Accidents such as a fatal collision between a gasoline truck and a passenger car last July could be prevented if Congress approves new hazardous material transportation legislation, according to the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Rep. James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., said Friday he was concerned that the Federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had not taken steps to ban the transportation of gasoline and other fuels in unprotected external piping on tank trucks, known as “wet lines.”

Under a PHMSA exemption, carriers may legally carry from 30 to 50 gallons of flammable materials in wet lines if the transport of toxic or organic peroxide materials is banned.

Oberstar was reacting to the release by the National Transportation Safety Board of a report on a wreck in New Jersey where a car was engulfed in flames when a loading line on a tanker truck ruptured and spilled 13 gallons of gasoline.

On Nov. 4, Oberstar’s committee passed to the House the Hazardous Materials Safety Act. Under the bill, transport of flammable liquids would be banned in new tank trucks within two years, and all vehicles would have to comply by 2021.

The bill also calls for tighter regulations for transporting lithium batteries on aircraft, and new training standards for first responders.

- By R.G. Edmonson, The Journal of Commerce Online.

During a September 10 hearing of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (the Committee), testimony regarding the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) oversight and management of hazardous materials safety in the United States drew concerns from legislators. As part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), PHMSA regulates the transport of explosives, toxic chemicals, and fireworks, among others hazardous materials.

During his opening statements, Committee Chairman James Oberstar voiced criticism of current PHMSA procedures and processes regarding the transport of hazardous materials in the United States, calling them “completely unacceptable.”

He continued, saying that an investigation conducted by the Committee staff, and also by the DOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel III, revealed “a shocking number of failures by PHMSA to follow federal law in hazmat regulation, as well as outright neglect in regulating the transport of hazmat.”

Corrine Brown, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, offered damaging statistics regarding PHMSA’s track record, stating, “Each day, nearly 1.2 million shipments of hazardous materials are moved by all modes of transportation. Over the last decade, there have been over 170,000 incidents involving the transportation of hazardous materials, resulting in 134 fatalities, 2,783 injuries, and more than $631 million in property damage. More disturbing, PHMSA has only 35 inspectors to cover over 300,000 hazmat-related entities.”

In his testimony, Inspector General Scovel also criticized PHMSA, saying, “Regulating and monitoring the movement of hazardous materials is a critical part of ensuring the safety of the nation’s transportation system, and it is PHMSA’s role to properly assess all risks before allowing applicants to participate in commerce under special permits and approvals.”

A summary (PDF) of the Committee’s concerns with current PHMSA operations includes the following:

• The agency has granted 12 blanket waivers to trade associations for use by their members, which total more than 5,000 companies, without any evaluation of their fitness for waivers.
• PHMSA often fails to advise other government agencies of its decisions to waive regulations. In particular, PHMSA officials appear to go out of their way to avoid informing the Federal Aviation Administration of waivers involving air cargo.
• The agency issues special emergency waivers of regulations for shippers without any “meaningful justification” for the expedited action.
•  PHMSA’s failure to promptly address safety issues associated with special permits to transport bulk explosives and lithium batteries.

Of the non-emergency special permits studied in the investigation, 65% were either incomplete, lacking evidence showing the applicant’s safety record, or nonexistent, according to report. Furthermore, of the 16 companies that held the majority of the special permits studied, none fully complied with the terms and conditions of the permits.

Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari told the committee that he and Secretary Ray LaHood, who took over the department in February, have begun taking steps to correct the problems identified by investigators.

Pocari said the department has begun conducting a comprehensive review of permitting policies and procedures and will make the necessary revisions. It is also clarifying agency policy to ensure trade associations do not hold special permits, and it is overhauling the data and information technology systems in place to enhance productivity and accountability.

The oversight hearing was held as the committee prepares legislation to reauthorize the hazardous materials safety program, which expired last September. That legislation is expected to be included as part of the Surface Transportation Authorization Act (PDF), which was released in draft form in June.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is planning to conduct a public meeting to receive input and guidance for the upcoming Proof-of-Concept Study on the use of electronic data sharing in lieu of paper hazardous materials shipping documents.

The meeting will be held Tuesday, October 13, 2009, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and Wednesday, October 14, 2009, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the DOT Headquarters, West Building, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590.

Persons planning to attend should send an e-mail to ryan.paguet@dot.gov, including name and contact information (company/address/telephone). Due to the nature and length of the meeting, remote access/call-in capability will not be provided.

For further information, contact Ryan Paquet, P.G, Assistant Director, Office of International Standards, Office of Hazardous Materials Safety, Department of Transportation, Washington, DC 20590; (202) 366-0656.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) will conduct a public meeting in preparation for the 22^nd meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Dangerous Goods Panel (DGP), to be held October 5–16, 2009 in Montreal, Canada.

