Infrastructure in the News: April 21, 2015
BAF IN THE NEWS
Next City: Bloomberg to Give $42 Million to Help Mid-Size Cities With Big Data
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/bloomberg-philanthropies-help-cities-use-data
New Orleans’ “BlightStat” program helped to reduce blighted residences there by 10,000. New York City’s recently announced Council 2.0 aims to engage the public by, among other things, making the connection transparent between budget numbers and decision-making. And even though many transit agencies have released a stream of numbers about their operations — leading to the creation of dozens of apps that help us navigate our cities — cycling and pedestrian advocates are always looking for more data.
The Hill: Bloomberg wants to open up local government data
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/239383-bloomberg-wants-to-open-up-local-government-data
Michael Bloomberg is launching a $42 million program to increase the use of open data in mid-sized cities across the country.
AP: Bloomberg Philanthropies launches data initiative for cities
NEW YORK (AP) — Bloomberg Philanthropies has launched a $42 million program to help 100 mid-sized cities to better use data and evidence.
Government Technology: Bloomberg's 'What Works Cities' Initiative Targets 100 Mid-Sized Metros
Cities want to do new and exciting things with their data, and now they’re getting some extra help to do just that.
NATIONAL NEWS
National Journal: WHY CAN'T AMERICA HAVE GREAT TRAINS?
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/amtrak-acela-high-speed-trains-20150417
Thirty-nine minutes into his southbound ride from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C., Joseph H. Boardman, president and CEO of Amtrak, begins to cry. We're in the dining car of a train called theSilver Star, surrounded by people eating hamburgers. TheSilver Star runs from New York City to Miami in 31 hours, or five more hours than the route took in 1958, which is when our dining car was built. Boardman and I have been discussing the unfortunate fact that 45 years since its inception, the company he oversees remains a poorly funded, largely neglected ward of the state, unable to fully control its own finances or make its own decisions. I ask him, "Is this a frustrating job?"
National Journal: Transportation Leaders Will Only Tolerate Short Highway Extension
It was an unusual gathering last week in the "Senate Swamp," a grassy area just outside the U.S. Capitol where senators sometimes hold press conferences. A Republican and a Democrat stood side by side and said the same thing: We want a long-term transportation bill, and we want it now.
AP: TSA Adding New Security Measures for Airline, Airport Staff
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/04/20/us/politics/ap-us-airline-gun-smuggling.html
WASHINGTON — The Transportation Security Administration is tightening security rules for airline and airport workers in the wake of a criminal case in which an Atlanta baggage handler was accused of smuggling guns on commercial jets, Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said Monday.
AP: Trucking Group Urges Government to Move on Speed Limiters
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/04/20/us/ap-us-truck-tire-danger-.html
DETROIT — The nation's largest trucking industry group wants the government to get moving on a rule requiring electronic speed-limiting devices on big rigs.
Smithsonian.com: Tactical Urbanists Are Improving Cities, One Rogue Fix at a Time
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/tactical-urbanists-are-improving-cities-one-rogue-fix-at-a-time-180955049/?no-ist
One rainy January night in Raleigh, North Carolina, Matt Tomasulo went out to commit what some would call vandalism. Along with his girlfriend and a friend, the graduate student walked around downtown hanging homemade signs on lampposts and telephone poles. The signs featured arrows pointing the way to popular downtown destinations, along with average walking times. Tomasulo called the project “guerrilla wayfinding.” His decidedly un-criminal intent was to promote more walking among Raleigh citizens.
Washington Post: Millennials are not who you think they are
For the last five years, Zipcar has been conducting an annual study of the preferences of Millennials whose shifting ideas about ownership aresupposed to be driving the rise of concepts like car-sharing. The survey has found that Millennials are more interested in alternative forms of transportation, that they often find car ownership a pain, that they'd more likely give up their cars than their smartphones.
STATE NEWS
New York Times: New York Subway Use Rose in 2014, Especially in Growing Neighborhoods
The number of people riding New York City’s subway system continued to rise last year, with some of the biggest jumps in ridership occurring in Brooklyn and Queens.
WNYC: Subway Ridership Hits 65-Year High
http://www.wnyc.org/story/subway-ridership-hits-high/
The MTA says subway ridership has hit its highest level in more than 65 years.
WNYC: NJ Transit Proposes Fare Hike
http://www.wnyc.org/story/nj-transit-proposes-fare-hike/
According to the details of the proposal, NJ Transit will raise fares by roughly nine percent and eliminate six bus routes and two late-night trains out of Hoboken.
The City Fix: Five Cities Show the Future of Walkability
http://thecityfix.com/blog/five-cities-show-future-walkability-active-transport-priscila-pacheco/
To walk in our cities is more than just a simple act of transport. Walking represents an appropriation of urban space for daily life. It means being an active part of the urban environment by learning, understanding and shaping the city on a personal level. Walking is one of the most democratic and equitable ways of getting around, but it’s also one of the ways most linked to factors outside an individual’s control, like social or physical abilities and the presence of infrastructure to walk comfortably and safely.
New York Times: N.J. Transit Proposes Fare Increase and Service Cuts
Fares for most riders would increase about 9 percent under a New Jersey Transit proposal announced on Monday in an effort to close a large budget gap at the agency.
