Well last week the Senate was out-of-town; this week it will be the House that will be back home talking with constituents. There will only be two hearings of possible (and I’m really stretching it this week) interest to the chemical or cyber security communities. One will deal with the Surface Transportation Board and the other with emergency response.
STB Authorization
On Wednesday the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will be holding a Full Committee mark-up of a number of bill including S. 158, Surface Transportation Board Reauthorization Act of 2011. Most of this bill is rather arcane railroad related stuff but there is a study requirement about interchange rules that I mentioned in my blog about the introduction of this bill. As I concluded in that blog, it will be interesting to see if this provision is changed in the legislative process to clearly include a requirement to analyze the affect of these interchange rules on the route selection process for security sensitive materials.
Of course, given the way this Committee operates it will be months before we see anything about changes made to the bills during this markup. We won’t have any idea what changes are made until the Committee finally prints their report on the bill.
Emergency Management
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing on Wednesday looking at “the status of emergency management in the U.S., including the important role communications systems play during a disaster”. I’m assuming that this is designed to inform the Subcommittees funding of interoperable communications in the Senate’s version of the DHS FY 2012 appropriations bill.
It would be interesting to see if anyone asks the two government witnesses about planning for emergency response at large high-risk chemical facilities, but I won’t hold my breath. This is another issue that everyone is happy to ignore until it comes time for finger pointing.
Showing posts with label S 158. Show all posts
Showing posts with label S 158. Show all posts
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
S 158 Introduction – STB Reauthorization
Almost two weeks ago, Sen. Rockefeller (D, WV) introduced S 158, the Surface Transportation Board Reauthorization Act of 2011. This weekend the GPO finally printed a copy of the bill. Looking over the bill I did find one provision that might be of interest to the chemical security community; the requirement for the STB to conduct and report to Congress on a rail interchange study.
Section 210 requires the STB to “initiate a study of rail interchange rules, including car service, interchange, and other operating rules adopted and administered by the Association of American Railroads and the effect of those rules on the national rail system”. This could be of interest because of the effects these interchange rules can have on the decisions made by rail roads concerning the routing of TIH chemical shipments.
Since the STB is not directly involved in the enforcement of the hazmat rail routing rule, they might not understand the potential importance of these interchange rules. As a result they might miss subtle nuances of these rules that would make it easy to justify not shipping TIH chemicals on routes outside of major urban areas. Rerouting of TIH rail shipments out of these urban areas was one of the objectives of Congress when they directed TSA and FRA (in Section 1551 of the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007) to establish rules to require carriers to “select the safest and most secure route to be used in transporting” ‘security sensitive materials’ like TIH chemicals.
It will be interesting to see if this provision is changed in the legislative process to clearly include a requirement to analyze the affect of these interchange rules on the route selection process for security sensitive materials.
Section 210 requires the STB to “initiate a study of rail interchange rules, including car service, interchange, and other operating rules adopted and administered by the Association of American Railroads and the effect of those rules on the national rail system”. This could be of interest because of the effects these interchange rules can have on the decisions made by rail roads concerning the routing of TIH chemical shipments.
Since the STB is not directly involved in the enforcement of the hazmat rail routing rule, they might not understand the potential importance of these interchange rules. As a result they might miss subtle nuances of these rules that would make it easy to justify not shipping TIH chemicals on routes outside of major urban areas. Rerouting of TIH rail shipments out of these urban areas was one of the objectives of Congress when they directed TSA and FRA (in Section 1551 of the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007) to establish rules to require carriers to “select the safest and most secure route to be used in transporting” ‘security sensitive materials’ like TIH chemicals.
It will be interesting to see if this provision is changed in the legislative process to clearly include a requirement to analyze the affect of these interchange rules on the route selection process for security sensitive materials.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Cybersecurity Legislation in the Senate
Tuesday was the first day for legislation to be introduced in the Senate for the 112th Congress and 187 bills were introduced. This produces the typical backlog for the printing process, but based on the basic information available on Thomas.LOC.gov there were only two bills that might be of interest to the chemical security community; S 21 and S 158. The later is a reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Board (STB) and may contain provisions on rail shipments of TIH chemicals. The former may be the cybersecurity jackpot legislation for this session.
Interestingly this bill was introduced by Sen. Reid (D, NV); that would make the bill important enough. More important though is the fact that both Sen. Rockefeller (D, WV) and Lieberman (I, CT) are co-sponsors of the bill. They had competing versions of cybersecurity legislation last session and the participation of these three important Senators (and five other senior Democrats) probably indicate that this is a compromise version of the various bills from the last session.
The title of the bill is currently an unwieldy description of its general intent: “A bill to secure the United States against cyber attack, to enhance American competitiveness and create jobs in the information technology industry, and to protect the identities and sensitive information of American citizens and businesses”. No way to tell if it addresses control system security, but I would suspect that there will be provisions that will have some affect on the chemical security community.
I’ll be watching for this to be printed.
Interestingly this bill was introduced by Sen. Reid (D, NV); that would make the bill important enough. More important though is the fact that both Sen. Rockefeller (D, WV) and Lieberman (I, CT) are co-sponsors of the bill. They had competing versions of cybersecurity legislation last session and the participation of these three important Senators (and five other senior Democrats) probably indicate that this is a compromise version of the various bills from the last session.
The title of the bill is currently an unwieldy description of its general intent: “A bill to secure the United States against cyber attack, to enhance American competitiveness and create jobs in the information technology industry, and to protect the identities and sensitive information of American citizens and businesses”. No way to tell if it addresses control system security, but I would suspect that there will be provisions that will have some affect on the chemical security community.
I’ll be watching for this to be printed.
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