Maria Cantwell Presses Former Railroad Executive On Derailment Cleanup Standards

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During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) spoke about derailment cleanup standards and fines.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand earlier Senator Cruz asked you, Mr.

00:05Jensen, about spectrum, so I wanted to go back to that if I could. Are you aware

00:09that the 2000 Defense Authorization Act required the Secretary of Defense, the

00:14Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Commerce to all work together, that's what we are

00:17trying to do, certify that spectrum auction includes use by DOD. Are you

00:22aware that no such certification was made by the Trump administration? That

00:25never happened? Nobody worked together? I wasn't aware of that, Senator. I'm very

00:31happy to look into that. Well, I think I think the reason I'm bringing it up

00:35because what happened is then some DOD radar spectrum was auctioned and there

00:41was a lot of confusion and interference and so we obviously think that in the

00:48spectrum world you should have, you know, the test bedding of important issues

00:53before moving DOD spectrum. So are you also aware that I think Senator Cruz

00:59mentioned relocation fund but he claimed that these funds enabled users to

01:03upgrade their capabilities and that's not true. In fact, it only allows federal

01:08users to maintain a comparable. I am suggesting a legislation that we had last

01:16Congress that does give people the ability to upgrade because I really do

01:19think that that is important but I just want to make sure that we have the record

01:25correct that mission-critical systems were turned off and no replacement was

01:30provided and so that's a very important distinction I think in the debate because

01:35I want to make sure that this doesn't happen again. We don't we don't want to be

01:39in this vague area that somehow somebody thinks there the law exists to

01:43protect DOD when in reality during the last Trump administration it didn't and we

01:48had some confusion and we don't want to see it again. Okay, Mr. Mr. Fink, I hear five or so of my

01:54colleagues asked you about mainline derailment issues and you had you were

02:01mentioning that you think there were some other statistics there but we're

02:05talking about FRA, the Federal Railroad Administration numbers which they say that

02:11you had an 850% higher than the other class 2 railroads. Do you dispute the FRA numbers?

02:17Our train accident records were in the middle of the railroads, my peer group

02:24railroad, so I don't know of any 850% higher for that. I do not know that and

02:29that number makes really no sense to me. Okay, well in fact in every year in the

02:33decade before you sold Pan the the railroad the mainline derailment rate was double the average

02:42railroad and the reason why the mainline is so important is because we're talking

02:45about East Palestine, we're talking about areas that we think are critical for safety.

02:54Also, do you think that Norfolk Southern's responsibility was to clean up the mess?

02:58Absolutely. Okay, and your company was criminally convicted and sentenced for trying to cover up

03:0590,000 gallon fuel in Ayer, Massachusetts? It was 900 gallons. 900 gallons. So do you think you should

03:14have done that without the without the court decision? We were cleaning it up. We did not

03:20properly report it and we were fined and found guilty. Yes, we... So what do you think that we should

03:28be doing moving forward to make sure that we have better alignment on product, safety,

03:36clean up, all of these responsibilities? What do you... What is your... In that instance,

03:41we had an employee that didn't follow the procedure that they were supposed to follow.

03:46We were cleaning it up. We did not report it. We cleaned it up. We were found guilty of not reporting

03:51and had a very substantial fine. Okay, do you remember what that fine was? Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

03:58You think that's substantial? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, given what some of these communities,

04:02the lives? We will do more for the record on this, but we... I represent a very big port state and

04:12railroad state. We move a lot of product for the United States and oftentimes it's through very treacherous

04:18areas where the response to this can take a long time. The Columbia River Gorge, for example. So we want

04:25to see someone who's going to be aggressive about the continued evolution about information,

04:33involvement, first responders, plans for communities, and responsibilities, and certainly for

04:40follow-up of the legislation we've moved out of this committee that would have for very, very long

04:46trains, the staffing that is required to keep all of us safe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

04:52Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

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