BALTIMORE — A proposed House bill prohibiting the transportation of flammable liquids in unprotected product piping on cargo tank trucks would result in an overall increase in welding shop fatalities and cost the industry $200 million to comply, an American Trucking Associations official told a Congressional panel Monday.
“We believe that the industry’s safety record clearly demonstrates that a mandate for wetlines purging equipment is not justified,” Barbara Windsor, ATA’s first vice chairwoman, told the panel at a field hearing here Monday.
The total cost of retrofitting cargo tankers with purging equipment would be about $8,000 per cargo tanker, she told the House Transportation Committee’s railroads, pipelines, and hazardous materials subcommittee.
Although a recent Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration database analysis of wetlines incidents 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.
By Eric Miller
Staff Reporter
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