Special Permits and Authority Approvals can impact every type of hazardous material in every type of transport mode—like this Union Pacific Railroad mixed freight train negotiating the sharp mountain curves in the village of Helper, Utah on July 28th, 2014. (© Paul Burgess 2014, used w/permission)
In the August 12th 2014 edition of the US Federal Register, the United States Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) published a proposed rule (NPRM) under Docket # PHMSA-2012-0260 (HM-233E) RIN 2137-AE99 under which the agency proposes to set forth specific procedures and guidelines for the consideration of both Special Permit applications and (Competent) Authority approvals.
One can usually say with some degree of certainty that regardless of the content of any particular Federal Register notice, one thing which they typically have in common with each other is that they tend towards being less than compelling reading—useful and informative, yes, often vital in nature to any affected party, absolutely; but exciting—perhaps not. Whilst I would not categorize this latest NPRM as necessarily being literally exciting either, it is in some ways as compelling a read as one is ever likely to find in the Federal Register.
This is due to its particularly unusual subject matter. In it, PHMSA is proposing to set forth very formal procedures and processes for their own agency to follow in terms of granting Special Permits and (Competent) Authority Approvals (to shippers/packaging manufacturers), and that is straightforward enough material, sensibly organized; however, as is usual with these Register notices, PHMSA includes explanation and justification for the rulemaking proposal in a sort of preamble, and this portion of the notice is what is truly fascinating. In it, PHMSA covers a very wide gamut of information—in fact a much broader range of associated material than I find that they usually discuss as background—revealing how many applications they receive, the ways in which they consider an applicant’s suitability for approval, the factors that they take into consideration, how they try to best allocate their resources, what they think is most important about the approval process, how that differs (or not) in priority from how shippers and users may view the same information, and so forth. It is in many ways a “backstage tour” of PHMSA’s process, both now, and in how they propose to change it, and a glimpse, extraordinarily intimate in a sense, of how they view their role and how they think they can best relate to and assist as well as regulate the industry. It’s really very enormously interesting—if you are a Hazardous Materials/DG professional who typically deals with this agency, or at least deals with the operational consequences of their rulemaking activity, then I suspect you may find it as fascinating as I did.
Here is a link to the new NPRM:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2014-08-12/pdf/2014-18925.pdf
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