Wetlines Proposal Will Burden Trucking, ATA Chairman Windsor Tells House Panel

This story appears in the April 18 print edition of Transport Topics.

Federal regulators should abandon a proposed rule that would restrict transportation of flammable liquids in the pipes used to load and unload gasoline and other flammable products, the chairman of American Trucking Associations told a House panel last week.

Despite an impressive safety record, hazmat haulers are burdened by inefficient, inequitable and overly complex regulations that are in need of streamlining, ATA’s Barbara Windsor told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s subcommittee on railroads, pipelines and hazardous materials.

The April 12 hearing sought testimony on the reauthorization of the hazardous materials safety program of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Windsor said hazmat truck drivers face redundant background checks, and carriers sometimes are held responsible for violations caused by shippers.

In addition, the new wetlines-purging proposal would be more dangerous than the problem it is designed to solve, Windsor said. Besides abandoning that rule, she also recommended ensuring equitable enforcement of hazmat regulations and reforming incident-reporting requirements.

Windsor said the industry is more concerned with the risk of tank-truck rollovers than wetlines incidents. 

“Incidents involving wetlines are extremely rare,” Windsor told the committee. “In fact, an individual is more likely to be struck by lightening than to be injured by a wetlines incident.”

As an alternative, ATA proposed that Congress direct the National Academy of Sciences to study the wetlines issue before any rulemaking, Windsor said.

Subcommittee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) agreed with Windsor, saying the wetlines rule is unneeded and an example of “regulatory overreach.”

“According to [Department of Transportation], from 1999 to 2009, there were eight incidents of fatality or injury attributed to wetline releases,” Shuster said. “There are over 50,000 cargo tank shipments of flammable liquids each day, meaning the risk of a fatal wetline incident is 1 in 30 million.”

Similarly, Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.) characterized the agency’s wetlines proposal and other regulations as “onerous.”

“It seems like we keep on regulating and have more oversight, and we’re not getting to the root of the problem,” Fincher said.

But Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) suggested that while PHMSA is moving in the right direction, there is “still a lot of room for improvement of the agency.”

“Fifty-one inspectors for 300,000 entities is not a lot,” Brown said.

Pointing to a 2009 committee investigation and inspector general report critical of PHMSA’s handling of the special-permits program, Brown suggested the agency has in the past actually not been providing enough oversight of hazmat transportation.

Brown said the committee should also have heard testimony from the DOT inspector general, not just PHMSA’s administrator, Cynthia Quarterman.

During her testimony, Quarterman agreed that tank-truck rollovers are a greater safety risk, but said that as a commodity, flammable liquids are the leading cause of hazmat incidents.

“The wetlines rule does address potential issues with flammable-liquid transportation,” Quarterman said.

Quarterman also testified that the agency has made “groundbreaking progress” since undergoing a major reorganization and an increase in staff beginning in 2009.

PHMSA had a “banner year” in 2010, recording the lowest number of hazmat incidents in the agency’s history, despite 1.2 trillion hazmat shipments by air, rail, highway and water, Quarterman said.

At the same time, Windsor called the safety and security record for hazmat transportation by truck “impressive.”

“Serious incidences have decreased by 30% over the past decade,” said Windsor, president of Hahn Transportation Inc., New Market, Md. “Further, the annual number of highway fatalities caused by hazardous materials has declined from 16 to 4.”

In testimony at an April 7 hearing of the subcommittee, John Conley, president of National Tank Truck Carriers, said the cost of implementing a wetlines-purging rule would far exceed the potential benefits.

“We remain concerned that any retrofit requirement could be detrimental to the safety of workers in tank-repair facilities,” Conley testified.