[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 18 (Thursday, February 17, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H768-H769]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION TO CREATE A COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM 
                 FOR HAZARDOUS MATERIALS TRANSPORTATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing legislation to 
establish a Cooperative Research Program for Hazardous Materials 
Transportation.
  This program will enable experts from the multiple Federal agencies 
responsible for regulating and enforcing the hazardous waste materials 
industry to join with the private sector and State and local 
governments to research cross-cutting issues in the transportation of 
hazardous materials that are not adequately addressed by existing mode-
specific research programs.
  Hazardous materials move through thousands of local communities 
across the United States every day, usually without the knowledge of 
residents or even of local officials. During the past decade, the 
United States Department of Transportation has recorded between 14,000 
and 18,000 unintentional releases of hazardous materials during 
transportation on an annual basis. Between 1994 and 2003, these 
incidents resulted in 210 fatalities and more than 3,400 injuries.
  Recent incidents involving the release of hazardous waste being 
transported by trains, including a 2001 incident in my district in 
Baltimore that resulted in a massive fire, as well as incidents in 
South Carolina, Texas and South Dakota that resulted in fatalities, 
have dramatically reminded us of the danger that these shipments can 
pose to our communities.
  It is, therefore, imperative that we take every concrete step 
available to us to improve the safety and security of hazardous 
materials transportation, and the bill I introduce today takes a joint 
step towards enabling us to improve all facets of hazardous materials 
transportation.

                              {time}  1415

  Currently more than a dozen Federal agencies have regulatory, 
enforcement and operational responsibilities over the estimated 1 
million hazardous materials shipments that are made on a daily basis in 
the United States.
  These Federal agencies share responsibilities with literally 
thousands of State and local agencies and private sector actors, for 
anticipating and responding to the varied risks, including safety, 
security, human health and environmental risks associated with the 
transportation of hazardous materials.
  A report just issued by the Transportation Research Board has found 
that perhaps the most notable gap in America's system of ensuring 
hazardous material safety and security is in the conduct of research 
that is cross-cutting and/or multimodal in application.
  This is a wake-up call urging us to begin to address the transport of 
hazardous materials from a comprehensive multimodal perspective rather 
than from the isolated perspective of a single mode program or material 
type.
  Modeling the successful cooperative research programs that already 
exist to study transit and highway transportation, my bill will create 
a cooperative research program that will bring

[[Page H769]]

together representatives of 10 Federal agencies, private sector 
hazardous material shippers and carriers, and State and local 
governments to study cross-cutting topics in hazardous materials 
transportation.
  Priority will be given in the selection of research projects to 
topics that yield results immediately applicable to risk analysis and 
mitigation and/or that will strengthen the ability of first responders 
to respond to incidents and accidents involving hazardous materials, 
among other topics.
  My bill mandates that the research program conduct studies that will 
inform the routing of hazardous shipments and the development of 
regulations regarding mandatory routing decisions, the formulation of 
appropriate packaging requirements for those hazardous materials that 
are most frequently involved in release incidents, the development of 
reasonable models of State and local risk response and management plans 
that effectively address both safety and security considerations, and 
the definition of the roles and responsibilities of carriers and 
shippers in the hazardous materials events response and even event 
response procedures that can be consistently applied across all 
transportation modes.
  Without the ability to adequately research and respond to issues in 
hazardous materials transportation that are multimodal in scope and 
national in application, our ability to make informed legislative, 
regulatory, and operational decisions regarding hazardous materials 
transportation is unacceptably limited.
  Therefore, I urge you to join me in supporting the formulation of a 
cooperative research program for hazardous materials transportation by 
cosponsoring this important legislation.

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