AP: NYC Subway Ridership Grows to Highest Point in 65 Years http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/04/21/us/ap-us-subway-ridership.html?_r=0
NEW YORK — New York City subway ridership has reached its highest level in more than 65 years.
Washington Post: With Purple Line decision looming, county officials tout economic benefits
A study commissioned by Montgomery and Prince George’s counties estimates that the Purple Line light-rail project through the District’s Maryland suburbs would generate more than 40,000 permanent and temporary jobs, add tens of millions of dollars to the region’s tax rolls and boost property values by the billions.
Next City: Black Cyclists Receive Large Share of Tampa Bike Tickets
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/african-americans-bike-tickets-tampa
A 2009 American Community Survey showed that white people accounted for about 77 percent of all trips taken by bike in the U.S., but the last decade has seen an uptick in the number of African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics who are cycling. Yet while advocates across the country are working on issues like bike-share accessibility, there’s another kind of biking disparity in Tampa.
POLITICO MORNING TRANSPORTATION
By Jennifer Scholtes | 4/21/15 6:00 AM EDT
With help from Heather Caygle and Darius Dixon.
WHITE HOUSE PROPOSES NEW ENERGY TRANSPORTATION GRANTS: In a national energy review released this morning, the Obama administration is proposing a new DOT grant program aimed at improving connectors of transportation infrastructure used for moving energy products. Federal officials have even thought up a name for this hypothetical program: Actions to Support Shared Energy Transport Systems, or ASSETS. And they are recommending the program dole out $2 billion to $2.5 billion over 10 years.
In the report, the administration urges Congress to fund President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget request for the Energy Information Administration to fill gaps in data on energy transportation and to share that information with the STB. The document also suggests the administration continue to look at alternatives for paying for maritime transportation infrastructure, and come up with plans for working with the private sector to finance port and waterway resources.
SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE EXAMINES AIRCRAFT CERTIFICATION: Lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee will talk today about making changes to the FAA’s certification process for new aircraft designs, looking to speed approvals and the time it takes for U.S. products to get to market. Those on the subcommittee that handles aviation issues will hear from a top FAA official, an aviation expert with GAO and a leader in the aviation manufacturing industry. “We need to make sure the certification process is working well and efficiently so we can get the planes and parts manufactured. Those are good-paying jobs, and obviously there’s a lot of opportunity,” subcommittee Chairwoman Kelly Ayotte told MT. “There are good things about the process. But I think an open, public hearing will bring to light any modifications we need to make it a better process.” Watch the hearing live at 2:30 p.m.: http://1.usa.gov/1DFVNF4
LAWMAKERS DECRY GM VICTIM COMPENSATION PROCESS: Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Bill Nelson plan to gather this afternoon on the Capitol grounds to demand GM provide a fair compensation process for those injured or whose family members were killed in accidents after faulty ignition switches failed to trigger airbag deployment. Blumenthal has been riled up since a federal bankruptcy judge ruled last week that the automotive company is shielded from death and injury claims in crashes that happened before it emerged from bankruptcy protection. The senator called the ruling a “disgraceful defeat for American justice and for victims” and reiterated his calls for the company to extend compensation deadlines, vowing “to hold GM accountable and prevent the reoccurrence of this problem.” The two senators will be joined at the press conference by Mark and Samuel Averill from Connecticut, whose mother died in a car accident in 2003, and a lawyer representing more than 1,000 people suing GM over the defect.
SENATE BANKING LEADERS SEEK TRANSPO FUNDING SUGGESTIONS: Federal Transit Administration acting chief Therese McMillan will testify this morning before the Senate Banking Committee as the panel’s lawmakers consider strategies for reauthorizing surface transportation authority, which is set to expire in less than six weeks. Chairman Richard Shelby told MT that his committee is just beginning to weigh all the options for funding the nation’s transportation infrastructure, mulling additional taxes and tolling. “We’re looking for suggestions,” he said Monday.
American-made: Shelby’s Democratic counterpart on the panel, Sen. Sherrod Brown, is expected during the hearing to encourage his colleagues to strengthen requirements that give preference to American-made materials for taxpayer-funded transportation projects, according to a Democratic aide for the committee. Catch the hearing webcast at 10 a.m.: http://1.usa.gov/1G1G5CD
TALKIN’ BOUT TUESDAY: Good morning and thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports.
Since you just can’t get enough of our Americana coverage, you’re going to love the just-launched transportation policy section of POLITICO Europe, where trucks aren’t called trucks: http://bit.ly/1D7ISIg. The latest headlines: Latvia has worst road safety record in EU (http://bit.ly/1P7KeM6) | Airlines face fines over failure to compensate passengers (http://bit.ly/1yMu5I6) | Conflict over Germany’s minimum wage plans (http://bit.ly/1HNEg0W).
“From Julie Andrews to Jerry Garcia, life was all fun and games. I was out of my head and underneath my bed, playing with electric trains.” http://bit.ly/1J43Lwm — H/t Marc Scribner.
