Review – OMB Approves CG NRRI ICR Update – 4-22-25

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved an information collection request (ICR) revision from the Coast Guard on “National Response Resource Inventory (NRRI)”. The revision reports a reduction in the number of responses expected by the Coast Guard with an increase in the burden hours.

 

For a more detailed discussion of the changes in the burden estimate provided by the Coast Guard, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/omb-approves-cg-nrri-icr-update-4 - subscription required.

S 1611 Introduced – FY 2016 CG Authorization

Two weeks ago Sen. Thune (R,SD) introduced S 1611, the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2015. This is the Senate version of the annual authorization bill. Unlike the House version (HR 1987 which passed in the House last month) there are two sections in this bill that will effect maritime transportation of hazardous chemicals. They deal with fishing vessels and with enforcement of hazardous material transportation law.

Fishing Vessels

Section 303 of the bill would amend 46 USC 3702, addressing the carriage of liquid bulk dangerous cargoes by fishing vessels. It would add a new paragraph (c) to that section that would generally exempt fishing or fish tender vessels from the provisions of 46 USC Chapter 37 when those vessels are “engaged only in the fishing industry” {new §3702(c)(1)}. That exemption would not apply if “the vessel is carrying flammable or combustible liquid cargoes in bulk” {new §3702(c)(2)}.

Enforcement

Section 304 would add a new section to 49 USC Chapter 51, Transportation of Hazardous Materials. The new §5129 would require the Secretary of Transportation and the DHS Secretary to “establish policies and practices to ensure that the authorities set forth in this chapter are enforced in the same manner and to the same extent, and the civil and criminal penalties are assessed or recommended in the same manner and to the same extent”.

Markup Hearing

The bill was marked up by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on June 25^th. A number of amendments were offered and accepted by voice vote, but only one may be of specific interest to readers of this blog. The amendment was offered by Sen. Peters (D,MI) and Sen. Johnson (R,WI) and would require a report to Congress on the assessment of the effectiveness of the oil spill response activities specific to the Great Lakes.

The bill was adopted by the Committee by voice vote.

Moving Forward

This bill will move to the full Senate, probably after the summer recess. There is a good chance that the bill will be considered as expeditiously as the House version was. The two versions would then be reconciled in Conference.

PHMSA Oil Spill Response Plan ANPRM Comments – 09-13-14

This is the first post in a series that looks at the public comments provided to DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) on their advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) for possible regulations governing oil spill response planning for High-Hazardous Flammable Trains. Fifty comments have been received as of last Friday and 20 comments are posted to the current docket.

Most of the comments (18 of the 20 posted) received to date are from private individuals that feel that they might be impacted by a spill from one of these crude oil trains. Thirteen of those are part of an organized letter writing campaign organized by RiverKeeper.org. I have never understood why environmental organizations think that an organized letter writing campaign will sway regulators in their decisions about how or if regulations should be written. I suspect that these campaigns are more about keeping their members feeling like they are involved and having an effect rather than a real effort to affect the rulemaking process.

There is a very interesting ‘Anonymous’ comment that was obviously written by someone familiar with oil spill response planning. That comment coupled with one from a business group and another from a spill response consultant organization provide the most useful information in the comments to date. All three of these comments look at the rulemaking as an extension of current oil spill response regulations; they have various ideas about how the railroad situation parallels or differs from fixed installation, pipeline or maritime spill response situations. All are worth reading.

The first comment posted to this docket makes a point that PHMSA has yet to address and none of the commenter mentioned above look at, flaming oil. The comment from an individual starts with a very succinct statement of the problem: “Develop a plan for flaming oil running downhill or under other tank cars.” If the PHMSA regulations don’t at least make an effort to deal with that problem they will be incapable of preventing disasters like we saw in Canada last year.