Jocelyn Bauer:
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jocelyn Bauer and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Planning for Hazardous Materials. Please be advised that today's seminar is being recorded.
Today we'll have three presenters, Ron Duych of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reggie Dunn of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, and John Allen of Battelle.
Ron Duych has thirty years of experience in the field of transportation and has worked in the area of hazardous materials for the last twenty years. During this time Ron has worked for trade associations and as a consultant to private industry and the federal government, and currently, as a Senior Transportation Specialist at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration's, Bureau of Transportation Statistics. His work at BTS has been concentrated in the freight and hazardous materials area with a primary focus on commodity flows across the transportation network.
In past years Ron worked extensively with hazardous materials safety data in the Hazardous Materials Information System while a consultant to the Research and Special Program Administration, the predecessor agency to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. In the mid 1990's he was responsible for designing the collection methodology for the hazardous materials data in the Commodity Flow Survey, as well as developing the tabulations and designing the tables for the CFS Hazardous Materials Report.
Over the last several years Ron has been involved in reviewing and analyzing the Commodity Flow Survey and developing improvements to the program. In addition he has been involved with numerous other transportation projects while at DOT, including managing the production of State Transportation Profile Reports for all fifty states and the District of Columbia along with a Summary State Report.
Ron is a member of Transportation Research Board's Committee on the Transportation of Hazardous Materials, the Freight Data Committee, and the Task Force on Freight Modeling. He is also a past president of the Washington Chapter of the Transportation Research Forum. He holds a BA in political science from the University of Dayton and an MPA in Public Policy from American University.
Reginald Dunn is a Transportation Specialist with the U.S. Department of Transportation, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration's (PHMSA) Office of Hazardous Materials Initiatives and Training. He has worked with PHMSA for over eight years and is the Hazardous Materials Safety Assistance Team's National Capital Area Coordinator. As a member of the Hazardous Material Safety Assistance Team (HMSAT), Mr. Dunn is dedicated to providing hazardous materials education, technical assistance and outreach throughout the nation.
A primary goal of this team is to improve hazardous materials transportation safety and security through increased communication and education. This requires interaction and coordination with the modal administrations, industry associations, and state and local government organizations. In this capacity, Mr. Dunn provides outreach to the hazardous material communities in the Washington Metropolitan Area which includes the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland. He is also a retired combat veteran that served with the United States Army. While serving, he provided hazmat transportation expertise to logistic support activities. He also volunteered to participate in Operation Desert Shield and fought for his country in Operation Desert Storm.
John Allen has 23 years of experience in transportation planning and management, both with the government and the private sector. Mr. Allen has been a Vice President in the Transportation Sector at Battelle since 1995. Battelle is the largest non-profit research institute in the world, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. He is currently responsible for managing surface transportation safety research projects, including hazardous materials transportation, for Battelle. Before Battelle, Mr. Allen spent seven years with the U.S. Department of Transportation as a regulations and policy analyst with the Research and Special Programs Administration. Mr. Allen's past projects have included all modes of transportation in a variety of policy and technology areas including intelligent transportation systems, hazardous and nuclear material transportation, drug and alcohol regulatory compliance in the highway and transit industry, and high speed rail safety. Mr. Allen's most recent project work involves the evaluation of implementing new intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technology. He was the Program Manager of a large field operational test to evaluate the effectiveness of a variety of technologies (real-time tracking, remote vehicle disabling, geofencing, biometric driver identification, electronic cargo seals, and others) to enhance the security of hazardous materials transportation. Mr. Allen has a BA in Economics from Western Maryland College and an MBA in Transportation Management from the Lundquist School of Business at the University of Oregon.
I'd now like to go over a few logistical details prior to starting the seminar. Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the smaller text box underneath the chat area on the lower right side of your screen. Please make sure you are typing in the thin text box and not the large white area. Please also make sure you send your question to "All Participants" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. Once we get through all of the questions that have been typed in, the Operator will give you instructions on how to ask a question over the phone. If you think of a question after the seminar, you can send it to the presenters directly, or I encourage you to use the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The LISTSERV is an email list and is a great forum for the distribution of information and a place where you can post questions to find out what other subscribers have learned in the area of Freight Planning. If you have not already joined the LISTSERV, the web address at which you can register is provided on the slide on your screen.
Finally, I would like to remind you that this session is being recorded. A file containing the audio and the visual portion of this seminar will be posted to the Talking Freight Web site within the next week. Due to the size of the file, recorded files are available for viewing/listening purposes only and cannot be saved to your own computer. We encourage you to direct others in your office that may have not been able to attend this seminar to access the recorded seminar.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar will also be available within the next week. I will notify all attendees of the availability of the PowerPoints, the recording, and a transcript of this seminar.
It's now about 1:00 and I see that many others have joined in so let's begin. Today's topic, for those of you who just joined us, is Planning for Hazardous Materials. Our first presenter will be Ron Duych of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of Transportation Statistics .
If you think of questions during this presentation or during any of the other presentations, please type them into the chat area on the screen. Questions will be answered in the last 30 minutes of the seminar.
