Confirmation of Feinberg a good move | Montgomery Herald

Last week, the Senate confirmed West Virginia native Sarah Feinberg as Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). As a West Virginian, I truly believe she has the same pragmatic approach to problem-solving that we see in our state every day. I have the utmost confidence in her ability to bring customer service and West Virginia common sense to Washington, in large part, because of her effective and efficient response to the train derailment in Fayette County and other incidents across the country.

In West Virginia, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat – what matters is if you can get the job done. During my time in the State Legislature, her father, Lee Feinberg, served on the West Virginia Governmental Ethics Commission, and he instilled in her a sense of moral responsibility that led them both into public service. Over the past 10 months, as Acting Administrator of the FRA, she has proven herself to be an effective and engaged leader with the courage to make tough decisions and the character to accept the criticism those decisions often incite.

She was baptized by fire after being appointed to this position on Jan. 9 of this year, leading the agency’s response to five major incidents within her first 60 days at the helm. On Feb. 3, six people were killed when a commuter train hit an SUV at a grade crossing in Valhalla, N.Y. On Feb. 4, 14 tank cars carrying ethanol derailed just north of Dubuque, Iowa. Three of them caught fire. On Feb. 16, 27 tank cars derailed right here in our state in Mount Carbon. They released 378,000 gallons of crude oil and ignited a fire that destroyed a nearby house. On Feb. 24, a commuter train hit a tractor trailer at a grade crossing and jumped the tracks in Oxnard, Calif. On March 6, 21 cars derailed outside of Galena, Ill., near the border with Wisconsin. Five of them caught fire.

Over the past eight months, I have continually pressed the FRA to improve the safety of Bakken crude oil and other energy products that are being shipped by rail so that we never have to experience an accident like that again. Rail infrastructure is playing an increasingly important role in our domestic energy industry, and we must protect the people of West Virginia and the other communities across the country who live along these corridors.

Over the past 10 years, the increase in domestic energy production has been an engine of economic growth across our country, and the Energy Information Administration predicts that growth to continue through 2020. But unprecedented new challenges come along with the new economic opportunities presented by the growth in domestic energy production.

That’s why I fought to protect strong, new braking requirements that could prevent pile-ups like we saw in Fayette County earlier this year. It took the FRA nine years to finalize these rules for Electronically-Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes, and I made sure they were included in the long-term highway bill that passed the Senate on July 30. My Track, Railroad, and Infrastructure Network (TRAIN) Act was also included in that bill to reform the environmental permitting process and make it easier for critical rail infrastructure projects to get off the drawing board and under construction.

It is not often that we find federal officials willing and able to roll up their sleeves and take on a tough job, but I believe we finally have one in Sarah Feinberg. Just five weeks into the job, Ms. Feinberg executed an efficient and effective federal response to the Mount Carbon derailment that showed me she understood the importance of being on the ground to support our first responders and local officials serving on the front lines. In July, I hosted Administrator Feinberg in West Virginia for a tour of the Center for National Response (CNR) in Gallagher, where we held a roundtable discussion on the site’s emergency response efforts. She also visited Mount Carbon a few weeks ago to announce the findings of the FRA investigation into the February derailment.

The new tank car safety regulations that were finalized in May were dependent on close collaboration between the FRA and the Pipeline and Hazards Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). Ms. Feinberg’s experience allowed her to cut through red tape and get the right people in the room to get the job done. While the new rules do not solve every problem, they represent a major step in the right direction. In fact, they satisfied all or part of 10 outstanding National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommendations, including all four recommendations that were made in April of this year.

Ms. Feinberg’s experience makes her uniquely qualified to lead the FRA through this transition, and I look forward to working with her to improve the safety and efficiency our country’s rail infrastructure.

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