Hazmat Legislation Introduced in Senate

Earlier this month Sen. Lautenberg (D,NJ) introduced S. 1952, the Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011. This legislation, co-sponsored by the Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, addresses a number of issues concerning hazardous materials transportation and operations by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. It is essentially the PHMSA reauthorization bill.

The provisions of this bill address the following areas:

• Accounting for the results of grant supported training programs for emergency responders;

• Conducting a Paperless Hazard Communications Pilot program trial;

• Reporting to Congress on improving the data collection, analysis and reporting on hazmat accidents and incidents;

• Initiating rulemaking on the loading and unloading of bulk hazardous materials;

• Establishing a hazardous material enforcement training program;

• Making minor revisions to regulations regarding inspections;

• Increasing civil penalties;

• Modifying the authority to issue special permits, approvals and exclusions; and

• Requiring State reporting of hazmat highway routing designations.

• Authorizing spending for the hazardous materials regulations programs.

The Senate Commerce Committee met last week in executive session and adopted this bill without changes. Chairman Rockefeller mentioned that this bill would probably be rolled into a larger surface transportation authorization bill in the second session of the 112^th Congress.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 12-12-11

Both the Senate and House will be working this week waiting to see what the leadership comes up with as far as compromise on the spending bill for the rest of the government. With a Friday deadline once again approaching it is always possible that another short term CR will be passed. The DOD authorization bill conference report is also expected this week. With all of that waiting going on there is only one committee hearing currently scheduled for this week that will be of interest to the chemical safety community, a Senate hearing on transportation issues.

HAZMAT Transportation

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will be holding an executive session (markup/final action) on Wednesday on four transportation related bills. Two of those bills will be of particular interest to the chemical safety and transportation communities;

• S 1950, the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act of 2011; and

• S 1952, the Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011.

Both bills were introduced last week, but there are currently no publicly available copies of the bill for review. Hopefully the GPO will have them available later today or tomorrow as there could be lots of interesting things in these two bills crafted by Sen. Lautenberg and co-sponsored by Chairman Rockefeller.

Pipeline Safety Bill

The House Rules Committee web site and the Majority Leader’s web site both indicate that HR 2845, Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011, will be brought to the Floor this week to be considered ‘under the suspension of rules’. This procedure limits the amount of debate and prohibits amendments to the bill. It also requires a larger number of votes to pass the measure so it is reserved for relatively non-controversial bills. It is also an indicator that the leadership expects the bill to pass easily.

It is scheduled to be considered on Monday, though a vote, if a recorded vote is demanded (likely), could be postponed until Tuesday.

NOTE: This is not the pipeline safety bill that I have been following closely in this blog (HR 2937). I'll have more info on this bill in a later post.

DOD Authorization

The House-Senate Conference Committee was working on HR 1540, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, last week. According to the Majority Leader’s web site the bill will be brought to the Floor later this week. This will be considered under a rule, but Rules Committee does not yet have a hearing scheduled on that Rule nor has the conference report been printed. Both are likely to happen on Tuesday with floor action on Wednesday or Thursday. It will be a closed rule with very limited debate. Bipartisan support is expected.