RED CROSS: ‘DRONES CAN SAVE LIVES’: In partnership with a branch of the 32 Advisors consulting firm, the American Red Cross is set to release a report this morning on how drones can help first responders and improve disaster relief efforts, making several policy recommendations to the FAA on allowing drones for emergency and disaster response. The report recommends that the FAA allow small commercial drones to be flown over populated areas during declared emergencies and within controlled airspace within disaster areas. The report also suggests the FAA ensure it can scale up staff resources to process drone flight requests during disasters. The Red Cross will unveil the report during an event this morning at its headquarters. The full 52 pages: http://bit.ly/1Em9gp6. A six-page summary: http://bit.ly/1QcwGR4.
ROLLING OUT ‘FREIGHT CAN’T WAIT’: The Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors is releasing an 81-page document (http://bit.ly/1bn0Zof) this morning called “Freight Can’t Wait,” urging Congress and the Obama administration to ensure passage of transportation policy that includes dedicated funding for multimodal freight projects. The group will unveil the report during a Capitol Hill press conference hosted by Reps. Alan Lowenthal and Brenda Lawrence, who plan to call for more investment in freight infrastructure. Watch the event live at 10 a.m.: http://1.usa.gov/1aMgvs.
FLOUNDERING PHMSA FAILS ITS MANDATE: More than 15 years after the fiery and fatal gas leak in northern Washington that prompted tighter pipeline regulations, there is little evidence of meaningful improvements, Pro’s Elana Schor and Andrew Restuccia explain in their latest story about the struggles of DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. After digging through more than a decade of federal data and talking to more than 15 federal experts on pipeline safety, “the picture that emerges is of an agency that lacks the manpower to inspect the nation’s 2.6 million miles of oil and gas lines, that grants the industry it regulates significant power to influence the rulemaking process, and that has stubbornly failed to take a more aggressive regulatory role, even when ordered by Congress to do so.” More from Pro: http://politico.pro/1ElYAqy
DHS STEPS UP SCREENING OF AVIATION WORKERS: The security screening perks of being an airline or airport employee have just diminished substantially. DHS announced this week that it is handing down new screening rules requiring those workers to go through TSA security screening when flying as passengers and is now going to screen aviation employees more often, including randomly throughout the workday. Our Katherine A. Wolfe explains that the new rules come after a three-month review triggered by allegations of gun-smuggling by airline employees last year. http://politico.pro/1D83m4Z
LAWMAKERS EYE SPECTRUM BAND DOT USES: House Energy and Commerce Committee lawmakers plan to talk with federal officials about freeing up high-frequency airwaves for consumer use on the 5 GHz band of radio spectrum DOT uses for its Intelligent Transportation Systems program for vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The goal is to increase unlicensed access to the spectrum band “without harming the existing work being done to improve auto safety.” The details from Pro’s Kate Tummarello: http://politico.pro/1yKFqrZ
MT MAILBAG: Siding with U.S. airline interests in their fight with Gulf carriers, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin is calling on DOT and the State Department to “carefully review” allegations that the foreign airlines are getting unfair government subsidies and “consider appropriate action to uphold the legacy of our Open Skies agreements.” Our Kathryn A. Wolfe explains that Durbin stops short of calling on federal officials to reopen Open Skies with the UAE and Qatar, but he does say in his letter that “government subsidies by the Gulf states have disrupted the playing field, … [which] puts the foundation of our Open Skies agreements at risk and has the potential to render the agreements meaningless.” The letter: http://politico.pro/1Em20tx
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ):
— Millennials embrace cars, defying predictions of sales implosion. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1aL9msD
— The sad ubiquity of sexual harassment on public transit. CityLab: http://bit.ly/1GevEAY
— Uber must face lawsuit claiming bias against blind riders. Reuters: http://reut.rs/1IyKaRG
— Pilots fault Allegiant on safety as talks stall. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1HLP1AG
— World’s fastest train records speed of 603 kilometers per hour. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1yMRysJ
— Trucking group urges government to move on speed limiters. AP: http://abcn.ws/1IA1LbL
— Europe’s used jets luring U.S. bargain buyers with strong dollar. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1P8HzSd
— Aston Martin turns to China to soup up supercars. The Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1aJ8pRp
— AirAsia plans share sale of Indonesia subsidiary early next year. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1E4RzIC
— New California bill could legalize paid carpooling. LA Times: http://lat.ms/1O8ETa9
— With Purple Line decision looming, Maryland county officials tout economic benefits. The Washington Post: http://wapo.st/1yKNSY1
— U.S. airlines say gulf carriers rushing expansion amid probe. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1E4Rq8d
— With a May 31 Transportation Deadline Ticking, State Officials Wait for Congress to Act. Route Fifty: http://bit.ly/1P4kqk5
THE COUNTDOWN: Highway and transit policy expires in 40 days. DOT appropriations run out and the FAA reauthorization expires in 162 days. The 2016 presidential election is in 568 days.
THE DAY AHEAD:
All day — The American Association of Port Authorities meets for the second day of its three-day spring conference, with speeches by DOT undersecretary Peter Rogoff, Rep. Alan Lowenthal and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft. 1127 Connecticut Ave. NW.
10:00 a.m. — Reps. Alan Lowenthal and Brenda Lawrence hold a press conference on investing in freight infrastructure. Outdoor plaza at southeast corner of the Capitol.
10 a.m. — The Senate Banking Committee holds a hearing on surface transportation reauthorization, with testimony from Therese McMillan, acting administrator of the Federal Transit Administration. Dirksen Senate Office Building 538.