Ron Duych:
Thank you. I am happy to be here today. Let me go through a few slides for you out in the audience. I would like to first mention that I'd be negligent in not initially thanking Jennifer Brady of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to help to me prepare these slides and she helped an awful lot with the entire presentation.
My first slide starts with the history of the federal government's involvement in hazardous materials transportation. I noticed that only had six bullets on this slide, but, when I first went through this presentation in a dry run, I spent an awful lot of time talking about these six bullets because it represents 140 years of the federal government's involvement in HazMat transportation. It goes all the way back to the mid 1800s and applies to the modes of transportation that existed back then, steamship lines and railroads, which was followed a few years afterwards by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 which was the primary transportation agency in the federal government and was the first regulatory agency. It sunsetted in 1996, but it still lives on as the Surface Transportation Board or ICC lite, which now is pretty much devoted exclusively to railroads. In 1908, the Explosives and Combustibles Act was directed to the railroads, which was the only mode of transportation at the time. This act as far as hazardous materials are concerned addressed the packaging, handling and the loading of HazMat, which is what much of the regulations that exist today are concerned with. So that goes back almost 100 years. I'm not sure what HazMat was back then, but it was certainly much more limited. There are an awful lot of chemicals that have been developed since then. In 1911, the regulations pertaining to these procedures were adopted by the ICC and the ICC began the regulation of hazardous materials transportation as we know it today. Of course, now we have the Department of. I think I've read somewhere that since the 1800s there were no less than 14 proposals in Congress to create the DOT. The law was passed in 1966 to establish the DOT. Since then, I know many of you are from the state and local areas, agencies.
The states have established their own departments of transportation. Many of them have been spun off from highway departments. Recently, we have had an entire set of laws passed regarding HAZMAT transportation. The first law recently passed was the Transportation of Hazardous Materials Act of 1975. That was the foundation for the laws that exist today. That was followed by an Act in 1990 called the Hazardous Materials Uniform Safety Act. And then just last year, SAFETEA-LU was passed. That had a number of research provisions and there that the audience might find quite interesting. I know John is going to speak about that later on in his presentation.
I'm going to start here with discussing the incident and accident data that exists today in hazardous materials transportation. This imposing chart here, also known as the mountain, is a chart of the number of incidents and accidents that are recorded in the hazardous materials information reporting system that exists here in the Department of transportation. This is a PHMSA database. This is one of the first, this dataset within the DOT. The Hazardous Materials Information System was one of the first if not the first safety database at the DOT. It started late in the fall of 1970. And you'll see the first full year of incidents from 1971. But, other safety databases here in the DOT, many of which you are may be familiar with, this is the Fatality Accident Reporting System at the FRA started in 1975. This is one of the oldest ones in the department. The changes in the annual number of incidents that you see, it looks very erratic. There are primarily due to changes in regulation and some enforcement actions. The up and down part of this graph really shows mostly the number of incidents involving leaking packages and relatively minor incidents that have occurred. You'll see in some upcoming graphs that the major incidents have that -- remain pretty steady in recent years and, really, throughout the data set at about 400 or so in a year. This data set includes attributes like states, cities, locations, so, for those of you that might be interested in that aspect of it, commodity types or HazMat types, I should say. These are all attributes of the data set, types of packaging that was involved in this data set, and is available to the public.
My next slide is a subset of the data set you just saw. What this slide shows is serious verses other incidents. By serious incidents, and I apologize for the very fine print at the bottom of the slide, but we simply did not have enough space to have the font any larger. Serious incidents really represent things like accidents or incidents that include deaths, derailments, evacuations or releases of large amounts of material. As you can see, the serious incidents represent a small percentage. It's about three percent each year. And the actual numbers are in the 400 range. This is for all modes of transportation. The greatest number normally occur on highways. This is all -- it points out what's known in the business as the low probability, high consequence event. In other words, the whole safety program associated with HazMat is concerned with trying to prevent those catastrophic accidents or incidents that occur infrequently, but represents major loss of life or property.
This next slide breaks out again the subset of the previous slide, and these are the number of reported fatalities going back 10 years. What we're trying to show by this graph is that a small number of incidents represents the death and injuries you see in 1996, there was the incident involving the ValueJet crash in Florida's Everglades. That one incident represented 110 deaths. There were 120 deaths in the country that year due to hazardous materials. But, 10 of them involved, 11 of them involved single fatalities. This represented, this one incident represented 110 deaths. On the other end of the graph, just last year and 2005, there was a large railroad derailment down in South Carolina involving chlorine, where nine people were killed in South Carolina. But, again, about half of the deaths just last year were really represented by only three incidents.
