WASHINGTON — A U.S. legislator from Wisconsin has introduced a bill to fund additional investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board, part of the ongoing increase in rail legislation that has followed the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment in February.
However, the bill by Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien), the Rail Inspector Safety Act, was actually inspired by another incident: the April derailment of a BNSF rail near DeSoto, Wis., that injured four people and sent containers into the Mississippi River [see “Injuries reported in BNSF derailment …,” Trains News Wire, April 27, 2023].
The legislation would provide an additional $3 million per year in the 2024 to 2028 fiscal years to provide for 15 additional NTSB investigators. In a press release earlier this month, Van Orden said the bill had been introduced both as stand-alone legislation and as an amendment to a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration.
Van Orden told Spectrum News he has limited his comment on the derailment until the investigation is complete, but said his legislation grew out of a conversation with NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy in which Homendy said the safety agency needed more investigators.
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