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Winter Storm Hits Maryland, Part 3
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Lawmakers Look At Transport Of Hazardous Materials
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CBS
Tankers hauling hazardous materials roll through Maryland each and every day.
In the past, a lot of the attention has been on rail traffic.
Alex DeMetrick reports Congress is now expanding that concern to trucks.
Baltimore's close call came in the summer of 2001, when a train hauling hazardous chemicals burned for days beneath city streets.
"One derailment can be very, very harmful," said Congressman Elijah Cummings.
While much of the focus is on rail traffic, hazardous material is on the move, and it is moving in tanker trucks, carrying everything from industrial chemicals to gasoline and fuel oil.
A congressional subcommittee, which up to now had been working on rail legislation, took up trucks in a hearing in Baltimore.
"It does seem to me that there's an important balance to be struck between the public's safety, worker safety and the ability to move commerce," said Congresswoman Donna Edwards.
Every so often, that commerce goes up in flames. Five years ago, frantic 911 calls came after a tanker went off a bridge onto I-95 in Baltimore.
The trucking industry also says deaths and injuries are rare. Out of nearly a million shipments of hazardous cargo each day in the U.S., only a fraction of a fraction of one percent result in serious accidents.
"If we regulate too much, we risk knotting the system with so much red tape, that it will cease to be effective for its users, and could damage the economy. I have grave concerns that we're doing exactly that in this bill," said Republican Congressman Bill Shuster.
"It's going to cost quite a bit of money to retrofit them. On the other hand we have to look at the fact that safety is very important, and how do you put a cost or value on a human life?" Cummings said.
Ever since 9-11, years of studies and hearings have gone into a legislative package to improve hazardous cargo safety. That package is finally expected to make it into a bill for Congress to take up.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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