Open road for hazmat trucking in NY

Courtesy of StarGazette.com by Steve Reilly: For the first time in 14 years, federal officials have updated the nation’s list of roadways where states restrict the transport of hazardous materials.

But rather than close a long-standing regulatory gap affecting hazardous materials shipments outside New York City, the new rules only serve to reinforce it.

And in a peculiar regulatory twist, the New York City Fire Department is designated in the new 71-page Hazardous Materials Route Registry as the the only agency with authority to decide where hazmat can be shipped in New York State.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s newly-revised registry, released on Monday and like the previous version, includes no listings in New York’s 57 counties outside of New York City — giving haulers free rein to carry hazmat through neighborhoods, around lakes and across rivers and streams. A hazmat trucker can choose to drive on any road in the state that’s open to truckers outside of New York City.

New York is the only state in the nation where a local agency has been named as the state’s hazmat routing agency.

“It does raise some interesting questions about what the authorities are and what the processes are if New York wants to designate hazmat routes outside of New York City,” said Boyd Stephenson, director of hazardous materials policy for the American Trucking Associations

Stephenson, who has watched the regulatory developments closely, said the industry trade group is “thrilled” overall with the update to the nation’s hazmat routes. Among other improvements, he said, the list is organized in a way that makes it easier for haulers to plan out routes.

But New York’s entry in the state-by-state registry makes it unclear where responsibility lies for regulating where hazmat carriers are allowed to go outside New York City.

Although new federal regulations say the nation’s governors are responsible for naming the state agency that supervises hazmat routing designations in their states, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office did not respond to repeated inquiries for this report about why FDNY was selected.

New York State Department of Transportation spokesman Beau Duffy said the state DOT was not involved in the decision to name FDNY as the state’s routing agency.

While the national hazmat route registry published Monday lists FDNY as the “state agency” for hazmat routing, Duffy said the fire department’s purview is limited to the city.

Category: General Update, Safety