I am switching gears and I'm going to what is called a the denominator values, the flow data regarding hazardous materials. And the Commodity Flow Survey, which is jointly conducted by the Bureau of Transportation statistics and the Census Bureau, we fund it at an 80% level, is really the only major source of HazMat flows in the country on a national basis, but specifically it's the only source of HazMat flows for the highway mode. The total funding for this survey which is scheduled to begin next year, is somewhere around $25 million. It's the fourth in a series of surveys that were conducted in 1993, 97 and 2002. This is part of the Census Bureau's economic census. Here in 2007, we are planning to improve the HazMat component of it. We have made an effort to oversample some industries that ship hazardous materials, especially those that ship 100% HazMat to try to include the quality of the data and also the volume of the materials in this survey. The survey will be conducted by the Census Bureau with our funding, and constructed out of the Census Bureau's Business Register of about 753,000 companies or establishments as they say out of the Census Bureau and 100,000 of these will be surveyed. This is a survey with a mandatory reporting requirement and is part of the Census Bureau's economic census that is conducted every five years. The Commodity Flow Survey has a number of shipment characteristics. It produces data on the value of tons, ton miles an values per shipment. Using the HazMat regulatory structure, the class and the division and the UN number of the materials being shipped are also in this report. These are tables showing Toxic by Inhalation materials and other special sorts. Of course, the major states that are perpetual chemical states will see a lot of it HazMat being shipped into and out of them. And then, of course, there's also the aspect of population. There's a lot of gasoline moving wherever there's a large population.
This does not tell you, however, about the through traffic is in any given locality or state. These are the uses that are associated with this hazardous materials report. We try to identify the flows and exposure by mode with this report, and these data are often used here at the federal level for policy development as input to rule makings and to help with planning various programs assisted with safety or security. This is used to address public safety concerns. These data are important because they are used as a denominator with the incident or accident data in developing ratios and looking at risk for analysis. Security assessments, these data are often used to represent exposure for them. There are good sources for HazMat data in the rail and in the water modes. But, when it comes to trucking which represents the majority of what moves in HazMat, the only data that I know of that are available come from the CFS. It also helps with the emergency response preparation to know what types of materials are moving on the nation's transportation system.
The Commodity Flow Survey is not all inclusive. It doesn't survey all sectors of the economy but it captures the great majority, mining, manufacturing, wholesale and of sectors which would be associated with HAZMAT. As you can see, this graph points out the basic nature of hazardous materials. These are basic commodities. The value is often relatively low, but the tonnage is great. These are either chemicals or petroleum products. We might think of gasoline as pretty expensive. They tend to move large distances by pipeline and that's why you will see the highway miles relatively low. The production facilities, the refineries, the chemical plant that produces these types of materials are often clustered in certain arenas, some of you who live in the Gulf Coast and New Jersey are aware of that fact. This graph sorts out the same type of data the we have been looking at, the Commodity Flow Survey and hazardous materials portion. As you can see, a truck represents the majority of the tonnage being shipped. Most of this is local delivery. Gasoline and most petroleum products move long distances by pipeline, but then, of course, some highway to get to that gas station. The way it does that is by a truck. The pipeline is represented almost entirely by petroleum products and represents a huge amount of tonnage, but not nearly as much as the truck that brings it to you.
This next graph shows the same data broken out by ton miles. Rail is used because of the basic nature of the material and the relatively low value and is used to transport HazMat long distances, as is water. The truck, even though it represents the majority of ton miles of hazardous materials being shipped, it is 20% -- 20 percentage points less than the actual tonnage of the previous graph All other represents the pipeline mode, but it is hard to put a number on that because the fungible nature of the materials moving through the pipeline. If a certain amount of gasoline or petroleum pipeline is put into the pipeline in Texas, it doesn't necessarily mean that the same shipment of gasoline as taken out at the end over here in Virginia or wherever it goes it's much like putting grain in a grain silo. You are not exactly certain what is being pulled out. It's not the same that was placed in by the farmer.
This is my next-to-last slide and I wanted to make a couple of summary points and let those of you who have tuned in have some take away some points, and that is that safety has historically been the focus of the federal government. As I said before, it goes back a long way, over a century. It is one of the first safety programs the government has been concerned with in regard to transportation Security is now a major concern and issue, there been a number of initiatives taken on the federal level to try to anticipate any issues that might occur in this area and provide a picture of incidents and accidents. HazMat data are available from the HMIS. This is a public data set. You can take a look at this. I hope I am not stealing any of Reggie's thunder here.
My final point is that hazardous materials flow data are also available on the national level, there are some state and local reports within the Commodity Flow Survey, but these data do not break out very well detailed hazardous materials. Highway HazMat and flow data is very sparse on the state and local level, and I wanted to make this point clear and in wrapping up, because one of the most common questions I get here in the building from the outside is, "Can you tell me what is moving through my school district, state, town or my city?" We can't do that at the federal level, and I usually refer those people who are trying to get a handle on that, to somewhere at local level. Usually, they are working with the national numbers. These data are available from two Web sites. The BTS Web site and also at the Census Bureau Web site. You will see those at the bottom of this slide. And here is my contact information. And I thank you for taking the time to listen today and if you have any questions I will be happy to answer them at the end of this seminar. Thank you very much.
J. Bauer:
Alright, thank you Mr. Duych. Just as a reminder, at any time, you can type in a question you have into the chat box there and we will use these questions for the question and answers session during the last 30 minutes of the seminar. Let's now move on to Reggie Dunn of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. I will pull up your slides here and get you ready. I think we are ready for you.
