Cleaner Lands
Ensuring Pipeline Safety
To protect environmentally sensitive areas, densely populated areas and areas of special concern, the
Department of Transportation's Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) issued four rules in 2001
and 2002 to implement pipeline safety mandates. These address pipeline integrity management for high
consequence areas for operators of large hazardous liquid pipelines and define areas unusually sensitive to
environmental damage from pipeline releases. The new rules improve control of pipeline corrosion, reduce the
potential for pipeline accidents due to corrosion, improve the reporting of accidents involving hazardous
liquid pipelines, provide guidance on repair of hazardous liquid pipelines as part of the integrity management
program, and extend pipeline integrity management requirements to operators with less than 500 miles of
hazardous liquid pipeline. RSPA also completed the identification and mapping of the unusually sensitive areas
in 2001.