to think this legislation is not needed based on safety experience, we are pleased that the date for a mandatory retrofit has been pushed back to 2025,” NTTC President John Conley said after the committee approved the amendment. “There is no doubt in my mind that this further delay will save lives in our tank repair shops.”

At a field hearing in Baltimore last week, Barbara Windsor, ATA’s first vice chairwoman, said the legislation would cost trucking $200 million to comply with and result in more fatalities.

“We believe that the industry’s safety record clearly demonstrates that a mandate for wetlines purging equipment is not justified,” Windsor told the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials at the Nov. 16 field hearing.

The total cost of retrofitting cargo tankers with purging equipment would be about $8,000 per cargo tanker, Windsor said.

The subcommittee’s field hearing was conducted at the request of Brown, who said she had “serious concerns” over the proposed wetlines ban legislation introduced in the House on Nov. 4 by Oberstar.

Oberstar originally had scheduled a mark-up of the bill for Nov. 5, but he postponed the session after Brown and other committee members asked for more time.

“The development of this legislation has been a challenging process to be sure and a great deal of work remains, but clearly the committee product reflects the efforts of members of the committee who now better understand the industry,” said Tim Lynch, an ATA senior vice president.

At last week’s field hearing, Brown and other members of the panel said they wanted to “strike a balance” between safety on the nation’s highways and the bill’s effect on the operations of the nation’s fleet of 30,000 tankers that transport flammable materials.

Windsor, who also is president of Hahn Transportation, New Market, Md., said the retrofitting expense would prevent her company and other carriers from deploying safety technologies.

Although a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration database analysis of cargo tank truck accidents over the past 10 years attributed six fatalities to wetlines releases, Windsor said that during the same period there were at least 20 fatalities from cargo-tank welding operations.

“Perhaps the greatest cost associated with the wetlines ban would be the additional lives lost as a result of retrofitting a large number of tank trucks,” Windsor said.

She said that over the past decade, flammable materials carriers have made more than 180 million shipments.

“These government statistics indicate that the risk of a fatal wetlines incident is approximately 1 in 30 million,” Windsor said. “In fact, the odds of being struck by lightning during your lifetime are 6,000 times greater than the odds of being killed in a wetlines incident.”

Oberstar has been a staunch advocate of tougher wetlines regulations and has accused PHMSA of “failing miserably” in protecting the public from the dangers of transporting hazardous materials.

At the hearing, Brown and other members of the subcommittee raised concerns over the fact that there is only one company that manufactures wetlines purging technologies.

“I know that there are patents pending on several technologies, but I believe we need to ensure that the equipment is available and that there is a robust industry that will spur innovation and competition,” Brown said.

John Cannon, vice president of sales and marketing for Walker Group Holdings, a cargo tank manufacturer based in Fond du Lac, Wis., urged the committee to explore alternative methods.

“I suggest to the committee that the risk is far greater than the 20 deaths that have occurred in the past 10 years,” Cannon said.

On the other hand, Ron Andenmatten, co-owner of Cargo Tank Concepts, Dix Hills, N.Y., which is believed to be the sole manufacturer of wetlines retrofit purging equipment, said he supported the ban.