Luckily the nation has this federal executive to worry about hazardous materials safety
"We oversee 3.5 million miles of pipeline that transport almost two thirds of the energy products that we use every day in the U.S.," said William Schoonover.
We’ve been interviewing a series of award winners of the Senior Executives Association. My next guest is this year’s lifetime achievement award recipient. He works in one of those obscure but crucial areas. One of the associate administrators of the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration William Schoonover joined The Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss more.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin And I guess let’s start with the beginning. Are you a federal administrator guy or are you a pipeline and hazardous materials guy?
William Schoonover So actually, I’m the associate administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. That’s a very small agency under the Department of Transportation (DOT). It’s actually the second smallest. We like to say we’re only bigger than the St Lawrence Seaway. So within DOT, you’re right, it is an obscure agency that has an amazingly important mission.
Tom Temin Well, tell us about the mission, because people think of pipelines as fuel carriers, but that’s not all they carry, it sounds like.
William Schoonover Well, yes. So that’s a great, great opportunity for me. So the agency I work in oversees, we have two roles. One, we oversee 3.5 million miles of pipeline that transport almost two thirds of the energy products that we use every day in the U.S. And then my agency, my part of the agency oversees the transportation of hazardous materials, and that that is about $3 trillion to the U.S. economy, about almost 1.8 trillion tons of materials every year that go into and out of and through the U.S.
Tom Temin That includes fuel.
William Schoonover Includes fuel, that includes radioactive explosives, the household products we use, poisonous materials, all kinds of things you wouldn’t even think of, etiological agents, just shipping samples from the labs to study things like COVID. We help move those materials safely. So a lot of interesting things.
Tom Temin But they all moves through a pipeline, even those types of things.
William Schoonover Nope, I’m on the hazardous materials side, so it’s the pipeline and hazardous material safety.
Tom Temin Got it. Ok, so it’s pipeline stuff and hazardous material which could go in the back of the station wagon.
William Schoonover Sure. We regulate it by air, by rail, by highway and by vessel. And I have to do that in partnership with all my modal partners. So I work with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the FAA, Federal Railroad Administration and the Coast Guard. And they enforce our regulations and help us with it. And so together we all make that work. So it’s a very collaborative job for me. I have to constantly work with a whole bunch of other agencies.
Tom Temin And what about the Transportation Security Administration? Don’t they have to do with pipelines, too?
William Schoonover We work with TSA. They are the security side of transportation. And so we do a lot of coordination with them. We work with a lot of federal agencies. That’s the one thing I love about this job is that you get to work with just about everybody. I work with EPA, I work with ATF, OSHA, everybody who has a role in hazardous materials. And that helps us really collaborate and do a better job in the transportation side, and also carries over into the fix facilities.
Tom Temin Well that quality of working with all of those agencies that could also be something that someone would hate because you can’t get anything done by yourself. And how do you manage that? Because it sounds like maybe too many cooks in the kitchen at a given time to get something done.
William Schoonover So, it does require ensuring you have a lot of clarity in roles and responsibilities. And so we spend a lot of time making sure that we’re focusing on our area, but we are focusing on things as well that help each other. And so I have authority to step in and do what I need to do. But I try to make sure I’m keeping my colleagues informed on what we’re doing. So there are some clear lines on who does what.
Tom Temin And the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Are you primarily concerned with the enforcement of regulations or the establishment of regulations.
William Schoonover So we’re the nucleus. So my team writes regulations. We do enforcement. We also are motel partners enforce with us. So they have the ability to do that. We develop international standards. So we represent the U.S. on international panels at the U.N., at the International Civil Aviation Organization and at the IMO, the International Maritime Organization. So we work on international standards. We issue permits and waivers from the regulations. We also issue grants for training and preparedness of communities. So we give out most of the the grants that train firefighters around this country so that there prepared when an incident occurs.
Tom Temin Yeah, so it’s busy. We’re speaking with William Schoonover. He’s associate administrator of the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, and also this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Senior Executives Association. And so what do you think they gave you the lifetime achievement award for? Just from durability or maybe some specific things?
William Schoonover I hope it’s in recognition of the accomplishments that I’ve been able to achieve over over my 44 years of federal service. I really think making positive change to safety of transportation where our safety record right now is really phenomenal. There’s still more to do. There’s always more to do until we get down to zero fatalities and injuries. But we’ve reduced it down. We have about 1.2 million shipments a day. And almost all of those get to their destination without any issue. So that’s a testament to the work that really my team has done. I like to have recognize that I’m only as good as my team. And I’ve got a tremendous team of professional federal employees that make this success every day.
Tom Temin Well, I can tell you’re an 80s era fed because you’re sitting in your home office with a suit and jacket on and a necktie pull up straight. So you’re doing that teleworking, then you’re dyed in the wool, you might say. Where else have you worked or is it always been DOT?
William Schoonover So I started I’ve always worked for DOT. I started with the Coast Guard, spent some time with the Coast Guard, I helped them in their Hazmat program, and doing other things in law enforcement, search and rescue. A lot of great opportunities. Then went to the Federal Railroad Administration, where I spent 21 years, and really addressed some some significant opportunities to improve safety. After some really horrific accidents, really found ways to protect communities and make sure that we weren’t putting people in harm. And I came here to PHMSA, where I ran the field program for a while and then had the opportunity to lead the organization. And it’s just been a true. I have this belief that if I go to work every day and enjoy what I’m doing, it’s it’s work, but it’s enjoyable work. And as a safety organization, you can see the tangible results that communities are protected around the country.
Tom Temin Sure. And if you are driving out say maybe the families in the car and you are the first one in line when the gates go down and a freight train rolls by, what goes through your head when you see those tank cars?
William Schoonover Yes, sometimes I think about the changes that I’ve helped bring about to those, because over the years we’ve developed some ways to really improve the safety so that when we have accidents, if you look 40 years ago when we had accidents by rail, they were horrific accidents where you would have lots of different cars fail, lots of commodities. Now when there’s an accident, what we’re seeing is there’s only, we have a down to a very few cars that fail really able to protect communities. I won’t say we’re completely there. We still have the occasional East Palestine[, Ohio] and other issues. And that’s where we’re still striving to make those next level advancements. But when I see cars that survive that’s really what I think about when I see those cars, is that we’re getting better.
Tom Temin And by the way, is there an assessment going on of lessons learned from safety and trains and so forth from East Palestine?
William Schoonover There is. The National Transportation Safety Board gives us recommendations. They’ve issued their report, they’ve given us recommendations. We’re working very hard to address those concerns and to make changes. In addition, through the department, we do our own investigation, our independent review, and we’re taking actions as well. So we’re not waiting on somebody to tell us what to do, we’re very proactive in that area.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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