House Subcommittee Plans Field Hearing After Wetlines Bill Markup Is Postponed

This story appears in the Nov. 16 print edition of Transport Topics.

A House subcommittee was scheduled to hear testimony at a Nov. 16 field hearing in Baltimore on a controversial House bill that would prohibit the transportation of flammable liquids in unprotected product piping both on existing and on newly manufactured cargo tank trucks.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials, called the hearing after the “last-minute concerns” of some committee members caused the postponement of a scheduled Nov. 5 markup of the bill.

The hearing will be preceded by a tour of a cargo tank manufacturing facility in Baltimore to give panel members a firsthand look at the potential dangers associated with using welding equipment to repair cargo tankers or to retrofit equipment to purge wetlines.

In a letter to Bill Graves, president of American Trucking Associations, Brown said the field hearing will focus on “unresolved issues.”

Barbara Windsor, ATA’s first vice chairwoman, is among those scheduled to testify at the hearing.

The wetlines requirement was included in the proposed reauthorization bill for the Department of Transportation’s Hazardous Materials Safety Program, introduced in the House on Nov. 4.

A congressional source told Transport Topics that some committee members were caught by surprise when Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) pulled the hazmat safety provisions from the committee’s broad highway reauthorization bill and introduced them in a separate measure also on Nov. 4, scheduling the markup for just one day later.

Several proposals are likely to be discussed when the bill gets to markup after the Baltimore hearing, the source said.

One would extend the requirement for existing cargo tank fleet wetlines retrofits to 20 years, from the current 10 years; another would extend the requirement for newly manufactured tankers to four years, from the current language calling for two years.

A third measure would add language to allow wetlines purging technologies developed in future years to be used as they come onto the market, the source said.

A committee spokeswoman declined to comment on the nature of the concerns Oberstar mentioned.

“We are pleased that there were enough questions about the wetlines ban and other aspects of the hazmat reauthorization that the Transportation Committee decided to look at the issue a little longer,” John Conley, president of the National Tank Truck Carriers, told TT. “There is no magic deadline by which this legislation must be completed, and taking time to look at the impact this unnecessary and potentially unsafe bill could have on the tank truck industry is time well spent.”

At the Nov. 5 committee meeting, Oberstar scolded some House transportation committee members for delaying consideration of the bill that would require all cargo tankers to install wetlines retrofits by 2020. Newly manufactured cargo tank trucks would be required to have wetlines purging equipment two years after the bill is passed.

“As is characteristic of the legislative process, those outside interests who have concerns wait until the last minute to come with incomplete, inadequate or, in some cases, misleading information,” Oberstar said at a Nov. 5 committee meeting. He said he was “exasperated with the disrespect to the committee.”

Oberstar, who has been highly critical of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s oversight of the industry on the wetlines issue and the accuracy of its wetlines mishap database, said he will reschedule the markup shortly after the Baltimore field hearing.

NTTC and ATA have opposed the legislation because they said it is both costly and unnecessary.

Richard Moskowitz, ATA vice president and regulatory affairs counsel, said the hazmat transportation industry, with more than 50,000 gasoline shipments a day, has an impeccable safety record and that retrofitting existing cargo tankers with purging equipment could cause more injuries and deaths in workshops than it would prevent on the nation’s highways.

“If you look at the historical record — the number of incidents that have occurred involving cargo tank wetlines — it’s clear that the risk of a serious incident occurring from wetlines is infinitesimally small,” Moskowitz said.

More workers are killed welding and cutting tankers in shops than are killed in wetlines-related accidents on highways, he said.

“Welding a purging system onto a cargo tank that has previously been in service is a very dangerous activity,” Moskowitz said.

Steve Niswander, vice president of safety policy and regulatory relations for Groendyke Transport, Enid, Okla., said he is very concerned about the dangers of vapors escaping as tanks are cut and welded during the installation process.

The issue also needs further study, Niswander said, to ensure that the accidents resulting from tank ruptures are not incorrectly identified as wetlines mishaps.

“The tank itself would rupture in most cases if something ran into it before it ever got to the wetlines,” Niswander said.

Only one company, in New York City, makes the retrofits for cargo tank fleets, he said.