CSB Meeting Includes Freedom Spill Update

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) published a meeting notice in today’s Federal Register (79 FR 34282-34283) for a public meeting concerning two separate chemical incidents in West Virginia; the explosion and fire which occurred at AL Solutions located in New Cumberland, WV on December 9^th, 2010, and the tank leak at Freedom Industries that contaminated the local water supply leaving hundreds of thousands of West Virginia residents without clean drinking water earlier this year. The meeting will be held in Charleston, WV on July 16^th, 2014.

The primary purpose of the meeting is to receive the staff report and recommendations on the titanium dust explosion. After receiving public comments following the staff report the Board typically votes on accepting those findings and recommendations.

The information on the Freedom spill will be an update on the Board’s investigation to date. No recommendations are expected to be presented or adopted at this meeting.

The meeting is open to the public and no registration is required.

HR 4738 Introduced – DOT-111 Tank Cars

As I mentioned last month Rep. Payne (D,NJ) introduced HR 4738, the Tank CarSafety Act of 2014. This is a relatively simplistic reaction to the length of time that it is taking DOT and the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) to address the safety design problems with the current (and very large) fleet of DOT-111 tank cars that are used to transport flammable liquids including crude oil.

Section 2 of the very short bill provides two general requirements for the Secretary of Transportation. First it requires the Secretary to complete a rulemaking process within 1 year, a practical impossibility given the controversial and expensive nature of the requirements mandated for that rulemaking. The second requires the Secretary to submit the obligatory report to Congress about a phase out (“on an aggressive basis”) of “older-model DOT–111 tank cars used to move flammable liquids that are not retrofitted to meet new Federal requirements established under this section” {§2(b)}

The “new Federal requirements” mentioned are those that this bill would be require the Secretary to impose under the regulations described above. Those requirements include {§2(a)(1)}:

• Outer steel jacket around the tank car;

• Thermal protection;

• Full-height head shields; and

• High-flow capacity pressure relief valves

Now these are all certainly features that would make the DOT-111 tank cars safer if properly implemented. Unfortunately, they are also more than a little vague and modifications could be made fitting these descriptions that would do very little to increase the safety of the load, or could be so onerous as to make the railcar unusable. The devil is in the detail and that is what takes so much time in a serious rulemaking like this.

Could PHMSA move faster on this rulemaking? Certainly; but PHMSA has so many rulemakings in progress (a term used very loosely here) that there are manpower constraints that impede fast action on anything, not to mention the resistance from railroads and DOT-111 car owner because of the costs involved in upgrading this very large fleet.

One final note; Congress has not been real successful in getting Federal agencies to comply with deadlines imposed by statute. The only enforcement tool that legislators have is the power of the purse string, but cutting funding can only increase the time to complete something, so it is a very empty threat.

I don’t expect that we will hear much about this legislation.

Bills Introduced – 06-13-14

The Senate and House were back home on Friday, but a pro forma session of the House saw two bills introduced, both of which will likely be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 4869 Latest Title: To provide for Department of Energy fundamental science, basic research activities, and applied energy research and development. Sponsor: Rep Lummis, Cynthia M. (R,WY)

HR 4870 Latest Title: Making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Frelinghuysen, Rodney P. (R,NJ)

Both of these bills may include cybersecurity language. The DOD spending bill has been published by the GPO, so I just have to wade through that. We will just have to wait and see on the DOE R&D authorization bill.

BTW: The House Rules Committee will be meeting Tuesday evening to craft the rule for the consideration of the DOD bill. Currently that is the only congressional hearing listed for this week that might be of specific interest to readers of this blog.

PHMSA Dealing with Syrian Chemical Weapons Issues

The DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) published a notice in today’s Federal Register (79 FR 33802-33803) announcing the availability of an environmental assessment concerning a special permit request covering the truck transportation of various chemical weapons precursor chemicals from the port facilities at Port Arthur, TX 15 miles to a hazardous waste treatment facility for destruction. This operation is being conducted as part of the OPCW’s operation to remove chemical weapons and their precursors from Syria.

