GAO Says Defense Department Should Improve on Hazmat Shipments
A federal report said the Department of Defense should improve the regulations and procedures governing the transportation of hazardous materials.
The report recently released from the Government Accountability Office said that at least 44 times during fiscal 2012 and 2013, DOD installations did not give commercial carriers access to secure hold areas for arms, ammunition and explosives shipments.
Although there were about 70,891 of these types of shipments in those years, DOD didn’t provide a secure holding area “for even a small percentage of these sensitive shipments,” posing a risk to public safety and national security, according to the GAO.
The report also said that DOD may be making decisions about which carriers are eligible to handle hazmat based on carrier safety scores that lack the sufficient information to make them reliable.
DOD uses the Department of Transportation’s Safety Measurement System scores to determine which carriers are eligible to participate in the Transportation Protective Services program.
“However, in February 2014 GAO found that scores from many carriers lack sufficient safety performance data to reliably compare them with other commercial carriers’ scores,” the report said.
According to GAO, more than 3 billion tons of hazmat is transported by commercial carriers in the United States annually. DOD accounted for about 1.6 million of those shipments in fiscal year 2013, using commercial and military carriers, the GAO said.
