Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

Issues

Pipeline Safety

Inslee, Police Officer, and Firefighter Demonstrate Pipeline Emergency Response Technology

September 23, 2000

Mountlake Terrace, WA – U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee was joined by local law enforcement officers for a demonstration of the pipeline emergency response technology that Inslee's Pipeline Safety Bill would require if it passed. Inslee was joined by Officer Mike Roskind of the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department and Lieutenant Gregg Sieloff of the Lynnwood Fire Department.

Inslee's bill was recently endorsed by the National Association of Sheriffs, with a membership of over 6,000 law enforcement officers, because of this "Community Right to Know" provision. This provision requires pipeline companies to provide basic safety, location, and operator contact information about the pipelines in a GPS readable format. The GPS format allows emergency responders to immediately determine key information including the type of substance running through the line in the event of a rupture.

Currently, this information is not available in any organized database.

In many cases police officers and firefighters do not even know that there are pipelines running beneath the communities that they protect.