[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 111 (Tuesday, September 19, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H7843-H7844]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            PIPELINE SAFETY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, in June 1999, a gasoline pipeline ruptured 
in Bellingham, Washington, and the ensuing fireball killed three young 
men. Following that tragedy, the House of Representatives did nothing.
  Several months ago, a fuel pipeline ruptured by the Patuxent River in 
Maryland, spilling over 100,000 gallons of fuel, creating an 
environmental disaster. And following that disaster, the U.S. House of 
Representatives did nothing.
  Several weeks ago in New Mexico, in Madam Speaker's own State, entire 
families were incinerated in a terrible tragedy due to a ruptured 
natural gas pipeline. And to date, despite many of our best efforts, 
the U.S. House of Representatives has done nothing.

                              {time}  1930

  This Chamber, despite this continuing toll of human loss and 
environmental loss, has not moved one bill through committee, has not 
moved one bill to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote 
despite many of our bipartisan efforts to accomplish a meaningful bill 
this year.
  Madam Speaker, I rise today to call on the House leadership to bring 
forward to this Chamber a meaningful, comprehensive, pipeline safety 
bill with real teeth. And we have several to choose from in the House. 
We have a bipartisan bill cosponsored by the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Metcalf), a Republican from the Second District in Washington, and 
myself, H.R. 4558. I am a prime sponsor on a bill, House bill 4792, 
bills that will achieve something we have long needed in this country 
and that is statutorily codified inspection criteria to require that 
pipelines in this country are inspected on a regular basis to try to 
prevent these tragedies.
  Now, why is that so important? It is important because the tradition 
in the last several decades here has been of abject failure. What has 
happened before is that when tragedies of this nature have occurred, 
the U.S. Congress has passed bills that have essentially deferred to an 
administrative agency, to the Office of Pipeline Safety, and have 
directed the Office of Pipeline Safety to adopt meaningful inspection 
criteria, to adopt meaningful training criteria for operators.
  And what has happened despite those continued grants of discretion to 
the administrative agency? Well, what has happened is total failure.
  In 1992, this Chamber required requirements to identify high-risk 
pipelines. And yet, in a new millennium, we still do not have a 
regulation or rule requiring that. We have the National Transportation 
Safety Board. It found ``in 1987, the Safety Board recommended that the 
Office of Pipeline Safety require pipeline operators to periodically 
inspect their pipelines to identify corrosion, mechanical damage, or 
other time dependent defects that may prohibit their safe operations. 
Yet, 13 years after our initial recommendation was issued, there are no 
regulations that require pipeline operators to perform periodic 
inspections or tests to locate and assess whether this type of damage 
exists on other pipelines.''
  Thirteen years and yet we are on the cusp of a failure if we do not 
pass a bill that has a statutorily required maximum period between 
inspections.
  Now, the other Chamber, Madam Speaker, has passed a bill that again 
requires and gives discretion to the Office of Pipeline Safety to act. 
Well, frankly, we need a tougher bill. We need to break this chain of 
failure in the U.S. Congress. We need to bring to the floor of this 
House a bill that will have a statutorily codified inspection regime to 
make sure that these pipelines are in fact inspected.
  I believe we can obtain a bipartisan resolution and get a bill to 
conference committee relatively quickly to do that under the leadership 
of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Shuster) and the gentleman 
from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking member.
  There have been lots of discussions, and I believe we can find a 
bipartisan

[[Page H7844]]

solution to this to make sure we pass a meaningful bill.
  I want to address a couple of other things our bill needs to do if we 
are going to give Americans the confidence they deserve in their 
pipelines. Besides the inspection, we have got to pass a bill that has 
meaningful training requirements for the people who operate these 
pipelines. They have to get a license to drive a truck with gasoline in 
this country. They have to get a license to fly an airplane. But they 
do not have to have any license or essentially any training 
requirements to operate a pipeline. It is time to require a meaningful 
training requirement for all operators.
  Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to help this leadership 
bring these bills up for a vote.

                          ____________________