S 546 Amended and Passed in Senate

On Monday the Senate passed S 546, the RESPONSE Act of 2015, under their unanimous consent provisions. Without debate or vote the Senate adopted substitute language introduced by Sen. Heitkamp (D,ND), the original author of the Senate version of this bill (the House version, HR 1043, has not yet been acted upon in the House). The bill amends 6 USC 318 adding a Railroad Emergency Services Preparedness, Operational Needs, and Safety Evaluation (RESPONSE) Subcommittee to the National Advisory Council.

Revisions

There were large number of relatively inconsequential wording changes made in the substitute language. There were, however, some substantial changes made to the bill. These include:

• Changing to a Co-Chair leadership of the RESPONSE Subcommittee with FEMA and PHMSA sharing that role {new §318(d)(3)};

• Removed provisions providing for the appointment of elected State, local, and tribal government executives to the RESPONSE Subcommittee {original §318(d)(2)(J)(i)(III)}’

• Added provisions providing for the appointment of emergency response training providers to the RESPONSE Subcommittee {new §318(d)(2)(J)(ii)(V)};

• Removed provisions requiring the RESPONSE Subcommittee to provide recommendations for the “need for emergency response plans for rail, similar to existing law related to maritime and stationary facility emergency response plans for hazardous materials” {original §318(d)(2)(D)};

• Removed provisions requiring the RESPONSE Subcommittee to provide recommendations for the “need for a rail hazardous materials incident database” {original §318(d)(2)(E)};

• Removed provisions requiring the RESPONSE Subcommittee to provide recommendations for the “access to relevant, useful, and timely information for the local emergency responder for training purposes and in the event of a rail hazardous materials incident” {original §318(d)(2)(F)};

Moving Forward

The bill has been forwarded to the House for consideration. I suspect that the revised language will allow the bill to move to the floor of the House without too much problem. There it will probably be considered under suspension of the Rules. That means limited debate and no floor amendments.

Commentary

The last three changes described above were almost certainly necessary to allow the Senate to consider the bill under the unanimous consent provisions. The emergency response plan provision is already being dealt with by a PHMSA rulemaking, but the other two provisions would certainly have drawn the ire of the railroads and some hazardous material shippers.

The bill probably would have been able to garner enough votes in the Senate to be passed, but it would have been difficult to get the bill to the floor in with the crowded and election limited calendar.

The last two provisions have also probably been the reason that the Democratic sponsors of the House version of the bill have not been able to have it considered in Committee.