GOVERNMENT
House Hearings Probe Problems of Hazardous Materials Transportation Aim is legislation to improve system that regulates shipment of hazardous materials, training of local emergency response teams Janice R. Long, C&EN Washington
Crafting legislation that will both ensure the safety of hazardous materials transportation in the U.S. and provide adequate funding for enhanced training for local emergency response teams is the top priority this year for the House Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, chaired by Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D.-Calif.). As the subcommittee found out during two days of hearings earlier this month, there is room for improvement in the system that regulates the shipment of hazardous materials. More than 1.5 billion tons of gasoline, chemicals, explosives, and hazardous wastes are transported across the U.S. annually. It is estimated that on any given day more than 250,000 shipments of hazardous materials are made on the nation's highways, railroads, and waterways. And accidents, although infrequent, do happen. In the state of Illinois alone last year, according to Rep. Cardiss Collins (D.-I1L), chairman of the Government Operations Subcommittee on Government Activities & Transportation, there were a number of hazardous materials transportation incidents, including: • Rail spills of phosphoric acid and potash in Chicago residential areas. • Leak of 180 gal of an herbicide in a motel parking lot. • A two-railcar spill of 500 gal of 20
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sulfuric acid and 100,000 lb of ammonium nitrate that caused the evacuation of hundreds of people. • A propane truck explosion at a Coca Cola bottling plant that caused the evacuation of 200 employees. • Leak of morpholine from a truck on Interstate 94, on a day hot enough to make morpholine explode, causing 200 residents to be evacuated. Among suggestions for improvement presented to the subcommittee were rerouting shipments of hazardous materials, providing more and better information on what is shipped where and how it is shipped, and providing better training programs for emergency response teams. But the subcommittee didn't find much agreement on who should be responsible for what. New Jersey Assemblyman Byron Baer told the subcommittee that "government has too often been 'asleep at the wheel' when it comes to recognizing the potential danger inherent in the transportation of hazardous materials." He views trucks and railcars as "mobile chemical plants—potential catastrophes going somewhere to happen," adding that "Bhopal on wheels is not a fantasy." Baer pointed out that over the past 16 years more than 3700 hazardous materials incidents occurred in New Jersey. In 1987 alone there were 174 incidents with 144 of them involving motor carriers, 24 rail carriers, and five freight forwarding terminals. In addition, he told the subcommittee, during the past three years New Jersey's State Police had inspected 8700 trucks carrying hazardous materials. Of that number, about 36% were immediately placed out of service and not allowed to leave the inspection site without repair or correction of violations. "Must we wait for hundreds of
bodies in our streets before we wake to the need for stronger regulation of the transportation of lethal chemicals through our neighborhoods?" Baer asked the subcommittee. He said he supports legislation, and has sponsored such legislation in the state legislature, that would result in better enforcement of hazardous materials transportation laws, allow for the safe routing of hazardous materials, provide for proper training of both enforcers and transporters, and p r o v i d e the necessary funding, through permit fees, for these programs. However, Baer basically believes that this should be done on the state—not the national—level, because "only the individual states know what safety measures will best meet their local conditions and circumstances." He maintained that states have been very responsible in enacting legislation in this area and have not placed an undue burden on interstate commerce. Baer does not believe that state permitting fees should be replaced with a Congressionally imposed national permitting fee unless the revenues are returned to the states. He does, however, support "federal legislation mandating more accurate information from transporters and studies on the flow of and risks posed by the transportation of hazardous materials." Baer's position was almost diametrically opposite that presented by Ronald M. Jacobson, logistics manager for Rohm & Haas, testifying on behalf of the Chemical Manufacturers Association. He stressed the idea that national regulatory uniformity should be the primary goal of any amendments to the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act. CMA pointed out that at present there is a proliferation of differing
Bills target wide range of hazardous materials transportation issues A number of bills dealing with hazard ous materials transportation issues have been introduced in this first session of the 101st Congress. They include: H.R. 53, introduced by Rep. Cardiss Collins (D.-lll.), which sets up a federal grant program to aid states in determining transportation routes and parking sites for hazardous material cargoes; requires mandatory, annual registration of transporters, equipment manufacturers, and repairers; and im poses a 0.01 cent-per-gal tax on gaso line for a hazardous materials transpor tation emergency response trust fund. H.R. 584, introduced by Rep. Dean A. Gallo (R.-N.J.), which requires the Secretary of Transportation to con
