Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capital News Today 20130802 : vimarsa

CSPAN2 Capital News Today August 2, 2013

That are necessary to respond to the explosions. I am troubled by the prospect of thousands or maybe tens of thousands of these facilities operated under the radar screen in there used to be a sense of urgency on this issue at all levels. It is essential between osha and dhs and the coast guard and state regulators and there has to be enough Information Available to identify those facilities that could pose a risk. That information needs to be shared. The next challenge is to ensure that dhs analyzes the facilities that provide information and gao has told us that when it comes to assessing and assigning risk, arguably the most essential aspect of the program is neither reliable or consistent. To that point the blue rhino facility exploded scented fireballs into the night sky and it was not determined by dhs to be high risk. But i believe with a lot of work and smart people in this program, we can do better. That is why we have called on the president to bring together experts to tackle the fundamental issues and i was pleased to see that the president established an Interagency Working Group to collaborate on improving information and safety and security. I want to thank the Ranking Member for the full committee for his Opening Statement and for being here this hearing. I think it does is further underscored by the presence of the committee chairmen. The gentleman from texas, mr. Mccaul. I would like to recognize the full Committee Chairman for any statement that he would like to make. Thank you for willingness hearing on the tragedy that occurred in my home state of texas. It is not just a level concern, but it is a local concern as well as this demonstrates, the harm to individual communities resulted in a chemis demonstrate harm to individual communities resulted in a chemical incident that does became part of this that could be devastating. Fifty people lost their lives and hundreds more were injured. Schools were leveled. And Nursing Homes were destroyed and homes were lost and neighborhoods and the cost of the physical damage alone is estimated to be nearly 100 million. Whether it was an industrial accident or if theyll play, it wreaks havoc at the local level. And chemical facilities are not run with the utmost care and are a liability to everyone. Over the years they have been vandalized repeatedly and ammonia smell so potent that it burns peoples eyes. The facility was routinely left open after hours. The fertilizer was literally a disaster waiting to happen. As formidable as this facility is known to be, dhs had no idea even existed. The plants owner failed to introduce himself. Thus remaining unidentified and unknown. What is even more disturbing is thatknown. What is even more disturbing is that this is just one of similar situations across the country that dhs has no knowledge of. On may 2 chairmen sent a letter to secretary napolitano asking to stay off the rail and what the department is doing to improve the outrage. The departments response was insufficient. The reply reiterated the current efforts. Say nothing about what dhs have learned. I was encouraged to receive a call last night talking about chemical safety. This is a step in the right direction and i look forward to the results of this executive order. While these indicate potential progress if they materialize, they will not be alone to give them what they need. In july we wrote to secretary napolitano joined by fred upton and today we stressed the failure of the program. Including the identification of covert facilities. The ultimately want this to succeed in order for them to be viable. Dhs needs to include chemical and the structure and identifying those that need to be secured. I look forward to hearing from the director as to how he intends to work smarter and not just harder to right his ship. It is imperative to our communities of this problem is solved. With that, mr. Chairman, i yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for your direct concern and presents a mess. We have had numerous conversations with this with the original letter. It is one that we represent, and the numerous times that you spoke about your very genuine personal interests and i am pleased to havebeen able to have this hearing and have you participate to the extent. We also have some other responsibilities prior to this if she chooses, she can jump into what i would do is be happy to introduce our witnesses. I will ask for your Opening Statement in the conclusion of the Opening Statements, at the conclusion i will recognize the Ranking Member and enable her to make your Opening Statements and we will move into the questions. So, i would identify for the other Committee Members that the Opening Statements may be submitted for the record and we are pleased to have two distinguished panels of witnesses before us today on this important topic. We will introduce the first panel and the rest of you for your testimony. The first is mr. David wolf, the director of the Compliance Division within the National Protect them until protections and the department of Homeland Security. In the essence is the personal person who oversees this and we are grateful for your presence here today. As a director, he helps the National Efforts to implement the security planning and assess highrisk chemical facilities as well as assisting dhs and creating regulations for Ammonium Nitrate products. Mr. Stephen caldwell is the director of the Government Accountability office of Homeland Security and justice