The U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Pipeline Safety hosted a 1.5 day workshop April 27 and 28 in Washington D.C. concerning the DOT's Unusually Sensitive Area (USA) rulemaking. The USA rule will be used in current and future regulations associated with spill response, low pressure pipelines, emergency flow restricting devices, increased pipeline inspection, risk management, and integrity management in high consequence areas. The purpose of the workshop was to initiate a peer review of the proposed approach to defining USAs.

The first 10 states slated for USA identification completion are TX, OK, KS, LA, IL, WY, NM, CA, MO, and MT. These 10 states contain about 75% of the hazardous liquid pipelines in the United States. The DOT is targeting to have USA maps for these states by the end of 2000. Peer reviewers (primarily academia and agency personnel) are expected to provide their input/comments to the DOT by May 19th. The DOT plans to publish a final rule on USAs by 12/00. The DOT intends to post a summary of the workshop on their website at http://ops.dot.gov.