Jackie Speier: “I thank the gentleman from Washington State for yielding me time. Fifteen months ago, in my district, a gas pipeline…”

“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.…”