Congressional Hearings for Week of 4-19-10

The Congressional Record Daily Digest for last Thursday provided a list (pgs D394-7) of Congressional Hearings planned for the coming week. There were three hearings listed that might be of interest to the chemical security community. Additionally, the House Homeland Security Committee has announced a field hearing for Monday that is not included in the list. Pipeline Security On Monday, April 19th, the Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight, will be looking at pipeline security issues at a field hearing in Plant City, Fl. The ranking member of that subcommittee, Rep. Bilirakis (R, FL) represents portions of this area which has seen a number of pipeline releases due to vandalism, including an anhydrous ammonia release in November 2007. There will be witnesses from DOT and TSA as well as local law enforcement and emergency response agencies. This hearing will not be web cast. Rail Security The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will take a look at rail security issues on April 22nd at 2:30 pm EDT. The current witness list includes representatives from GAO and DHS as well as Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and CSX Transportation. The presence of the CSX representative tends to indicate that freight rail security will be at least briefly addressed. I assume that GAO will have a new rail security report to present to the Committee; their last freight rail security report was issued just about a year ago. WMD Issues The House Homeland Security Committee will be looking at WMD issues on April 21st at 10:00 am EDT. Since this is being billed as a ‘A Discussion with the WMD Commissioners’, I expect that the major focus of this hearing will be on bio-security issues. The problems of chemical weapons and chemical facilities as potential chemical weapons may be briefly addressed. PHMSA Oversight On April 22nd the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will be conducting an oversight hearing on PHMSA. Readers of the Journal of Hazmat Transportation will have seen my piece (subscription required) on the recent DOT IG investigation of PHMSA’s program for classifying explosives; that will probably be the focus of this hearing.