Reggie Dunn:
During this session, I will be addressing who we are, what we do, who our customers are, how we determine training needs and priorities and how we reach out to all of our customers. PHMSA was formerly the Research and Special Programs Administration which a lot of you people may know as RSPA. In 2005, it was recognized and established as two administrations, the Research and Innovation Technology Administration, which you heard of it with the last slide, was one administration that came from RSPA. The other one is the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The Hazardous Materials Initiatives and Training is part of the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety governing the Safe transportation of hazardous materials for highway, rail, air, and vessel.
In the United States Department transportation, PHMSA has a public responsibility for safe and secure movement of hazardous materials to industry and consumers buy all transportation modes, to include the national pipeline.
The standards used to regulate the transportation of hazardous materials are written, issued, revised and enforced by PHMSA. The 49 CFR Parts 171-180 govern the safe transportation of hazardous materials by all modes except bulk onboard vessels.
Other modal administrations such as the Federal Aviation Administration and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration all work together in assuring the safe transportation of hazardous materials. That's one of the ways that we come up with -- under one roof as far as the DOT is concerned. The Office of Hazardous Materials Safety consists of six different offices with responsibilities that support the safe transport of hazardous materials. Standards office writes and maintains the HMR. International office works towards the harmonization with international standards. Since I represent the Training and Initiatives Branch I will provide further information on how we promote the safe transportation of hazardous materials.
I do believe I may have failed to mention the hazardous materials preparedness grant that is also a part of PHMSA. My apologies for that.
Who are our customers? They consist of carriers, shippers, package manufacturers, reconditioners, and state and local governments such as; law enforcement, emergency responders and planners.
As far as the hazardous materials safety assistance team is concerned, anybody that deals with hazardous materials that comes in contact with hazardous materials that wants to learn how to transport hazardous materials safely through out the United States becomes part of our customers. So, that's just to name a few, but that's not just limited too. So, anybody that wants to know about transporting hazardous material safety, they become part of our customers.
Different factors play a part in determining training required and the programs and materials developed to reach the HAZMAT community. In 2005 Congress initiated new criteria in SAFTEA-LU. Which determined when a farmer was required to have a security plan so work began on a new agriculture brochure to reach the agriculture industry? If I'm not mistaken, that brochure has been completed and it will be out shortly. It will be available on our web site.
I will touch base on that a little bit further into the program. Training materials are developed to assist in understanding major changes in the HM rules. When standards change in the HM regulations, outreach materials such as the cylinder and infectious substance brochures are developed. The wetlines brochure was developed because a proposed rule was rescinded and the need to provide first responders with important information regarding response was needed. The brochure alerts first responders to how much fuel may be present in wetlines and precautions in approaching if involved in an incident.
When imminent dangers are perceived immediate notice is published through safety advisories such as for E85 fuels (ethanol mixtures of 85%) which alerts fire fighters to the different foams used in fighting fires involving E85 fuels.
Anytime there is an incident or an accident and you have these different mitigating circumstances, a lot of times, our office will develop a safety brochure to get the information out to our customers, to our participants, to everybody involved. That is one of the things that our office is responsible for. That is alerting the public to safety.
When the HazMat is needed and identified, that is when we go into action. There are several ways that we go into action; one way is our multimodal seminars. Last year we hosted four free successful seminars, but because of the success we've been having with other programs, we have scaled that number down to three multimodal seminars for the next fiscal year. We also host free one day hazardous materials training workshops. I do believe for the fiscal year 2007, I think we have about 13 workshops right now, that are planned for 2007. Wherever there is a need or if the states request to have a workshop, then we will put on a workshop. That type of workshop will be hosted under what is called Hazardous Materials Training State and Local Education (HMT Sale) program.
Another way that we reach our customers is through the dissemination of our publications. I will touch base on the exact publications, but as you can see on this slide, you can see our HazMat information pack, our Digipacks, and one particular manual that is on slide that is dear and true to my heart is our how to use the hazardous materials regulations guide. When it is time to train your people, I recommend you have them read this guide fist before you start your training so they can have a better understanding of the language of the 49CFR, parts 100 to 185. We also have our multi modal interactive training CD-ROM. After each module, there is a final exam. The office of hazardous materials initiatives and training is also responsible for the development of the 2004 Emergency Response Guidebooks. As you see at the bottom, there is our web site. I will go through a couple of placards and what type of information is available on our website, pretty much at the end of this presentation.
Through dissemination of our publication and training materials, we're able to reach a huge HazMat community. We are also partners with members and the transportation committee to reach a broader audience one addressing specific concerns. We are also forming partnerships with a lot of organizations to spread the word of hazmat safety any way possible. We use all kinds of resources in order to get this word out. As you know, and the next few slides, our outreach through the Hazardous Materials Safety Assistance Team has been extremely successful.
