February 10, 2015
WASHINGTON, DC
The ranking member of the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee has called for a full audit of safety programs within
the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
In a Feb. 3 letter
to Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III, Rep.
Peter DeFazio (D-OR) said PHMSA had failed to address longstanding issues such
as new design standards for rail tank cars.
In the past decade, the National Transportation Safety Board
has investigated 12 incidents involving DOT-111 tank cars that carried crude
oil and other flammable materials, DeFazio said. NTSB repeatedly recommended
that PHMSA adopt new standards, but the agency did not issue a notice of
proposed rulemaking until after a train carrying crude oil in DOT-111 cars
exploded and killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in 2013.
Other issues prompted Congress to take action with the
Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011, DeFazio
said. Yet “almost none” of the safety measures in the document have been
finalized, he added.
“Finalizing these rules is imperative; our nation’s vast 2.5
million-mile pipeline network is aging,” DeFazio wrote. “According to PHMSA,
more than 50 percent of these pipelines were constructed in the 1950s and
1960s. The potential for catastrophic accidents is not a matter of if, but
when.