OMB Approves McKenzie Valve Emergency ICR

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved a 6 month emergency information collection request (ICR) from DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). This ICR was supporting the reporting requirements of FRA’s Railworthiness Directive for McKenzie DNNR valves that was published in the Federal Register on Wednesday (80 FR 14027 - 14029) along with the ICR notice (80 FR 14238 - 14239)

The ICR was approved for 6 months. The FRA estimates that it will affect 100 railcar owners (and 15,000 railcars). Two separate reports required by the Directive are authorized by the ICR with an estimated 200 reports for each with a total reporting burden of 500 hours. This does not include the time needed to change out the valves; it just covers reporting requirements.

Interestingly the Railworthiness Directive reports that McKenzie sold about 11,200 of the affected 3” valves and about 37,000 of the 1” and 2” valves. They also noted that they expected that the 3” valves would be found on about 6,000 railcars where it would have been used as a replacement valve.