The public meeting will take place on Tuesday, September 29, 2009, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The meeting will be held at the DOT Headquarters, West Building, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590.

Conference call-in and “live meeting” capability will be provided for this meeting. Specific information on call-in and live meeting access will be posted when available on the PHMSA Web site.

For further information, contact Duane Pfund, Director, Office of International Standards, Office of Hazardous Materials Safety, Department of Transportation, Washington, DC 20590; (202) 366-0656.

Effective August 25, 2009, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is authorizing persons who offer lithium metal and lithium ion cells and batteries for transportation in commerce, and persons who transport lithium metal and lithium ion cells and batteries in commerce, to describe those articles in the same manner as recently adopted in international regulations. PHMSA will consider adopting these alternate shipping descriptions into the Hazardous Materials Regulations at a future date.

PHMSA is currently working on a rulemaking intended to enhance the safe transportation of lithium batteries. As part of this rulemaking, PHMSA is considering adoption of the international shipping descriptions for lithium metal and lithium ion batteries. To facilitate commerce, however, PHMSA believes shippers should be permitted to use the international lithium battery shipping descriptions for the domestic transportation of lithium batteries even though the shipping descriptions have not been adopted into the HMR. To that end, PHMSA has in its notice (PDF) identified in detail the corresponding entries in the Hazardous Materials Table in the HMR and the corresponding descriptions in the international regulations

Also with regard to such items, the Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA), is calling on the U.S. government to prohibit shipments of lithium batteries on passenger and all-cargo aircraft until new regulations are in place to ensure the safe transport of these hazardous materials.

During just the past 2 months, the organization asserts, fire, smoke, or evidence of fire associated with battery shipments has occurred aboard three separate U.S. airliners. ALPA said the incidents were similar to a 2006 battery fire aboard a DC-8 in Philadelphia, Pa. In that accident, the fire was severe and it prompted the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to recommend the full regulation of these types of batteries as dangerous goods.

For further information, contact Donald Burger, Office of Hazardous Materials Special Permits and Approvals, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, East Building, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, tel.: (202) 366-4535.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), has announced a public meeting to solicit comments on agenda items and potential rulemaking action regarding the use and applicability of international standards that will be discussed at the upcoming 35th Session of the United Nations Sub-Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods (UNSCOE TDG) in Geneva, Switzerland.

The public meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, June 17, 2009, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., at DOT Headquarters, West Building, Oklahoma City Conference Room, 1200 New Jersey Ave., SE, Washington D.C. 20590. Conference call-in and “live meeting” capability will be provided for this meeting. Specific access information will be posted online when available. For more details, see the notice (PDF) published in the Federal Register.

For further information, contact: Duane Pfund, Director, Office of International Standards, or Shane Kelley, International Transportation Specialist, Office of Hazardous Materials Safety, Department of Transportation at (202) 366-0656.

On March 30, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Secretary Ray LaHood joined China’s Minister of Transport Li Shenglin in signing an agreement to cooperate on the safe transportation of hazardous materials. The signing took place at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Secretary LaHood said that both nations’ industries — including manufacturing, agriculture, and medical research — need regular access to certain types of dangerous materials to conduct business.

“Chinese businesses ship billions of dollars worth of trade goods around the world each year, including to the United States,” he said. “We are eager to work together to make sure these items are transported safely. And I look forward to participating in this important mission.”

The U.S.-China Cooperative Project Arrangement on the Safe Transport of Dangerous Goods is intended to enable the countries to:

• Develop and strengthen avenues of communication concerning the safe transport of dangerous goods;
• Exchange and cooperate in the development of technical information to support regulatory development;
• Improve harmonization and increase safety by implementing international regulations developed by international forums;
• Cooperate on enforcement and investigative actions to improve dangerous goods transport safety, to include exchange of incident and violation data; and
• Organize training activities to strengthen the capabilities of managerial and technical personnel.

Secretary LaHood noted that the agreement is a step forward on improving transportation’s role in fostering a healthy climate for commerce and economic growth, while creating good jobs for both U.S. and Chinese citizens.

A joint transportation forum was held in Beijing last December to address transportation issues, including safety. The next such forum will be held at the end of this year in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to revise its regulations to ensure that shipping hazardous waste between countries for recovery is done in an environmentally sound and economically efficient manner. This proposal would make the  Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) hazardous waste transboundary shipment regulations more consistent with those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Specifically, the EPA proposes to:

• Update the existing RCRA regulation regarding the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes for recovery among countries belonging to the OECD to incorporate revisions made by the OECD;
• Amend the RCRA regulations for spent lead-acid batteries to add export notification and consent requirements;
• Revise the hazardous waste import requirements to require shipments to carry documentation of EPA’s consent to the import along with the hazardous waste manifest; and
• Provide a new address for export exception report submissions.

