Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Ms. SPEIER. I thank the gentleman from Washington State for yielding me time.

Fifteen months ago, in my district, a gas pipeline exploded and killed eight of my constituents. Thirty-eight homes were destroyed, many more were severely damaged, and many were victims that sat in burn centers for months; and I visited them. It was a horrific scene. It destroyed that community in so many respects; and yet like a phoenix, it has risen above it. This bill is really very personal to me because I lived with those experiences with all of those constituents.

There are a couple of things that must be said today. The chairwoman of the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board, said in their final report: Our investigation revealed that for years, the operator exploited weaknesses in a lax system of oversight. We also identified regulators that placed a blind trust in the companies that they were charged with overseeing to the detriment of public safety.

As a result of their report, they made 30 safety recommendations, many of them identified as urgent, to address issues in recordkeeping, information sharing, and pipeline testing. The NTSB report said it highlighted the fact that the problem has been under-regulation, not over-regulation, of the pipeline industry. For too long the pipeline operators have essentially written the rules for their industry.

Well, this bill takes a very important step forward in improving pipeline safety regulation , and I endorse it; but there is more that must be done. And ironically, now in California, because of this horrific accident, the residents in California will have better safeguards than any other State in this country because of actions taken by the State legislature and the California Public Utilities Commission that will require, moving forward, that automatic and remote shutoff valves be placed in high-consequence areas and in seismic areas, not just on new pipeline and not just on new pipeline that they find economically feasible to place these automatic and remote shutoff valves. This is a key component that was not included in the legislation.

And I must tell you, when you saw that ball of fire raging for 90 minutes, an hour and a half, before they were able to turn off the gas, that is something that has to be addressed on a national basis. It's been addressed now in California; and I urge us, as we move forward, to address it on a national level, as well.

The NTSB also recommended requiring all pipelines be configured to allow for inline inspection tools called "smart pigs.'' I didn't know what a smart pig was before this happened, but I do now. They are also recommending requiring that older pipeline, in particular, be subject to smart pigging. This is critical to make sure that they have not endured corrosion, that they have not been spiked and the like.

So moving forward I hope that we will take the steps necessary not just to support this measure and to have it signed into law but to make it clear that our work is still not done.

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