Noon — Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Bill Nelson hold a press conference to call for a fair compensation process for those injured and killed by faulty GM ignition switches.
2:30 p.m. — The Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety and Security holds a hearing on reauthorizing the FAA, focusing on the agency’s certification process.
Stories from POLITICO Pro
The little pipeline agency that couldn’t
The little pipeline agency that couldn’t back
By Elana Schor and Andrew Restuccia | 4/20/15 3:00 PM EDT
On June 10, 1999, a few days after his high school graduation, Liam Wood unexpectedly got an afternoon off work and decided to go fly-fishing on a creek near his hometown of Bellingham, Wash. About 100 miles away, operators missed the signs of a pressure spike in the 16-inch gasoline pipeline that crossed the stream in Whatcom Falls Park.
The pipe ruptured at a point where, several years before, a backhoe had accidentally struck and weakened the 50-year-old iron. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline began to spew into the creek near where Liam stood, staining the water pink.
It took an hour for control room computers to register an alert. Police began to evacuate the park, but Liam was already dead. Overcome by fumes, the 18-year-old had fallen unconscious into the water and drowned.
Then two 10-year-old boys playing in the park flicked a lighter they’d been using to set off fireworks, igniting the gasoline. The fireball set dozens of acres ablaze in a towering black cloud that could be seen in Vancouver, more than 50 miles away. The two boys died the next day, succumbing to burns over more than 80 percent of their bodies.
The ensuing public outrage revealed gaping holes in pipeline safety regulations. The pipeline company had failed — but clearly, so had federal authorities who were supposed to be keeping watch. At the time of the Bellingham disaster, pipeline operators were not required to inspect the inside of their pipes or install valves that would automatically shut after a rupture. Government auditors later found that the federal agency in charge of pipeline safety was a dismal failure at implementing more stringent regulations, in part because it deemed the rules “too costly for the pipeline industry compared with the expected benefits.”
Six months after the blast, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, the independent agency investigating the Bellingham explosion, strode into a meeting of pipeline executives to unleash a brutal critique of the federal regulators and of the industry he believed shared the blame for obstructing reform.
“There is nowhere today the sense that the Office of Pipeline Safety is in charge,” Jim Hall said then, “or that its regulations, its inspections, its assets, its staffing and its spirit are adequate to the task.”
Bellingham was supposed to change that. But more than 15 years later, Hall says he sees little evidence of meaningful improvements. “Unfortunately,” he told POLITICO, “I think I would give the same speech today.”
The story of what happened in those 15 years — or rather, what didn’t happen — is in large part the story of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, an obscure agency that was created to oversee the nation’s sprawling network of oil and gas pipelines.
Oil and gas companies like to assure the public that pipelines are a safer way to ship their products than railroads or trucks. But government data makes clear there is hardly reason to celebrate. Last year, more than 700 pipeline failures killed 19 people, injured 97 and caused more than $300 million in damage. Two of the past five years have been the worst for combined pipeline-related deaths and injuries since 2000.
MAP: EXPLOSIONS, LEAKS AND SPILLS
To understand the failure revealed by these numbers, POLITICO talked to more than 15 former and current federal pipeline officials and advisers, as well as dozens of safety experts, engineers and state regulators. We reviewed more than a decade of government data on fatalities, injuries, property damage, incident locations, inspections, damages and penalties.
The picture that emerges is of an agency that lacks the manpower to inspect the nation’s 2.6 million miles of oil and gas lines, that grants the industry it regulates significant power to influence the rule-making process, and that has stubbornly failed to take a more aggressive regulatory role, even when ordered by Congress to do so.
This is a particularly bad time for a frontline safety agency to take a backseat.
The current boom in fossil fuel production has created intense pressure for massive new pipelines like Keystone XL. Many of the pipes already in the ground are more than half a century old. Tens of thousands of miles of pipeline go completely unregulated by federal officials, who have abandoned the increasingly high-pressure lines to the states.
Meanwhile, fatal incidents continue; a gas explosion in Alabama killed one man in January, and PHMSA reported 10 injuries in the three months it took to report this story.
A senior Capitol Hill aide who has long tracked the agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, lamented PHMSA’s deeply rooted “culture of can’t.”
“PHMSA has always said, ‘We can’t,’” the aide said. “‘We can’t get it through [the White House budget office],’ ‘We can’t get the money,’ ‘We can’t get the resources,’ ‘We can’t submit what we really want,’ ‘We can’t regulate this,’ ‘We can’t get enough inspectors to do this.’ … PHMSA acts like it’s been beaten down for decades. Every time you try to offer a hand up, it almost retreats.”
****
About a year after Bellingham came a natural gas explosion in New Mexico that killed 12 people. Members of Congress were rushing to make up for years of inattention, but the families of those killed in Bellingham didn’t hesitate to criticize proposed laws they felt were “watered down by those who pay homage to the powerful oil and gas lobbyists.”
One of those family members was Bruce Brabec, whose stepson was Liam Wood. Brabec would soon join a private watchdog group as way to deal with his grief. “I didn’t want to just be angry,” said Brabec, whose short-cropped white beard gives him the look of a college professor. “I wanted to be effective. I wanted to help make changes.”
It was 2002 before Congress approved legislation that required companies to create risk-management analyses for pipelines that run through densely populated areas and perform more frequent inspections. That was enough to win the wary support of safety advocates.