The chemicals in these shipments (sixteen sealed ISO maritime shipping containers) include:

• UN1052, hydrogen fluoride, anhydrous (five containers);

• UN1340, diphosphorus pentasulfide (one container);

• UN1809, phosphorus trichloride (two containers);

• UN1810, phosphorus oxychloride (two containers); and

• UN1789, Hydrochloric acid (six containers).

The chemicals involved are all packaged in smaller packagings within shipping containers. The packagings for the hydrogen fluoride are not marked with UN markings indicating that they are designed and inspected for the safe transportation of HF, but they were inspected upon loading by a team including:

• A representative of the  OPCW Technical Secretariat;

• An independent IMDG expert, contracted by the Secretariat for this purpose;

• A Norwegian IMDG expert; and

• Danish and Finish representatives from the Danish cargo vessel Ark Futura.

Those inspectors determined that the material was appropriately and safely packaged for transportation.

PHMSA is now caught between a rock and a political hard place. They can forbid the transportation of the HF because it is not properly packaged under the US rules, it can put its collective head in the sand and ignore the situation, or it can issue a special permit with appropriate mitigation measures in place for the transport. It looks like PHMSA will take the last option; good for them.

PHMSA is soliciting public comments on its environmental assessment. Comments may be filed using the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # PHMSA-2014-0085). Comments need to be submitted by June 23^rd, 2014. The ship has sailed.

EPA Sends 2014/2015 Methyl Bromide Final Rule to OMB

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received the EPA’s final rule on the 2014/2015 Critical Use Exemptions (CUE) for Methyl Bromide. I discussed the combination of the 2014 and 2015 CUE in an earlier blog post.

One public comment [PDF download link] has been received about this rulemaking. It is a passionate request to stop the continued reauthorization of CUE, but it does exaggerate the length of the phase out program; it started in 1994 so it has ONLY been twenty years not thirty and it has only been 9 years since the CUE program has been in operation.

I expect that it will take a month or so before OMB issues their approval of this final rule.

OOOPS; I almost forgot: INSERT standard methyl bromide – COI list tirade.

Bills Introduced – 6-11-14

Both the House and Senate are in town this week and 30 bills were introduced yesterday. Only one will be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 4834 Latest Title: To authorize highway infrastructure and safety, transit, motor carrier, rail, and other surface transportation programs, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Petri, Thomas E. (R,WI)

It will be interesting to see if there is any mention of the crude oil train problem in this bill. Nothing was added to the HR 4745, the THUD spending bill, about this issue so maybe Congress has already forgotten this problem.

Control System Visualization – A Military View

There is an interesting article over on PubMemo.com about new cyber-visualization technology that DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing to make it easier for cyber warriors to ‘view’ the electronic battlefield. While the article does not mention control systems as part of that environment, it is clear that technology like this will be valuable to military planners trying to execute missions against control systems in industrial settings.

One of the problems that has always faced people who would attack a major industrial facility (chemical plant, electric generation facility, major municipal water treatment plant) is not gaining access to the facility, but rather what to do when access is gained. There is nothing that says ‘open this valve and then turn this controller to this position to blow up this storage tank’.

There is still something to be said for ‘security by obscurity’ as a protection against serious deliberate attacks on control systems in critical infrastructure. Just turning random valves or switches is unlikely to cause catastrophic destruction; there are just too many innocuous water and air valves to hit the cybersecurity catastrophe perfecta by making random changes.

For military planners (or terrorists for that matter) planning a remote attack on a critical infrastructure installation will require the ability to identify and locate critical controls in a timely manner. Only then will the planners be able to put together an attack scenario that will have the specific, limited effect that military planners, contrary to Hollywood movies, really want to employ in a well-executed attack.

It looks like the Pentagon understands this. They should; they’ve been planning complicated operations for years. This is just another target rich environment.