[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Page 19352]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                PIPELINE SAFETY IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2000

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, earlier this afternoon, the distinguished 
chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator McCain, and my 
distinguished colleague, Senator Murray, and I believe others on both 
sides of the partisan divide, came to the floor to speak about the 
Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2000. That bill was passed by the 
Senate unanimously. It resulted from a broad, bipartisan coalition that 
worked over a period of more than 1 year here in the Senate. It was 
sparked by my colleague and myself as a result of a terrible tragedy--
an explosion in a gasoline pipeline in Bellingham, WA, that snuffed out 
the lives of three wonderful young men, destroyed a magnificent park, 
and left physical damage that will be years in repair.
  No individual involved in this debate got every single element in 
that bill that he or she wished. Liquid and natural gas pipelines are 
vitally important to the Nation and the transportation of fuels.
  Some thought renewal of the act would be somewhat weaker than the 
present statutes. Others, myself included, wanted considerable 
strengthening, particularly with respect to local input into the way in 
which such pipelines are managed in communities near homes, schools, 
parks, and the like.
  The net result, however, is a pipeline safety renewal that is a 
considerable and significant improvement over the present act. There 
will be more notice. There will be more severe penalties. There will be 
greater opportunities for local comment and local participation.
  But in spite of all of this work, in spite of the passage of this 
bill, little is happening in the House of Representatives.
  The Bellingham Herald, the daily newspaper in the community subjected 
to this tragedy, pointed out just a little bit more than a week ago 
that the passage of the Senate bill means nothing if it is not passed 
by the House.
  Almost immediately, however, after the passage of the Senate bill, a 
number of Members of the House of Representatives began to place 
roadblocks in the way of the passage of the Senate bill, claiming it 
wasn't strong enough and it didn't do this, or it didn't do that, or it 
didn't do something else.
  The House of Representatives has had exactly the same opportunity to 
deal with this issue as the Senate.
  After a brief hearing a month or so after the accident took place, 
literally nothing at all took place in the House of Representatives. 
Many of us here were led to believe that if the Senate bill were passed 
in its ultimate form, it would be taken up and easily passed in the 
House of Representatives--until these last-minute critics began to 
point out what they consider to be the facts.
  Talk is cheap. But talk doesn't create safer pipelines in the United 
States. Those who oppose this bill have proposed nothing with the 
remotest chance of passage by the House of Representatives, much less 
the Senate of the United States.
  We have only a short time left. Those who criticize the bill as being 
too weak would do far better to pass the reforms that we have and 
attempt to build on them later than to destroy a bill which, if it does 
not pass within the next few weeks, will have to begin its process all 
over again next year, with highly questionable prospects.
  Believing that accomplishment is better than demagoguery and that a 
bill beats oratory any day, I come here to join with both Republican 
and Democratic colleagues to plead with the Members of the House of 
Representatives to take up the Senate bill, to debate it to the extent 
the House wishes to do so, and to pass it so we can get it signed by 
the President and enacted--which, incidentally, I am confident would 
take place if the House were to pass the bill.

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