This slide indicates the extent of the information provided to the office of hazardous materials safety, not just our office. This information includes mailings through publications, distributions and calls that are received through the HazMat hot line and calls are received directly through our office. We've distributed over 2 million information publications, received a response of more than 12,000 requests for assistance, assisted more than 31,000 callers requesting information clarification or interpretation of the regulations and we have trained more than 14,000 in the HazMat community. I just thought that needed to be said to let you know exactly what our office does.
We are a team of six members servicing five regions and the D.C. area. I am with the national capital area. I cover Washington D.C., parts of Virginia, parts of the Maryland region, so a lot of times I am "butting heads" with my counterpart out of the eastern region. Our team lead is Dave Lehman. We are available for your questions and can be contacted regarding any hazmat concerns. Our website is HazMat .dot.gov. If you have any questions pertaining to transportation, shipping, you have some training issues, you are not clear on a few things, all you have to do is go on our website and find who is in charge of your region. They would be more than happy to assist you. In some cases, they can even come to your location free of charge to assist you or even to give presentations free of charge.
When requested, the team members provide specific training to state and local communities and to first responders as well as through our MM seminars and workshops. They also assist in the review and development of training materials to assist in the outreach program.
During MM seminars and workshops the presentations cover PHMSA's hazmat program and the basic rules of the Hazardous materials regulations. We refer to the HMR presentations as HAZMAT 101 since it deals with how the use the HMR, training requirements, the hazmat table and other basics for hazmat communication which we feel, once you start with the basics, you should build your foundation from there. It's been extremely successful and will continue to march with that. Plus, we are going to also offer some other programs that may be more advanced, but at least you will have a variety to choose from, whichever fits your program.
Specific to the emergency response community we cover: overview of PHMSA's hazmat program, how to use the ERG, and hazard communication requirements – what an emergency responder should know from the HMR.
Starting in October this year we will provide 11 workshops throughout the country, reaching the hazmat community in each region represented by our team members and three two-day multimodal seminars; one each in Long Beach, CA, Raleigh, NC and Kansas City, MO. The information can be obtained on our website.
Now, we can't possibly show all of our publications, but here is an idea of the most popular ones, which we went over earlier. We have our charts 12, how to use the hazardous materials regulations and these fly these may not fly posters, our information standard packs. That is all of our brochures that we have produced in this office. We have put it into one package and that is information standard pack. We also have our HazMat training modules. That's the one I was telling you has nine training models, interactive CD-ROM training program. This CD-ROM training program is a $25 fee.
We plan on releasing the ERG 2008 for the first quarter of 2008.
If you have any questions, please feel free to call the HazMat information line. The phone number is (800)467-4922 and you will be able to obtain answers to HMR questions, request copies of Federal Register, exemptions or training materials, report HMR violations, and fax on demand.
Here is the Web site we talked about. That is the address right here. www.hazmat.dot.gov. This concludes my presentation. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and we will try to answer as many as possible. Thank you for your time.
J. Bauer:
Thank you Reggie. Our final presentation will be given by John Allen of Battelle.
John Allen:
Thank you, Jocelyn. Well, we are going to shift gears a little bit. I am John Allen with Battelle. I started out my career with the Office of Hazardous Materials where Reggie works. I spent most of my career and Hazardous Materials Research and Transportation Research. And I was asked to talk about research and hazardous materials, and of course the biggest thing going on there today is the efforts to establish a new cooperative research program. And that is the topic of my talk today.
The three topics I want to go over today, is the Transportation Research Board did a special report number 283 looking into the need for cooperative research programs. I'm going to talk about the enabling with legislation that followed that report and some of the early program activities. First of all is the report to which started everything off TRB. Is one of them nationally [ Indiscernible ] academies. They were the study directors and put together a final report on cooperative research. The study was sponsored by four agencies within DOT, said predecessor to RITA was RSPA. [ Indiscernible ] U.S. Coast Guard, although the U.S. Coast Guard is moved from DOT to the Department of common security. But, I think each of those agencies chipped in about 50,000 or so to make this study happen. The topic in the idea for cooperative research programs have been discussed for years in the committee structure, there is a committee on hazardous materials. I was chairman for six years and was actively involved in all the predecessors as were up a number of other folks to move that forward. The study charge was to look at the need for a cooperative program, obviously, looking at how to pay for it and how to manage it and to come up with some good advice on, first of all the recommendations as to whether there was a need for one and how to set it up and pursue cooperative research.
NRC this is the National Research Council. The way they do things, they've got a study director. I'll give you some contact information for him later. Tom is the study director. But, they appoint experts and the field and do the study in that fashion. There are 14 stakeholder members of the community in the HazMat shipping environment, how rich, well water and air, research management, and then they've done some research in the area of emergency planning and response. They met three times in September as you see there. We had one large stakeholder workshop, both public and private sector. Just all but about the report itself in the structure because of tell you how to get the report in a moment. I know HazMat is a little bit of an arcane topic for some people. But, this is a really good short report for those that want to get a good feel for what that HazMat Transportation world is all about. It's got a good overview. It's got a review of some of the correct research, the federal government too. The tough job was to identify some of the shared research needs. That was all about crossing jurisdictional lines which is what a cooperative research program is all about. This month those of the areas where it was the cooperative Research program would be useful in trying to get at research that crosses boundaries. Insights from other cooperative research programs, a lot of you are aware of the NHCP and the TCRP fourth transit. TRB runs both of those. They are a pretty knowledgeable about how to do that. [ Indiscernible ] governing and managing it. And some of the next steps. A little bit on the findings.