team. It is nice to see you again. Its been a busy week. We had the chance to share this with the work that mr. Caldwell has done on one of the other issues that we were dealing with. It has been related to protecting Critical Infrastructure and promoting resiliency. He recently raised concerns about the Risk Assessment process in terrorist risk to the 3500 chemical facilities under this program. So i thank you both for being here. All right, okay. The full written statements will appear in the record. I recognize you now for the five minutes to testify. Mr. Wolf, thank you for being here and i turn to you first. Thank you, chairman. Chairman mccall, Ranking Member thompson and distinguished members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to appear before you today. My team and our colleagues across the department are absolutely committed to preventing incidents and our hearts go out to the heroic First Responders and the people of the west community as they recover. Although it doesnt appear that this incident was the result of a terrorist act, we have been working with our Agency Partners to find solutions to present in turn prevent these disasters in the future. We have made significant strides over the past year. We have developed policy Training Programs to make sure that we can conduct this in a thorough fashion. We have streamlined the security review process which has enhanced our ability to grant final approval for security plans. We have authorized 589 security plans and granted approval for 182 of those. Reviews on authorizations are now underway as well. I am very proud of the pace at which our staff is operating. I do recognize that we must continue to find ways to become more efficient and effective in our inspection and review processes and were looking closely at options to streamline this cycle for facilities and are soliciting Stakeholder Input and i do anticipate that this will be an important tool to enhance our with this who have been considering this for about Member Companies and i expect that youll hear from our industry stakeholders that they have seen process and improvements and remain committed on a path forward so that this continues to improve and engagement with and the street is absolutely critical to this end we have conducted extensive outreach resulting in submission of more than 44,000 screens. Chemical security is something we feel strongly about. We know this is key to implement the program. Enhancing security is not something a Single Company industry can even do by itself. I am very grateful to our stakeholders for the hard work they have put into fostering security. And our engagements, we have all agreed that we must Work Together to prevent future incidents. Youre doing the part to promote safety facilities and recently associations such as the Fertilizer Institute and Agricultural Retailers association has played a Critical Role in our outreach efforts and facilitating this to the executives. First responders are also a critical part of the chemical safety nationwide and it is absolutely essential that we continue to engage with them through this program. Our past efforts include sharing lists of facilities with local responders as well as disseminating outreach material targeted at members of the Emergency Response community and the program will continue to have facilities conduct their own outreach to responders. This includes the conduct of an external peer review. We expected to provide input on how we can enhance this model as appropriate and in a fashion that comports with the practical realities of implementing the program. We are also committed to meeting the challenge of identifying facilities that have not reported threshold quantities of chemicals of interest. From the early days of the program coming dhs recognizes that it will be a challenge to identify and find every facility with chemicals of interest. Over the years we have undertaken and continue to support extensive outreach and industry engagement to ensure that these chemicals of interest comply with the submission requirements. We have committed to doubling down on these efforts and working with partners at the federal and state agencies to identify noncompliant facilities. It is also important to note that including chemical facility safety and security is a priority for this administration. That is why the president today signed an executive order to improve the safety and security of chemical facilities and reduce the risks of chemicals to workers and communities. Directs federal agencies to improve coordination with state and local partners, including First Responders to collaborate on innovative appropriations inspection and identification of highrisk facilities and also to modernize the regulations to improve chemical safety and security including the safe and secure storage of Ammonium Nitrate. This includes other federal departments and agencies following the tragic events in west texas. We will continue to be in the future as we focus on steps already underway to mitigate chemical risks. I would like to note that the department supports a permanent authorization for the program we believe it will provide the necessary stability to implement this and it will send a clear message to facilities that may be seeking to avoid reports that the program is here to stay. We are gratified to hear our industry stakeholders say the same is the department has turned the corner on the program as we implement it. We will continue to work stakeholders with stakeholders to get the job done at preventing terrorists from exploiting chemical facilities and we