The creation of PHMSA, an arm of the Department of Transportation, didn’t come for another two years, the result of a bureaucratic reorganization more than a burning desire to bring pipeline companies to heel. Indeed, the new pipeline safety agency inherited many of its predecessor’s flaws — weaknesses entrenched in part by a style that was “a lot more collaborative than traditional rule making,” as one former safety official described it.
PHMSA’s regulations tend to be “a bit open-ended” as opposed to “a prescriptive one-size-fits-all,” said Eben Wyman, a former Transportation Department official who is now a lobbyist representing the plastic pipe industry.
The post-Bellingham reforms give operators latitude to write their own safety plans overseen by PHMSA, which makes it harder for regulators to catch violations. Safety advocates worry that approach is tantamount to self-regulation. But PHMSA and its defenders say that no two pipes are the same and that regulators couldn’t monitor millions of miles of technically complex line without relying on the companies.
A PHMSA official who declined to speak on the record with POLITICO compared the agency to a traffic cop. PHMSA, the official said, “is not responsible for individuals speeding,” but it does have the “responsibility to enforce the law and pull them over to protect the public.”
But the rules PHMSA enforces get shaped by the pipeline industry — as if lead-footed drivers helped to set highway speed limits.
All rules made by the agency undergo “peer review” by two advisory committees, one for hazardous liquids and one for gas. By law, the 15-member committees — five each from industry, government and the public — have the power to vote on proposed regulations and policy moves. In theory, there is balance, but in practice, industry has an advantage. The committees’ current rosters are missing seven members in total on the government and public sides, making it difficult to stop a move backed by pipeline companies. (PHMSA told POLITICO that it is working on getting the rosters back in balance.)
“With PHMSA, there’s only one wind, and it blows from the industry,” said Paul Blackburn, a consultant who works primarily with environmentalists and landowners.
Advisory committee meetings are largely friendly affairs, a review of thousands of pages of transcripts shows, almost wholly devoid of resistance to industry-driven projects that craft voluntary standards for PHMSA. One high-profile standard that PHMSA and industry plan to tout at a hearing on April 22 covers “safety management systems” that are modeled on practices used for decades in the nuclear and aviation industries. But they are voluntary, like so many of PHMSA’s standards.
“From the get-go, the regulations get watered down,” said Randy Knepper, a top pipeline safety official in New Hampshire. “There’s not a lot of teeth behind them.”
PHMSA’s chief pipeline safety official, Jeffrey Wiese, acknowledged at a 2011 meeting of advisers that the agency has trouble determining “who really speaks for the public,” dismissing “advocacy groups out there with a hard-bent agenda.”
“[T]ruth be told, very little [of the] public is even interested or knows” about pipelines, Wiese said. “It’s the ones who were near a failure, and their view is skewed.”
Stacey Gerard, a 20-year PHMSA veteran who retired as its chief safety officer, said public members of the advisory committees “are not getting paid to do the research and reading” that might empower them to play a more vocal role. “Industry is going to be more dominant in the committee discussions because they’re usually more prepared and better armed.”
The most powerful counterweight to the pipeline industry’s sway over its regulators comes, not surprisingly, from Bellingham. Twelve years ago, former environmental educator Carl Weimer created the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust to keep an eye on pipeline companies and their regulators in Washington. The judge who awarded $4 million in criminal penalties to the group likened it to “Bambi taking on Godzilla.”
Bambi has learned how to roar in its own way over the years. Weimer sits on one of PHMSA’s advisory panels and is a frequent witness at congressional pipeline hearings. He recalls sprinting to a Capitol Hill Starbucks in 2006 to sketch out legislative language at the request of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) that ultimately made it into that year’s pipeline safety bill.
But Weimer’s influence has not sparked the kind of formal resistance that might stop a weak regulation. During his eight years on a PHMSA advisory committee, he could not remember any formal opposition materializing to a proposed rule. A PHMSA official countered that “tussling” among advisers does happen but downplayed its importance, telling POLITICO that “we consider their input, but are not bound by their input.”
PHMSA’s longest-serving chief, Cynthia Quarterman, said, in an interview with POLITICO, she was “concerned” about the advisory committee structure when she was appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama. But Quarterman, a former industry lawyer who led the agency until October, came around to the concept “because, if you could get them to agree across the board that what they’re doing makes sense, it makes a better case going forward.”
****
Five years ago this week, the nation was riveted by the underwater blowout of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig. But mere days after that Gulf of Mexico gusher was capped, a pipeline in Marshall, Mich., — 40 years old and pumping 8.4 million gallons of heavy oil every day — broke open.
The ruptured pipe leaked more than 840,000 gallons of oil sands crude into a creek that fed the Kalamazoo River, ultimately spreading for 35 miles. The operator, Canadian oil giant Enbridge, misread alarms in its control room and twice tried to pump more fuel through the broken line. Seventeen hours passed before oil was shut off for good.
At the time, it was the largest onshore oil spill in U.S. history. But Marshall got scant attention in 2010, as the public and policymakers focused on the Gulf of Mexico.
The Zinn family saw the Michigan disaster up close. The family’s land was a few hundred feet from the nearly 7-foot gash in Enbridge’s pipeline. Four decades earlier, the family’s patriarch, Frank Zinn, had fought in vain to stop the 30-inch-diameter pipe from being laid across his property. He had been assured that a major spill was unlikely.