state and local regulations concern ing all aspects of hazardous materi als transportation. It is sometimes difficult just to learn about, much less comply with, these require ments. Conflicting state and local requirements "make compliance and enforcement difficult, and dimin ish overall transportation safety," Jacobson told the subcommittee. What CMA would like Congress to do is give the Department of Transportation greater, not less, au thority to determine whether state or local requirements are preempted by federal requirements and make it clear that the federal govern ment—through DOT—has primary responsibility for promulgating haz ardous materials t r a n s p o r t a t i o n regulations. "State and local governments," Jacobson said, "should adopt the fed eral regulations and lend their en forcement capability to that of the federal government" to improve sig nificantly the safe movement of haz ardous materials. And state and lo cal governments do have an essen tial role to play, CMA believes, in identifying routes for hazardous ma terials traffic. "DOT is simply not in a position—nor would it be ap propriate for DOT—to select such routes," CMA said. It envisions a system under which DOT would set guidelines for states and com munities to use in selecting routes and have the authority to determine
duct a region-by-region analysis of the flow of hazardous materials on high ways, water, and railroads to deter mine the identity and amount of haz ardous materials that are transported within each region, the routes used to transport these materials, and the lo cation and frequency of incidents resulting from that transport. H.R. 2549, introduced by Rep. Jack Buechner (R.-Mo.) and Rep. Cardiss Collins (D.-lll.), which estab lishes a $20 million program to pro vide grants to state and local govern ments to improve planning and train ing for emergency response personnel; mandates new safety training standards for hazardous materials handlers; re
whether a state or local route plan is consistent with its guidelines. Commenting on other areas, CMA said it supports a federal, as op posed to a state, registration pro gram for companies involved in shipping and transporting hazard ous materials. It also favors nation al safety fitness requirements for carriers that transport Class A and Β explosives—materials that are tox ic by inhalation—and highway route controlled quantities of radioactive materials. The position of DOT, as present ed by Travis P. Dungan, the recent ly appointed administrator of DOT's research and special programs, falls somewhere between those of As semblyman Baer and CMA. Dungan asked the subcommittee's support for DOT-initiated legislation that he said would "establish three areas of federal jurisdiction to reduce any existing confusion over nonfederal jurisdictional responsibilities." The legislation, however, is limited and does not cover the areas CMA is most worried about. As explained by Dungan, the DOT legislation would "carve out exclu sive federal statutory authorities prohibiting nonfederal jurisdictions from enacting their own laws or regulations affecting hazard com munication, written incident report ing, and container manufacture and use. In addition, it would set stan dards for determining when state
quires DOT to set uniform, national standards for designating hazardous materials transportation routes; requires carriers of extremely hazardous mate rials to obtain special safety permits from DOT; sets minimum daily civil penalties of $250 for an employee and $1000 for others for each viola tion of hazardous materials transport regulations. H.R. 2584, introduced by Rep. Douglas Applegate (D.-Ohio), which sets up an automated central reporting system and data center to provide in stantaneous technical information to emergency response teams at the site of a hazardous materials transporta tion action.
and local laws and regulations are "inconsistent" with federal laws and regulations and thus preempted. And third, the legislation would, for the first time, mandate uniform federal highway routing standards that states would have to follow in designating routes used for ship ping hazardous materials. Just what the subcommittee will do about hazardous materials trans portation issues remains unclear. As Rep. Mike Parker (D.-Miss.) told Dungan, if the Secretary of Trans portation had exercised all the au thority he was given in the 1974 Hazardous Materials Transportation Act, "we wouldn't be holding these hearings today." Parker believes that the response of the federal agencies involved in regulating the trans port of hazardous materials "has been totally inadequate." Rep. Douglas Applegate (D.-Ohio) believes the subcommittee has "a good chance of coming up with a far improved system this year." The subcommittee's ranking mi nority member, Rep. Bud Shuster (R.-Pa.), on the other hand, ex pressed his concern about coming up with a multibillion-dollar solu tion to a relatively minor problem. In the interest of "keeping things in perspective," he pointed out that of the 48,200 deaths in highway ac cidents last year, only 17 of them were due to accidents involving haz ardous materials. D July 24, 1989 C&EN
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