believe this is making the nation more secure by reducing the risk assocted with our nations chemical infrastructure and along with our stakeholders, we are committed to it success. We thank you for the opportunity to be here today and we look forward to answering any questions that you may have. Thank you, mr. Wolf. The chair now recognizes mr. Caldwell for his testimony. Chairman, it is good to see you and we thank you. Also to mr. Clark and ms. Thompson. Thank you for inviting us to talk about chemical security and the issue of the outliers such as in west texas. Some of the earlier work that we had done has been presented and we are talking about the issues related to this and the outliers. The 2013 report on april 5, just one week before the explosion in west texas. We have continued to monitor the situation, including some discussions about some of the steps they are taking and some which the gentleman has outlined. So this includes aspects that we do not follow closely in the program. This may be one of the key examples. In terms of the security plan reviews, we found that dhs had a backlog of unapproved plants as mentioned. They have no streamline the process and i think it will still take several years to finish the inspections of facilities that have been tiered so far. We found that the program had increased its effort for the outreach and much of it was focused and it will represent the larger chemical facilities. Nevertheless, the program could be systematic and monitoring the effectiveness of some of that outreach. And now i would like to talk about how we contributed to the existence of the outlier issue that we are discussing here today. The Regulatory Regime in general is based on Self Reporting and we report the Chemical Holdings and these two dhs for the Risk Assessment. That is how it starts with the assessment for facilities. Also related to this Self Reporting. It could be months or even years for dhs to actually inspect the facility to verify the information it has been reported. To the extent that dhs prioritizes spectrums for the highest risk of sites. These are not likely to be the kind of facilities such as those in west texas. The second point id like to make is the reliance that i just mentioned makes the outreach process even more important than the explosion in west texas indicates a need for outreach for the smaller associations to get to the smaller facilities and maybe even some direct outreach to said facilities. It may also indicate a need for more coordination and between dhs and other federal agencies as has been discussed here may be hope the other agencies and the outlier facilities that are off the grid in terms of his visibility. The initial Risk Assessment is basically based on consequences and very specifically on the number of casualties which we tend to speak about the more urban populations in the dense areas. So it is quite feasible that even this facility in west texas to report its Chemical Holdings and that if those quantities exceeded this reporting threshold, that the dhs would not necessarily have categorized it as a highrisk facility and we would not have had to go through the process of the assessment and security plans. So in closing, certainly the latebreaking news, such as the update on the executive order, providing positive steps for coordination and the expanding coordination about why her facilities. Im happy to respond to any questions. I want to thank you, mr. Caldwell. Before we take a moment to engage with our panelists, i would like to recognize the Ranking Member for her Opening Statement. Let me thank you for your indulgence this morning, mr. Chairman. Thank you for convening this very important hearing. There are many questions to be answered today and i want to thank the Ranking Member as well as the chairman for being here today. Ive heard it described that two hours after a Fertilizer Distribution Center exploded in texas on wednesday, april 17, much of the town 18 miles north of waco resembled a war zone. Some people were missing and hundreds more were rushed off to area hospitals and homes were burned and others threatened to collapse. The Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman dlls offered this grim but accurate assessment of the devastation that many saw. It was massive just like a rock and the building in oklahoma city. Disclosure destroyed an apartment complex in the nursing home but that within a few hundred yards near an Almond Tree School that was severely damaged and walls of roofs of homes and businesses within a halfmile of the plant were cracked and there were no federal setback guidelines and requirements to step back these Hazardous Substances from the populations such as schools and Nursing Homes in apartments and businesses based on worstcase scenario. I have been told that at least 800,000 people across the United States with your hundreds of sites that store large amounts of potentially explosive Ammonium Nitrate. Hundreds of schools and hospitals and churches, as well as hundreds of thousands of households near these sites. At least 12 facilities at 10,000 or more People Living within a mile. According to an analysis of hazardous chemicals maintained by 29 states. It had recently focused on the fact that facilities that should be reporting are not being contacted about the required in under the program we hope that this review process could have produced more tangible results and reducing vulnerabilities and consequences it seems to me that they are all intertwined. But the current rush to it include this may not be

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