NEW DOT HAZARDOUS MATERIAL TRANSPORTATION RULE

Federal DOT has published a new rule governing the transportation of hazardous materials, including those used in agricultural production. The rule requires all operations offering, or transporting hazardous materials to create and implement a transportation security plan. The plan must include personnel security, unauthorized access and en route security.

Along with the plan, dealers are also required to conduct security awareness training and in-depth security plan training. This security awareness training can be combined with the standard 3-year training cycle for HazMat employees. The in-depth security plan training must provide the company's security objective specific security procedures, employee responsibilities and action to be taken in case of a security breach. This training must be completed by December 22, 2003.

The good news is this is a performance-based rule affording dealers a wide range in determining how compliance is achieved. Dealers can assess their own vulnerabilities and then create their own security plan without the government telling them how. However, when a DOT inspector arrives you better have a plan in place and able to show a paper trail of how it was arrived at, how the weakness where addressed and employees trained.

Using the Security Vulnerability Assessment (SVA) program offered by OABA is a great way to get the process started. To learn more about how the SVA works go to www.oaba.net , or call OABA at (614) 326-7520.