Not exactly rocket science, but it was good for a group of experts to come out with this -- to five concerns becoming more common, anyone involved with that knows that it is a very diverse field with lots of different parties involved, shippers, carriers of all modes, container manufacturers, state and local governmental levels. Safety and environmental the concerns of those been the focus of the program that leaked recently security has been added to her that.
Changing traffic patterns and so on is a huge pattern now. For those of view that were starting out back in the '70s, and that takes me a little bit, like I did, I think there's twice as many vehicles out on the road now with probably about five to seven percent of more highway mileage. So, it's a whole different world now. [ Indiscernible ] tower of risk because that is probably [ Indiscernible ] incidents recently as well as major concerns since 911 will talk about.
Risk management as part of the hazardous material world to perform for regulatory decision making in policy decisions because opposed to public and private effort, is buried. [ Indiscernible ] different realms of government, [ Indiscernible ] all of those tend to be mission specific and just look at their own needs, there is a feeling that there is some cross cutting issues. You get better bang for your buck. There are also some gaps that cut across missions that are not addressed.
The conclusion of this group was that there is growing need [ Indiscernible ] to the need for [ Indiscernible ] parent planning and preparing this and first response. You can get to the report by going to TRB.org and then go to recently released publications and then go to the subject for it. You will scroll down and see the Special Report 283. You can also contact Tom Menzes. Tom is very knowledgeable about HazMat. He is willing to talk to anyone that wants to get more information about the whole process.
Now, I want to go next to some with decision. This report was finished in maybe 2005 [ Indiscernible ] the highway bill. It was in its final throes deliberations ticket was a congressional funding vehicle. There also had that been some recent high-profile HazMat incidence among which was the famous Baltimore tunnel fire. That was a railroad fire and the tunnels outside of Baltimore. The report got the attention of a congressman up there. He got some more information about it from TRB. There's also growing concern about HazMat. D.C. was starting talk about their band, rerouting of HazMat through the city because of security concerns. All of that led to serendipity. You don't usually get a report [ Indiscernible ] legislation within a year but that is what happened here. Section 7131 was added to ID because of the efforts of Congressman Cummings. Just a couple of things you want to highlight about this. First of all, it gives the authority to conduct the program to the National academies of Sciences. It places oversight and development from PHMSA. But, the underlines our mind to it says to carry out the nine research projects called for in this special report. I will come back to those in a moment. In the second, paragraph be, you see that it is required from DOT to report on a need for us to establish a full-fledged [ Indiscernible ] it's a million and a corporate. It is not a full-fledged research program. It's a HazMat studies program.
The key thing is the last bullet. It consists of nine studies that are named in the special report [ Indiscernible ] see how it should be organized and evaluate what the research needs are and so forth. With this special report, what it did was get nine example projects. And there were good examples, but there were not necessarily intended to be the actual nine that should be funded. That is the way it has worked out, and I believe that both DOT and TRB. I'm going to run through these. I could say a lot more about each one. It's basically integration of security within the existing. This is something a lot of people would agree is needed. We have a regulatory regime in place now for the many years. [ Indiscernible ] based on has met that's acute hasn't in transportation [ Indiscernible ] it changes everything. All of a sudden, you are concerned about intentional releases, not just on intentional releases, and it is a whole different way to look at things, even risk analysis and risk management is turned on its head by looking at it from the perspective of unintentional release. You're looking at a whole different world of threat assessments [ Indiscernible ] [ Indiscernible ] consequence risk analysis. So, this is a study, and by the way, the bullet on estimated cost and schedule, that is pretty much going to be ignored. We know the budget that Congress has passed. It's up to the oversight committee to get a better handle on costs and schedules. This estimated thing was in the report, but it is not going to be any limiting factor. But, you can see some of the [ Indiscernible ]
The next three, actually are what I would call a little bit more hard core research in terms of trying to improve risk analysis, which is a fundamental, underlying practice in HazMat Transportation because you need that for a good decision making policy. But, this gets to you the growing concern about the changing infrastructure out on the highway. The monumental, grandiose new designs for the interstate highway interchanges, some of the may be familiar with, I'm thinking like Springfield, Va., but there are other examples where they are not cloverleaf anymore. There's a lot of crossover different changing direction ramps of that, and these ramps, they curve and go over 10 or 12 and lines in different directions. The have been a couple of incidents recently of truck rollovers on some of these overpasses. So, this is helping to get a better handle on standpoint of changing the infrastructure. [ Indiscernible ] what has been going on in the rail industry for the past few years, with have been doing this might take a look at incidents improbabilities and rail transportation and coming up with a good database to change operational practices and some of the tank car practices. This is a move toward risk space, having improved risk analysis [ Indiscernible ] consequences to improve decision making models.
