Train derails in Texas as rain, floodwaters soak state

Repost from CBS News/AP

Train derails in Texas as rain, floodwaters soak state

October 24, 2015, 10:05 AM
(Photo: CNN)
(Photo: CNN)

DALLAS – Heavy rains that brought a flood threat to North and Central Texas will spread into South Texas on Sunday as a stalled cold front causing the downpours is reinforced by remnants of Hurricane Patricia.

Much of the Texas heartland was under a flash flood watch early Saturday as the National Weather Service expected the Austin-San Antonio area to receive up to a foot of rain while already inundated sections of North Texas were expected to experience up to 7 more inches of rain.

In the latest sign of the floodwaters’ impact, a Union Pacific freight train derailed in flooded North Texas, near Corsicana, where the tracks washed away. Two crewmembers who were on board escaped by swimming to safety.

Union Pacific spokesman Jeff DeGraff said the derailment happened around 3:30 a.m. CDT Saturday in an area four miles north of Corsicana. DeGraff said Chambers Creek was overflowing and washed out the tracks.

One locomotive and several rail cars, hauling loose grave, went into the water and were partly submerged, DeGraff said. Both crewmembers on board “swam to high ground” and were rescued by emergency responders, he said. Nobody was hurt.

The 64-car train was traveling from Midlothian to Houston. DeGraff had no immediate details on how many cars went off the tracks since the flooded area was not accessible to cleanup crews.

Flash floods already have closed major highways in parts of North Texas. Floodwaters from more than 13 inches of rain closed Interstate 45 near Corsicana, backing up traffic for 12 miles, and closed parts of heavily traveled Interstate 35 near Waco.

Texas was contending with multiple storm systems, prompting emergency officials to gear up for heavy rains through the weekend and widespread flooding that may follow.

The rains already have scrambled the schedule of high school and college football games, forcing postponement of some games and rescheduling of others for earlier in the day.

Flight tracker flightaware.com reported nearly 100 flights canceled Saturday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

But for emergency officials, a primary concern is the widespread flooding expected over the weekend. Officials in Hidalgo County planned to hand out free sandbags to help residents prepare for the expected deluge. Heavy rains, gusty winds and tidal rises of up to 5 feet prompted a coastal flood advisory for the upper Texas Gulf Coast.

The potential for flooding comes five months after torrential spring storms caused more than 30 deaths and left large swaths of the state underwater.

The Memorial Day weekend brought an astonishing amount of rainfall, with some isolated areas receiving more than 20 inches. Homes were either damaged or swept away by river water southwest of Austin, about 1,500 homes in the Houston area alone sustained flood damage, and neighborhoods throughout the state were cut off by rising waters.

Little rain had fallen since then.

More than half of the state’s 254 counties had outdoor burn bans in effect Friday, due to previous dry conditions, the Texas A&M Forest Service reported.

Minnesota Governor Pens Scathing Letter To BNSF President Over Oil Trains In Twin Cities

Repost from CBS Minnesota
[Editor:  Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton learned about new routing of oil trains in a major metropolitan area AFTER THE FACT.  That is how the railroads notify the public of major changes in crude by rail transport.  It is important to have a sitting Governor join the chorus of voices on this highly significant issue of rail routing and notification.  See the TV news video below, and read Gov. Dayton’s full letter  here.  – RS]

Dayton Pens Scathing Letter To BNSF President Over Oil Trains In Twin Cities

By Jennifer Mayerle, October 21, 2015 10:34 PM

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Gov. Mark Dayton says he’s deeply concerned about an increase in the number of oil trains traveling through heavily populated areas of the Twin Cities.

In a letter to the President of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Dayton estimates an additional 99,000 people are living within an evacuation zone. The areas include spots where thousands gather at a time, like Target Field and the University of Minnesota.

Kathy Harrell-Latham lives in downtown Minneapolis with her family.

“We chose this neighborhood because it’s accessible and the risks were relatively limited,” Harrell-Latham said.

She was concerned to learn 11 to 23 crude oil trains per week are being transported on the Willmar-Minneapolis-St. Paul rail line. And it goes by Target Field, Target Center, the U of M and downtown Minneapolis.

“There are people that live here and work here all day and we need the safety measures to go above and beyond,” Harrell-Latham said.

Gov. Mark Dayton wrote a scathing letter to the President of BNSF Railway citing safety concerns and outrage over not being informed of the “significant change in operation, which puts an additional 99,000 Minnesotans at risk.”

That brings the total number in the state to roughly 425,000.

“The Governor is absolutely right there should not be these dangerous oil and ethanol trains being routed through population areas,” DFL Rep. Frank Hornstein said.

Hornstein championed last year’s crude oil transport response bill. He applauds the Governor’s request for the railway to: issue a public statement about the temporary route, to not operate under Target Field during events and to extend first responder training to affected communities, among others.

It’s in an effort to prevent accidents like this BNSF train that derailed in Montana in July, and a 2013 accident in Quebec that killed 47.

“We need to have a much stronger safety protocol for these trains as they come through but the railroads are not cooperating and now we have more evidence of that,” Hornstein said.

