Hazardous Materials: Information Collection Activities

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PHMSA-2024-0041 (Notice No. 2024-13)]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hazardous Materials: Information Collection Activities</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice and request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, PHMSA is publishing a 60-day supplemental notice and providing an additional opportunity for public comment on its development of general investigative questions that may be used by PHMSA's Office of Hazardous Materials Safety (OHMS) field operations personnel when investigating potential general safety issues. These questions are intended to facilitate fact-gathering efforts during general investigations related to PHMSA's safety oversight responsibilities. Answering these questions would be voluntary and not impose any new reporting or recordkeeping requirements on regulated entities. Rather, the goal is to develop a pool of questions that can be tailored as appropriate based on the specific circumstances of a general investigation that is not related to the inspection of an individual company or entity for compliance with the hazardous materials regulations. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Interested persons are invited to submit comments on or before January 6, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by the Docket Number PHMSA-2024-0041 (Notice No. 2024-13) by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> 1-202-493-2251. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management System; U.S. Department of Transportation, West Building, Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Routing Symbol M-30, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery:</E> To the Docket Management System; Room W12-140 on the ground floor of the West Building, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and Docket Number (PHMSA-2024-0041) for this notice at the beginning of the comment. To avoid duplication, please use only one of these four methods. All comments received will be posted without change to the Federal Docket Management System (FDMS) and will include any personal information you provide. Requests for a copy of an information collection should be directed to Steven Andrews or Nina Vore, Standards and Rulemaking Division, (202) 366-8553, <E T="03">ohmspra@dot.gov,</E> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the dockets to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> or DOT's Docket Operations Office (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ). <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to better inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">www.dot.gov/privacy.</E> <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. If your comments responsive to this notice contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private, that you actually treat as private, and that is relevant or responsive to this notice, it is important that you clearly designate the submitted comments as CBI. Please mark each page of your submission containing CBI as “PROPIN.” PHMSA will treat such marked submissions as confidential under the FOIA, and they will not be placed in the public docket of this notice. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Steven Andrews or Nina Vore, Standards and Rulemaking Division and addressed to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001 or <E T="03">ohmspra@dot.gov.</E> Any commentary that PHMSA receives which is not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket for this notice. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Andrews or Nina Vore, Standards and Rulemaking Division, (202) 366-8553, <E T="03">ohmspra@dot.gov,</E> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED"> SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: </HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Initial 60-Day Notice</HD> On June 12, 2024, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> PHMSA published a 60-day notice to give the public the opportunity to comment on an information collection request seeking approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a list of general investigation questions. PHMSA received seven (7) sets of comments from six (6) commenters on the 60-day notice. PHMSA is publishing this supplemental 60-day notice to address stakeholder comments (received from the initial 60-day notice), revise certain questions below based on feedback received, and clarify the intent of the information collection request. Specifically, PHMSA received comments from the following entities: <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  89 FR 50045 (Jun. 12, 2024) </FTNT> <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s100,r100"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Commenter name</CHED> <CHED H="1">Docket No.</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Airline Pilots Association (ALPA)</ENT> <ENT> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/comment/PHMSA-2024-0041-0008.</E> </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Council on Safe Transportation of Hazardous Articles (COSTHA)</ENT> <ENT> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/comment/PHMSA-2024-0041-0005.</E> </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Dangerous Goods Advisory Council (DGAC)</ENT> <ENT> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/comment/PHMSA-2024-0041-0002.</E> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/comment/PHMSA-2024-0041-0003.</E> </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Household & Commercial Products Association (HCPA)</ENT> <ENT> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/comment/PHMSA-2024-0041-0007.</E> </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">International Vessel Operators Dangerous Goods Association (IVODGA)</ENT> <ENT> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/comment/PHMSA-2024-0041-0006.</E> </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Smart TD</ENT> <ENT> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/comment/PHMSA-2024-0041-0004.</E> </ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Response to Comments</HD> ALPA provided comments suggesting that PHMSA should include questions about the adoption of a Safety Management System (SMS) and Safety Risk Assessment (SRA). COSTHA and IVODGA emphasized that some of the proposed questions might be beyond the shipper's operational scope, potentially asking for information outside the shipper's expertise, or lacking in clarity regarding the information sought by PHMSA. COSTHA and IVODGA also provided comments and proposed edits to the individual general investigation questions. DGAC expressed concerns that the general investigation questions lacked specificity and clarity in identifying the information PHMSA aims to collect to address safety issues. However, after receiving clarification from PHMSA on the intent of the information collection request, DGAC expressed willingness to review and comment on a supplemental notice. HCPA stated that PHMSA did not specify the selection criteria for respondents or how they should respond and questioned the relevance of the questions to investigations. HCPA also questioned PHMSA's assertion that there is no `burden cost' associated with this information collection request. Lastly, Smart TD expressed support for a streamlined inspection and standardized investigation process. In this 60-day supplemental notice, PHMSA is reaffirming that the questions outlined in this information collection request are intended to be used to engage in voluntary discussions with stakeholders regarding important safety issues that are not related to any specific inspection or enforcement actions. The purpose of this information collection request is to allow PHMSA to engage with our stakeholders on a voluntary basis to discuss potential safety issues across a particular industry sector ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> the transportation of hazardous materials by vessel, etc.) or process ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> the production of organic peroxides, etc.). Compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) is required even if an information collection request is voluntary. One example of a scenario where PHMSA might use these general investigation questions is when there are unexplained incidents on vessels suspected of involving the transportation of hazardous materials. Having a list of pre-approved questions would enable PHMSA to proactively engage with the shippers associated with those vessels, and still comply with PRA requirements. Information obtained from this outreach could assist PHMSA in identifying potential actions to ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━