After the spill, officials from Enbridge and the federal government transformed 45 acres of the Zinns’ land into the base of operations for the cleanup. Hundreds of trees were cut down and contaminated soil was piled high for removal. The family abandoned plans to plant a community vineyard. Dredging of the nearby river would drag on for more than two years.
“At a bare minimum,” said Carter Zinn, Frank’s grandson, “if you’re going to put a pipeline on people’s land, then the government has to make sure it’s safe.”
An independent investigation later concluded that “weak federal regulations” were partly to blame for the spill. Tests on Enbridge’s pipeline conducted five years earlier had shown warning signs of a future failure. But the company didn’t act, in part because of vague PHMSA rules for when to report potential defects, NTSB said.
“For the regulator to delegate too much authority to the regulated to assess their own system risks and correct them is tantamount to the fox guarding the henhouse,” Deborah Hersman, then the safety board’s chairman, said of PHMSA.
While Enbridge did not contest PHMSA’s penalty, it has offered a lengthy rebuttal to some of the charges. “Enbridge believes that its pipeline integrity process and management in 2010 were state of the art and in compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements,” the company said in a 2012 filing.
Yet even as Obama vowed to remake the nation’s offshore drilling regulations after the Gulf of Mexico spill, a small band of PHMSA critics lamented that it was hard to trust a pipeline agency whose chief had to step aside from the response to the Marshall spill to avoid a conflict of interest. Cynthia Quarterman had served as outside counsel to Enbridge before she was named to lead PHMSA.
Quarterman rejected the criticism. “To that, I would say, who cares what those folks are going to say?” she said. “You have to focus like a laser on safety.”
But PHMSA tends to turn on the laser beam after the oil is already leaking.
One of the agency’s most powerful tools is a “corrective action order” that could shut down a pipeline until the operator addresses violations. PHMSA has used this tool 117 times since 2002 — mostly after an incident has occurred.
“The only time they’re doing a lot of enforcement is after something hasn’t performed. I think if something occurs, it’s a failure,” said Knepper, the New Hampshire pipeline regulator.
While federal spending on pipeline safety has grown by more than 50 percent since 2010, at $145.5 million for 2015 the agency’s pipeline safety budget is still less than what the Pentagon spent on a single jet engine maintenance contract last year.
To boost its inspection capacity, PHMSA doles out grants to states to monitor pipelines that don’t cross state lines. But even when state and federal rosters are combined, the total number of inspectors is about 460 — roughly one person for every 5,830 miles of pipeline.
The federal pipeline safety budget for 2015 includes $11.9 million for hiring 109 new employees largely for inspections and enforcement, but PHMSA officials expect it will take as many as three years to hire and train the new staffers. And the ones they do hire are unlikely to be as highly trained as the engineers that private companies lure away with six-figure salaries.
Ed Ondak, a regional director for federal pipeline safety in the pre-PHMSA days, is now a consultant and frequent expert witness for pipeline companies. Ondak recalled in an interview that “I find violations within the first five minutes I’m there” on the job. “I say, ‘Aren’t you inspected by PHMSA?’ They don’t find the violations.”
Less than six weeks after the Enbridge spill, in September 2010, tragedy struck again in the Northern California suburb of San Bruno. Pressure built in a natural gas pipeline installed more than half a century earlier, resulting in a massive explosion that killed eight people, injured more than 60 and destroyed 38 homes.
Independent investigators later found that the pipeline’s operator, Pacific Gas and Electric, kept inaccurate records about faulty welds on the pipe and resorted to unorthodox strategies to get around PHMSA’s rules for pressure testing. State regulators failed to hold the company accountable until after the disaster. PHMSA, which had the power to sanction the state regulator, gave it the equivalent of an A rating in 2009.
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It took more than a year after San Bruno for lawmakers to send Obama a new bipartisan pipeline safety bill that imposed dozens of new mandates on PHMSA. But more than three years later, the agency has yet to finish many of the biggest tasks.
“They only seem to act when confronted by and forced by Congress to act,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s top Democrat, said of PHMSA. “And even then, they don’t act.”
Congress gave PHMSA two years to consider requiring excess flow valves — which shut off the flow of gas in the event of a leak to prevent an explosion — in multifamily residences and other facilities. The safety board has for years recommended expanded use of the valves, which only cost a few hundred dollars. A 2012 Associated Press investigation identified at least 270 gas pipeline accidents since 1968, causing 67 deaths, that the valves could have prevented.
But three years after Congress urged PHMSA to take action, the agency has yet to propose any rule for adding the valves to multifamily buildings, amid resistance from industry. A regulation requiring the valves on new single-family homes was finalized the year before the San Bruno blast.
Congress also gave PHMSA 18 months to write a regulation that would require pipeline operators to notify the National Response Center of an accident within an hour. During the Michigan spill, Enbridge waited more than three hours to alert federal responders. More than three years later, PHMSA’s rules only refer to notification at “the earliest practicable moment.”
Congress also sought to eliminate the so-called grandfather clause, which exempts lines built before federal safety regulations first took effect from current rules for record-keeping and pressure tests. Because the San Bruno pipeline was built before 1970, it didn’t undergo the kind of testing that could have alerted regulators to its potential defects.
