In the News

If there is a saving grace to the recent freight train derailment that forced the evacuations of towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, it’s that tank cars involved were not carrying highly explosive liquefied natural gas.

In a stunning case of regulatory malpractice, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in 2020 issued a regulation authorizing LNG shipment by rail. It buckled under pressure from the Trump White House.

That partly was to accommodate a plan to ship 3.6 million gallons of LNG every day from a plant in Wyalusing, Bradford County, to an LNG export terminal on the Delaware River in Gibbstown, New Jersey. The route, whether by rail or truck, would have carried that highly volatile LNG through some of the most densely populated areas of eastern Pennsylvania.

The federal agency did not conduct any community risk assessment for the rule. And state regulators compounded the federal misfeasance by blithely issuing an air-quality permit for the project without considering the transportation danger.

Now, seven Democratic U.S. representatives from Pennsylvania, including Matt Cartwright of Lackawanna County, have asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to suspend the 2020 rule that allowed LNG rail shipments.

They noted that Buttigieg temporarily suspended the rule and called on him to permanently suspend it until the agency conducts detailed safety assessments of the relevant procedures and equipment.

Doing so would be simple good sense in the cause of public safety.