WASHINGTON - Legislation targeting at-risk chemical facilities with heightened security measures received overwhelming support by a House Homeland Security subcommittee Tuesday, with all but two of the panel's Democratic members voting in favor the measure.
The bipartisan bill (H.R. 5695), which was approved 16-2 comes just weeks after similar legislation was approved by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The House measure, introduced by Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., and ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., would allow the Homeland Security Department to regulate companies that work with chemicals, and require that they conduct vulnerability assessments to be reviewed by DHS.

The department would also rank chemical facilities into one of four tiers based on risk. Facilities would be able to determine what measures to take in order to meet the new safety standards set by the Homeland Security secretary.

"Keeping this legislation risk-based and performance-based ensures that we don't enact inflexible or unreasonable requirements for all of the nation's 15,000 or more chemical facilities which are vital to our way of life," Lungren said.

The legislation allows state and local governments to enforce stricter chemical safety laws, but only if those requirements do not "frustrate" federal requirements.

Under language in the bill, the DHS secretary may determine to pre-empt any state or local law that undermines federal measures. A handful of industry specialists testifying before the House subcommittee last week voiced their support for the Lungren-Thompson measure.

During a subcommittee hearing, Marty Durbin, director of federal affairs for the American Chemistry Council, told the subcommittee that "we need to make sure that we don't have a patchwork of standards at the state level."

The Senate's chemical safety measure which received a unanimous approval by the panel last month, mandates that the issue of state pre-emption be determined in court. Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., attempted to have that language included in the House measure, effectively leaving the state pre-emption issue up to the courts.

Langevin told the committee that "there is no reason why a state or local government should not be able to expand on this bill," which was voted down 10-8.

The House measure, like the Senate bill, does not require chemical plants to install so-called "inherently safer technologies" in order to meet safety standards. Representatives of the chemical industry have argued that being required to use the safer alternatives, such as transporting chlorine in a liquid bleach rather than a gas form, would be too costly and inefficient.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., offered an amendment that would require facilities with the highest risk to use the safer technologies so long as it "doesn't drastically change operations or impose a heavy burden." The amendment was defeated on a party line 10-8 vote.

An amendment from Thompson creating an employee training program was approved by the subcommittee on a voice vote. Federal, state, and local officials, chemical facility owners and employees, and emergency response teams would be eligible for the training program, which would be carried out under DHS. Thompson did not have an estimate on the program's cost.

Markey and Norman Dicks, D-Wash., were the only members to vote against the final measure, which now advances to the full committee. There are no appropriations costs associated yet with the bill.