Jeff Denham: “First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to have been a conferee on this important piece of legislation. This piece of…”

“First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to have been a conferee on this important piece of legislation. This piece of legislation was a bipartisan effort between not only Republicans and Democrats in the House, but as a conferee who has been working between the House and the Senate, we have now culminated a number of different issues that, for years, we have had hearings on. Specifically, in the subcommittee that I chair--Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials--we are dealing with passenger rail in this bill, with rail safety, and with hazardous material. Under the hazmat title of this bill, it contains many important provisions on crude-by-rail safety: First, we require all new tank cars carrying flammable liquids to actually have a thermal blanket and top fittings protection, which is something that the DOT failed to include in its rule; We also ensure that railroads provide States and local emergency responders with information on crude-by-rail shipments within their States. In my community, this is a huge issue for our first responders, who want to know exactly what is traveling through our community; We also include a provision that fixes a loophole that would have allowed more than 35,000 legacy DOT-111--these old tank cars--to actually remain in service.…”