EPA has combined these actions because they all relate to the import or export requirements for hazardous waste shipments.

EPA is seeking comment on the proposed rulemaking. Comments may be submitted online through Regulations.gov and must be received no later than 60 days after the publication date for the Federal Register notice.

EPA has provided an unofficial pre-publication copy of the rule for public reference. This document has not been published in the Federal Register and is not an official version of the proposed rule. We will provide a link to the official proposed rule as soon as it is available.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) new report, Electronic Waste, EPA Needs to Better Control Harmful U.S. Exports through Stronger Enforcement and More Comprehensive Regulation, found that increasingly U.S. consumers are recycling their old electronics to prevent the environmental harm that can come from disposal. Concerns have grown, however, that some U.S. companies are exporting these items to developing countries, where unsafe recycling practices can cause health and environmental problems.

Items with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) are particularly harmful because they can contain 4 pounds of lead, a known toxin. Since January 2007 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required companies to notify EPA before exporting CRTs. In this context, GAO examined the fate of exported used electronics, the effectiveness of regulatory controls over the export of these devices, and options to strengthen federal regulation of exported used electronics. Among other things, GAO reviewed waste management surveys in developing countries, monitored e-commerce Web sites, and posed as foreign buyers of broken CRTs.

Some exported used electronics are handled responsibly in countries with effective regulatory controls and by companies with advanced technologies, but a substantial quantity ends up in countries where disposal practices are unsafe to workers and dangerous to the environment. Recent surveys made on behalf of the United Nations found that used electronics exported from the United States to many Asian countries are dismantled under unsafe conditions, using methods like open-air incineration and acid baths to extract metals such as copper and gold. GAO observed thousands of requests for these items on e-commerce Web sites during a 3-month period — mostly from Asian countries such as China and India, but also from some in Africa.

U.S. hazardous waste regulations have not deterred exports of potentially hazardous used electronics, the GAO found, primarily for the following reasons:

1. Existing EPA regulations focus only on CRTs. Other exported used electronics flow virtually unrestricted — even to countries where they can be mismanaged — in large part because relevant U.S. hazardous waste regulations assess only how products will react in unlined U.S. landfills.
2. Companies easily circumvent the CRT rule. GAO posed as foreign buyers of broken CRTs in Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, and other countries, and reports that 43 U.S. companies expressed willingness to export these items. Some of the companies, including ones that publicly tout their exemplary environmental practices, allegedly were willing to export CRTs in apparent violation of the CRT rule. GAO provided EPA with the names of these companies at EPA’s request.
3. EPA’s enforcement is lacking.

Since the CRT rule took effect in January 2007, Hong Kong officials have intercepted and returned to U.S. ports 26 containers of illegally exported CRTs. EPA has since penalized one violator, and then only long after the shipment had been identified by GAO, according to the report. EPA officials acknowledged compliance problems with its CRT rule but said that given the rule’s relative newness, their focus was on educating the regulated community. This reasoning appears misplaced, in the GAO’s opinion, given GAO’s observation of exporters willing to engage in apparent violations of the CRT rule, including some who are aware of the rule.

Finally, GAO found that the EPA has done little to ascertain the extent of noncompliance, and EPA officials said they have neither plans nor a timetable to develop an enforcement program. Beyond enforcing the CRT rule, the GAO said the EPA can take steps to ensure that the larger universe of potentially harmful electronic devices — such as computers, printers, and cell phones — are exported in a manner that does not harm health or the environment. Among the options raised by GAO are (1) expanding hazardous waste regulations to cover other exported used electronics; (2) submitting a legislative package to Congress for ratifying the Basel Convention, an international regime governing the import and export of hazardous wastes; and (3) working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agencies to improve identification and tracking of exported used electronics. According the the report, options such as these could help make U.S. export controls more consistent with those of other industrialized countries.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), in consultation with the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is proposing to modify its current security plan requirements governing the commercial transportation of hazardous materials by air, rail, vessel, and highway.

Based on an evaluation of the security threats associated with specific types and quantities of hazardous materials, the proposed rule would narrow the list of materials subject to security plan requirements and thus likely reduce associated regulatory costs and paperwork. The proposed rule also would clarify certain requirements related to security planning, training, and documentation and incorporate and build on recent international standards governing hazardous materials security.

Comments may be submitted by November 10, 2008.

For further information, contact: Susan Gorsky or Ben Supko, Office of Hazardous Materials Standards, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, (202) 366-8553.

Please see the notice in the Federal Register for more information.