[Congressional Bills 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 4370 Introduced in House (IH)]

111th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 4370

    To require railroad carriers to prepare and maintain a plan for 
  notifying local emergency responders before transporting hazardous 
                 materials through their jurisdictions.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           December 16, 2009

  Mr. Gonzalez (for himself and Ms. Norton) introduced the following 
    bill; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and 
                             Infrastructure

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
    To require railroad carriers to prepare and maintain a plan for 
  notifying local emergency responders before transporting hazardous 
                 materials through their jurisdictions.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Safe Transportation of Hazardous 
Materials Act of 2009''.

SEC. 2. NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENT.

    Every railroad carrier engaged in the transportation of hazardous 
materials shall transmit to the Secretary of Transportation, and 
annually update, a plan for providing at least 48 hours notification to 
local emergency responders before transporting hazardous materials 
through their jurisdictions within 48 hours of a request for such 
information from those local emergency responders. This plan may 
include notification by means of county or State government agencies.

SEC. 3. DEMONSTRATION.

    The Secretary of Transportation shall establish a requirement that 
railroad carriers periodically demonstrate to the Secretary that the 
procedures set forth in the plan transmitted under section 2 are 
adequate to provide appropriate notice to those local emergency 
responders if they request this information as described in section 2.

SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS.

    For purposes of this Act--
            (1) the term ``hazardous materials'' means materials 
        designated under section 5103(a) of title 49, United States 
        Code; and
            (2) the term ``emergency responder'' means State and local 
        emergency preparedness personnel described in section 613(a) of 
        the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance 
        Act (42 U.S.C. 5196b(a)).
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