Lawmakers gave PHMSA 18 months to close that loophole by requiring that previously untested larger gas lines in sensitive areas undergo strength testing. But the agency has not even proposed a rule.
Rep. Jackie Speier, the California Democrat who represents San Bruno, slammed the agency for an “appalling” failure to move “on this simple, noncontroversial regulatory fix that could save untold lives.”
Speier counted “at least 10 more explosions” on gas pipelines since the 2010 disaster, including one in Manhattan last year that killed eight people. “PHMSA knew what it had to do to fix the problem,” she said in a statement.
“Instead, in defiance of the law, it is endangering people by refusing to act. How many more explosions are enough?”
Brabec, who serves with Weimer on the Pipeline Safety Trust, is so unhappy with PHMSA’s sluggishness that he wrote last year to Democratic power broker, John Podesta, his roommate after college. “You grow weary of the reasons why rule making isn’t happening,” he said. He accepts some of the agency’s explanations, but wonders: “Where’s the part that untrue? Where are they holding themselves back?”
There is frustration even within PHMSA’s ranks. John Gale, director of the agency’s Office of Standards and Rulemaking, told PHMSA advisers in October that “I’m not just professionally disappointed, but I’m personally disappointed that we’re not getting these rules to you.”
Former safety board Chairman Jim Hall, who now consults for San Bruno operator Pacific Gas and Electric, said agency officials are “underfunded and understaffed and do not really have the political culture to be effective at what they’re doing.”
“They’re understaffed to provide adequate oversight of the industry, but I don’t believe they’re understaffed to move a regulatory framework,” he added. “They’ve just lacked the will to do so.”
The risk of inaction is real. Older pipelines, particularly those made out of cast or wrought iron, and steel pipelines without protective coatings are considered at most risk of bursting.
At least 1,984 pipeline incidents from 2002 to early this year — or about one-quarter of all reported incidents — involved failed parts installed before 1970, according to a POLITICO analysis of federal data. Ninety-one incidents since 2002 involved failed parts that were at least 80 years old, including a 2011 blast that killed five people in Allentown, Pa.
Incidents caused by equipment failure, including the welds on aging pipelines that the safety board has warned about for decades, have risen by more than 60 percent since their low point in 2007.
GRAPHS: AGING PIPELINES AND THE HUMAN TOLL
PHMSA has stopped short of comprehensive binding regulations that would mandate the replacement of aging pipelines, issuing only a “call to action” encouraging states to move quickly.
“It’s a failure of government, sad as it is,” Lois Epstein, the Wilderness Society’s Arctic program director, said of the agency’s inability to function. “Especially when you’re talking about a Democratic administration that’s out there saying ‘Government can do what’s needed, government is a force for good.’”
But perhaps the biggest unfinished business before PHMSA is the tens of thousands of miles of pipelines connecting oil and gas extraction sites to transmission and distribution lines that are now going almost completely unregulated.
These “gathering” pipelines, once seen as lower priority because of their smaller size and lower pressure, are growing in size and number, thanks to the U.S. shale drilling boom — and states are starting to move on their own to rein in the pipes’ potential dangers while PHMSA stays stalled.
“PHMSA should at least know what’s out there: how many gathering lines, what the pressure is, how old they are and what the risks are,” said Susan Fleming, director of the physical infrastructure program at the Government Accountability Office.
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Most of Congress’ mandates to PHMSA were still awaiting completion in March 2013 when a ruptured pipeline sent more than 200,000 gallons of heavy crude gushing through the streets of Mayflower, Ark.
The Little Rock suburb’s congressman at the time was Tim Griffin, a staunch Republican and former Karl Rove aide who is skeptical of federal regulations and strongly in favor of pipelines. But after the Pegasus pipe burst, forcing the evacuation of 21 homes, Griffin challenged PHMSA’s secrecy in a way that few others have.
When ExxonMobil, the owner of the 65-year-old pipeline, refused to release the full engineering analysis conducted after the leak, PHMSA deferred to the oil company’s decision.
So Griffin obtained a copy of the massive report and posted it on his congressional website. Weeks later, he released three more reports on the failed pipeline’s condition that ExxonMobil and PHMSA had tried to keep under wraps.
“They politely requested that I not” share the data, Griffin recalled in an interview. “And I did.”
Environmentalists played up TV images of Canadian crude spilling across sidewalks and lapping at backyard playsets to help their fight against Keystone, which would carry the same heavy oil through some of the Plains states’ most environmentally sensitive areas.
Few policymakers or advocates other than Griffin paid attention to PHMSA’s agreement with ExxonMobil to shield information regarding the spill. A review of PHMSA’s post-accident violation notice to the oil company, however, illustrates the pitfalls of letting pipeline operators police themselves.
Because the pipeline’s Arkansas leg runs through a “high-consequence area” close to drinking water sources, federal rules required ExxonMobil to test it every five years. The company flushed the pipe with water in 2005 and 2006 to gauge the aging steel’s strength under stress, and found what PHMSA later called “susceptibility to seam failures.”
ExxonMobil wasn’t forced to act right away, though PHMSA did require it to test the doomed line again within five years. The company waited seven years instead, without telling its regulators or requesting an extension to comply with federal rules, according to PHMSA’s post-spill violation notice.