The fifth one is a little bit different. There is concern, [ Indiscernible ] for the most part, HazMat regulatory structure is based on safety, as I said before and not necessarily chronic hazards in terms of degradation of water supply and rivers and so forth, this gets to what would be considered non regulated materials that could be subject to environmental hazards. This takeover community, that need to be looked at. The next to get to trying to get better data on incidents and HazMat flows the wrong talked about earlier at the local and regional level. [ Indiscernible ] the next one is developing a guideline for state and local communities to do their own local and [ Indiscernible ] No one has come up with a cookbook of best practices.
Number eight, this is something that has been on the high priority list for decades. They propose that they would like to see this cooperative research program address this. I definitely think if you just look at some of the objectives there, it is far, far beyond $500,000, a 24 month study to everything they would like to do, so I would guess [ Indiscernible ] where the gaps are in HazMat Emergency response.
Lastly, number nine is to take a look at improvement of the [ Indiscernible ]. This is one that the emergency responder committee thought needed to be looked at and updated.
Those are the nine studies [ Indiscernible ] early program planning for the has met studies program this month the have the money, they got to the [ Indiscernible ] [ Indiscernible ] if the new appropriations bill ever gets passed. TRB is now organizing an oversight panel of stakeholders. I am talking shippers and carriers [ Indiscernible ] experts and there particular field. The plan is to hold the first meeting in late November. That is where they are going to try to get a handle on those studies [ Indiscernible ] will be forming a technical review panels for that. For those of you interested in participating in this TRB Studies Program, as I mentioned before, it is a studies program right now for 2006 through 2009. If you're interested and being a member, I know that TRB is very interested in getting candidates to [ Indiscernible ] technical review panels [ Indiscernible ] you can bid on the opportunities. If it does evolve into a program that is annually funded, there will be the annually -- and all solicitation for research proposals.
I believe that is my last one, Jocelyn.
J. Bauer:
Thank you Mr. Allen. I hope everyone enjoyed these presentations. I am now going to put up a slide that lists the dates for the HazMat workshops that Reggie mentioned in his presentation. Bear with me while I get that slide out. There it is. Okay, I'd like to start off the question and answer session with some questions that were posted on mine. Once we get through those, if time allows, I will open up the phone line with questions.
Let's began with a question for Mr. Duych. Is data available to show the number, type and impact of hazardous incidents within 100 miles of the U.S./Mexico and U.S./Canada borders?
R. Duych:
The Hazardous Materials Information System records incidents by state and city, also by county was included in the form, but I'm not sure if that was a keyed attribute. So, you could request from PHMSA's Office of Planning and Analysis, the hazardous materials information systems group there, incidents that have occurred in the four border states by city and identify it that way. So, the quick answer is the incident data in the HMIS is listed by city and state. It may take a little work to extract it within 100 miles of the data set, and you can call (202)366-4555 and maybe someone in the Information Systems group will be able to help you.
J. Bauer:
Mr. Dunn, how does a local entity go about hosting a workshop? And what are some of the workshop logistics', is it free, etc.
R. Dunn:
I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?
J. Bauer:
Someone would like to know how a local entity goes about working with your agency to host a HazMat workshop, and also what are some of the workshop logistics such as how many days does a workshop last, is it limited to a number of attendees and is it free of cost?
R. Dunn:
Okay. As far as the workshop is concerned, actually both of the multimodals and the workshops are free of cost. There are one day workshops and it really depends if an entity wants to put on a workshop, as long as we get a decent number of people, we can put on a new workshop for 30 or more people. All you have to do is contact your regional Hazardous Materials Safety Assistance Team (HMSAT) member to discuss your training needs and he/she will assist you from there. If that organization is willing to obtain the facility, it should not be a problem at all. But, yes, each workshop is on the Web site. Also the workshops have a limitation on it as far as seating capacity is concerned, but most of our seating capacity on the Web is limited to 200 people, but we do require registration. If you want to register on line, go to hazmat.dot.gov, click on the training and information placard, scroll down till you come to the multimodal seminars and hazardous materials training workshops information, there you will find a brochure for either event. Attached to the brochure will be a registration form that you can fill out and fax it back to us or you can e-mail it. I hope that answers your question.
J. Bauer:
I think it did. Perhaps if you could just type in the address into that chat box, that might be helpful. Let's move on to some questions for Mr. Allen. I assume that HazMat does not include waste. Where does that fit and should it?
J. Allen:
It does include hazardous waste, but not all of it. It depends on the quantity that is being in transportation. If you can go to the DOT regulations of all the reportable quantities of hazardous waste. I don't think that has changed. Ron Duych knows the regulations pretty well. I think most of what EPA considers the hazardous waste would be covered by the regulations in certain quantities.
R. Duych:
What you are referring to is the hazardous substances. They are subject to regulations.
J. Bauer:
Here is a question that was given during Mr. Allen's presentation but other presenters may have thoughts. It's a fairly long question. How many cities are currently thought to be considering bans or restrictions on the HazMat movement? Are there communities that have been successful in deflecting such efforts? My fear is that the industrial well-being of our region may be adversely affected by such legislation that we may not have the 18 - 36 months to wait for completion of the study. We might be looking for best practices guidelines and the meantime. Our big issue seems to be real. We'll that be included in the study reference by Mr. Allen.
