PHMSA Publishes 30-day ICR for 3 Hazmat Paperwork Requirements

The DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration published a 30-day information collection request notice in today’s Federal Register (80 FR 50070-50071) for revisions to three separate hazardous material shipping paperwork ICRs:

∙ Hazardous Materials Shipping Papers & Emergency Response Information (2137-0034);

∙ Radioactive (RAM) Transportation Requirements (2137-0510); and

∙ Subsidiary Hazard Class and Number/Type of Packagings (2137-0613)

Hazmat Shipping Papers

This ICR is being revised to reflect the termination of the pilot of the electronic shipping papers under the Hazardous Materials Automated Cargo Communications for Efficient and Safe Shipments program. This reflects a reduction in burden hours due to the elimination of the voluntary double reporting requirements for organizations participating in the pilot.

RAM Requirements

There is no change in the burden estimate for this ICR. The early resubmission for this ICR renewal is due to the two-year approval on the last renewal request because PHMSA failed to include some of the required paperwork in their data submission.

Subsidiary Hazard Class

There is no change in the burden estimate for this ICR. This is a simple renewal with no apparent change in the information collection.

Public Comments

As always public comments are being solicited on the ICR renewals. Comments can be emailed to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA; OIRA_Submission@omb.eop.gov). Comments should be submitted by September 17^th, 2015.

Commentary

These ICR notices are typically a pro-forma exercise that are usually ignored by everyone. The problem is that it frequently takes some digging to find out if minor changes are actually be made to the collection requirements. Even when there are no apparent changes (like in the last two ICRs in this notice) we cannot not tell that for sure because there is a shortage of information provided in these notices. We won’t be able to tell for sure if there were minor changes made to the collection requirements until the ICR approval is published on the OIRA web site as that site will have copies of the actual information submitted to OIRA not just this brief summary material.