Exxon didn’t act despite what PHMSA called “more than adequate information” to deem the line at risk for a rupture. After the leak, the agency proposed a $2.7 million fine that the company is now challenging. Exxon has long maintained that PHMSA’s analysis of the Mayflower incident is flawed and it disputes the agency’s assertion that the company violated federal regulations.
Fines are meant to be one of PHMSA’s most powerful tools. Congress sharpened that weapon in 2011 by doubling the maximum civil penalties the agency can impose to $200,000 per day for each violation or $2 million for a related series of violations.
But over the past 12 years, a POLITICO review of PHMSA data shows, the agency has levied just $44.2 million in fines against pipeline operators that caused more than $5.5 billion in damage.
PHMSA started fewer civil penalty cases in 2014 than it had in almost a decade and proposed 73 percent fewer fines than a year earlier, even as the number of total pipeline incidents increased, agency records show.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which supervises interstate oil, gas and electricity transmission, imposes much steeper fines for a range of violations including market manipulation. A decade ago, Congress gave FERC authority to impose civil penalties of $1 million per day for every day that a violation continues, and FERC has proceeded to smack companies with more than $626 million in civil penalties since 2007.
Companies often fight PHMSA’s penalties in proceedings that are closed to the public. In addition to appealing its proposed fine for the Arkansas spill in 2013, ExxonMobil is challenging a fine of about $1 million for a leak that dumped an estimated 63,000 gallons of oil in Montana’s Yellowstone River in 2011. The company had already argued that down from the $1.7 million PHMSA first proposed.
“They fine people $1 million and they go into a closed room and they come out and it’s $250,000,” Weimer of the Pipeline Safety Trust said. “What happened in that room? We don’t know.”
PHMSA countered that its hearings are “informal” and shouldn’t be compared with court proceedings. It says the hearings may include discussions about “confidential business information and critical infrastructure security information” that can’t be disclosed to the public.
Former PHMSA officials and industry representatives say the agency does in fact inspire fear. Any civil penalty — even a low one — can hurt a company’s reputation and prevent it from securing permits for future projects, they say.
After the 2010 Michigan oil spill that destroyed the Zinns’ land, PHMSA hit Enbridge with a $3.7 million fine — the biggest civil penalty in the agency’s history. Enbridge did not challenge that penalty and paid up in 2012, during a quarter when its net profit was more than 70 times the size of the fine.
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The myriad problems facing PHMSA — from aging, untested pipes to its frozen rule-making process — might seem ripe for congressional attention in the agency’s next authorization bill. But new pipeline safety legislation, technically due for passage by this fall, is widely expected to slip to next year and to stop short of any serious remodeling of the agency.
Part of the reason for that, as House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton explained, is PHMSA’s lack of progress on the mandates lawmakers gave it in 2011.
“Pipeline safety has been and will continue to be a top priority,” the Michigan Republican said in a statement, but “it remains to be seen what needs to be accomplished” in a new authorization bill.
“About half of the new safety procedures and requirements are still stuck in the rule-making process,” Upton added. “My fear is that further delays and regulatory uncertainty will discourage development of much-needed infrastructure.”
Despite PHMSA’s lengthy to-do list, the agency hasn’t had a permanent leader since Quarterman, its former administrator, stepped down in October. Timothy Butters, the former assistant chief of operations for the Fairfax, Va., fire department, has served as acting administrator since then, and Obama has not nominated a permanent administrator.
PHMSA took a first step last year toward requiring testing and oversight of hazardous liquid pipelines that were installed before federal regulation began to kick in around 1970. But the road from the agency’s initial outline to formal rule making will be long and arduous, not least because the oil industry slammed the effort in February as costly, unnecessary and problematic.
The agency is also working on two highly anticipated rules that could reform existing regulations for both major types of pipelines, making good on many unmet mandates. Or not — their specifics, for now, remain largely a mystery.
DeFazio, the Democratic PHMSA critic, plans to press for reforms in the next federal pipeline bill regardless of the hurdles. He suggested that lawmakers “look at a major reorganization of the industry,” similar to what the airlines underwent after the 1998 ValuJet crash.
“You don’t screw around with this stuff politically,” DeFazio added. “This is life or death. Pipelines blow up and people die.”
Bob King contributed to this report.back
POLITICO Pro Whiteboard: Durbin throws in for U.S. airlines in Open Skies row
4/20/15 1:03 PM EDT
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin is asking the DOT and State Department to keep a close eye on the ongoing fight between Gulf carriers and U.S. airlines over accusations of unfair government subsidies.
In his letter, Durbin stops short of calling on the two agencies to reopen Open Skies with the UAE and Qatar, as U.S. airlines and their labor allies want. He instead asks that the agencies “carefully review this situation” and “consider appropriate action to uphold the legacy of our Open Skies agreements.”
But Durbin does align with U.S. interests on the subsidy fight, saying “government subsidies by the Gulf states have disrupted the playing field … [which] puts the foundation of our Open Skies agreements at risk and has the potential to render the agreements meaningless.”
The Illinois Democrat represents Chicago O’Hare International Airport. United Airlines is headquartered in Chicago, and American Airlines has a hub at O’Hare.
— Kathryn A. Wolfe
To view online:
https://www.politicopro.com/go/?wbid=52015