J. Allen:
I will start it off. Even before 911, this was -- this is one of the -- the whole idea of national uniformity, the whole idea of routing and bands started back in the '70s. That is one of the big projects started. I spent a big chunk of my life working on. There are not very many cities at all. DOT is pretty proactive and so this industry. When there is a ban put in place for hazardous material that is already regulated by DOT, there usually will be an inconsistency ruling process. Probably start out in the courts and the courts will look to the DOT to issue an inconsistency ruling. And the local regulation [ Indiscernible ] it will be ruled pre-empted. In the District of Columbia, they passed, essentially, a ban on real shipments through the city's. That went to the courts right away. I think it is into the circuit court now for consideration. In the meantime, the industry and district are trying to workout and accommodation of how to lower the impact or diminish the impact of shipping some of their HazMat directly to the city. Of course, when one city bans to Scott HazMat, [ Indiscernible ] anyway, to make a long story short, DOT has an active program for inconsistency and [ Indiscernible ] ruling, especially for bands, but still, I think the study would be good and would address real, just to get to your hands around the concerns around security and comparison to what the history is for safety. There are a whole new set of issues on bands and running. I'll just leave it there.
J. Bauer:
To the other presenters have anything else to add to that? Or does that pretty much sum it up?
I would just say a number of other cities were considering bans. And in Chicago and Cleveland were, too. I don't know if they ever implemented any. I have never heard of such a ban being upheld by the courts. This goes for the heart of interstate commerce, States and localities [ Indiscernible ] the courts upheld that they do not have the right to regulate interstate this night. That is what has occurred in the past. I don't know that any band has ever been successful. That's all have on that.
J. Bauer:
Okay. Well, let's move on to the next question. Are there liability issues with determining locations where HazMat responsibilities are less than adequate? Mr. Mr. Allen, do you have a response to that?
J. Allen:
This is the first time I have seen it posed in that way. I suppose if there was a spill, where there was -- it to be shown there was a high density of traffic, and you have the government never put any kind of response capability in place, and I guess that would be grounds for some kind of a new lawsuit, but I haven't heard of that.
J. Bauer:
Anything from the other two? Our next question is for Mr. Allen again. Are there studies on route planning and urban areas? Or where does this fit in.
J. Allen:
There are not only studies, but there are regulations for truck riding that would apply to the urban as well as suburban and rural areas. So, you may want to take a look at the HazMat regulations. There are rules that apply to certain quantities and types of [ Indiscernible ] has met. A placard, if it is of a certain type of material, a certain quantity, you need to have the diamond shaped black on the vehicle that shows the hazard class. But, there have been a number of studies, and if you want to send me an e-mail, I could point in the right direction, [ Indiscernible ] the Department of Energy is looking at that for future shipments of spent fuel [ Indiscernible ] developing guidelines for how to route those trucks and trains.
J. Bauer:
Okay, great. A participant has found that [ Indiscernible ] in 2003. Can PHMSA send out this information with a HazMat registration materials to get the word out on a more widespread level?
R. Dunn:
That's a very good idea. We will definitely take that into consideration. And I will be looking into that a little bit further. I like that idea. But, as far as the shippers and carriers are concerned, and our hazardous materials workshops and the multimodal seminars, one of our breakout sessions we have this security and we touch base on that. We're trying to reach as many people as possible. Like I said before, we have six HazMat Safety Assistance Team members working for that very same goal. As a matter of fact, we just finished, about a month in a half ago, putting on a workshop for of a carrier association. So, as soon as we identify them, we are all there. We are doing something about it.
J. Bauer:
Okay, great. Our last question it looks like is for Mr. Allen. The participant says that FEMA already has deadlines in place. So, his question is why is the study on guidelines for local agencies necessary when the ICS is already federally mandated.
J. Allen:
He refers to my discussion about the emergency response guidelines. Those guidelines are very specific to firefighters and first responders about initial steps as far as evacuation distances, etc., for a specific hazard class and in some cases, specific hazardous materials. That is supposed to be set within the larger context of overall incident Command and response at the regional and state, federal levels. So, my answer would be that those guidelines are very specific to a release of HazMat in the transportation environment. But there supposed to be part of an overall incident command system at the state and local level.
J. Bauer:
Okay, great. Well, that looks like that is all of our chat questions. Operator, would you be willing to give instructions on how participants can ask questions through their telephone at this time and see if we have anything on the line?
Operator:
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press star followed by Battelle. Questions will be taken in the order received.
There are no questions in the queue at this time.
J. Bauer:
Thank you all for attending today's seminar. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next week on the Talking Freight website.
The next seminar will be held on November 15, and is titled "Urban Goods Movement." If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to visit the Talking Freight Web Site and sign up for this seminar. Starting with this seminar, we will be transitioning to the use of the Adobe Breeze web conferencing system. More information about the transition will be sent out soon to all registrants and via the Freight Planning LISTSERV. I encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