In response, BNSF issued this statement:

“BNSF has multiple routes in the metro area that we utilize for hauling a variety of commodities. We comply with the law and report to the state crude volumes of a certain size and their routes and when they change by 25 percent. That occurred in this case where we have a major expansion project occurring and are rerouting some traffic to accommodate that construction work. Crude oil was already being shipped on the route in question. Volumes and routes can fluctuate for a number of reasons. In all areas of the metro region where we move crude oil and other hazmat, we take a number of steps to reduce risk. We’ll be talking directly with the Governor on his concerns and our ongoing efforts to safely move all commodities by rail.”

 Gov. Dayton has asked BNSF to provide a progress report by the end of the month, and urges them to inform him and the public about changes.

Read Gov. Dayton’s full letter here.

 

ForestEthics: Uprail opposition strategy – Benicia Organizing Toolkit

From a 10/21/15 email sent by Ethan Buckner, Forest Ethics

forest ethics logo

Hi all,

I am excited to share a new resource to support uprail work in the fight to stop the proposed Valero oil trains terminal in Benicia.

Our new Benicia Organizing Toolkit includes fact sheets, sample comments (DUE OCT 30!), a Letter to the Editor / OpEd guide, action alerts, and sample resolutions & opposition letters to bring to your city councils, county board of supervisors, school districts, and other public agencies.

As of now, there are NO cities & counties that have taken a firm oppositional stance and sent letters to Benicia’s decision makers urging them to reject the Valero project.  (Some area governments and the Attorney General critiqued the EIR, but they didn’t actually take a position on the project as a whole). This uprail opposition strategy has been very effective in the San Luis Obispo County Phillips 66 campaign and is an amazing opportunity we have in Benicia.

In reaching out to local governments, I recommend citing strong letters sent to SLO County in the Phillips 66 campaign. Along with the Organizing Toolkit, I’m making available a few of these letters:

Please download the Toolkit & letters, adapt and use as you will. If you plan to mount a resolution campaign in your city/county/school board/agency, please let me know and I will do my best to support you.

Many thanks for all your great work and more to come!

Onward,
Ethan


Ethan Buckner
Extreme Oil Campaigner
ForestEthics
www.ForestEthics.org/stop-oil-trains
follow me on Twitter: @ethanbuckner

As planet’s temperatures rise, world’s economies fall

Repost from the Associated Press

Study finds the warmer it gets, the more world economy hurts

By SETH BORENSTEIN,  Oct. 21, 2015 3:55 PM EDT
Warming Economy
FILE – In this June 3, 2013 file photo, Pakistani laborers bathe at a leaked water hydrant at the end of a day on the outskirts of Islamabad. With each degree, unrestrained global warming will singe the overall economies of three quarters of the nations in the world and widen the north-south gap between rich and poor countries, a new economic and science study found. Compared to what it would be without more global warming, the average income globally will shrivel 23 percent at the end of the century if heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution continues to grow at current trajectories, according to a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — With each upward degree, global warming will singe the economies of three-quarters of the world’s nations and widen the north-south gap between rich and poor countries, according to a new economic and science study.

Compared to what it would be without more global warming, the average global income will shrivel 23 percent at the end of the century if heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution continues to grow at its current trajectory, according to a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

Some countries, like Russia, Mongolia and Canada, would see large economic benefits from global warming, the study projects. Most of Europe would do slightly better, the United States and China slightly worse. Essentially all of Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East would be hurt dramatically, the economists found.

“What climate change is doing is basically devaluing all the real estate south of the United States and making the whole planet less productive,” said study co-author Solomon Hsiang, an economist and public policy professor at the University of California Berkeley. “Climate change is essentially a massive transfer of value from the hot parts of the world to the cooler parts of the world.”

“This is like taking from the poor and giving to the rich,” Hsiang said.

Lead author Marshall Burke of Stanford and Hsiang examined 50 years of economic data in 160 countries and even county-by-county data in the United States and found what Burke called “the goldilocks zone in global temperature at which humans are good at producing stuff” — an annual temperature of around 13 degrees Celsius or 55.4 degrees Fahrenheit, give or take a degree.

For countries colder than that economic sweet spot, every degree of warming heats up the economy and benefits. For the United States and other countries already at or above that temperature, every degree slows productivity, Burke and Hsiang said.

The 20th-century global average annual temperature is 57 degrees, or 13.9 degrees Celsius, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last year — the hottest on record — was 58.24 degrees and this year is almost certain to break that record, according to NOAA. Burke and Hsiang use different population-weighted temperature figures than NOAA calculates.

But the U.S. economy is humming despite the heat. When asked how that can be so, Burke said there were many factors important for growth beyond just temperature. He said one year’s temperature and economic growth in one nation isn’t telling. Instead, he and Hsiang looked at more than 6,000 “country-years” to get a bigger picture.

Burke compared the effect of global warming on economies to a head wind on a cross-country airplane flight. The effects at any given moment are small and seemingly unnoticeable but they add up and slow you down.

While it is fairly obvious that unusual high temperatures hurt agriculture, past studies show hot days even reduce car production at U.S. factories, Burke said.

“The U.S. is really close to the global optimum,” Burke said, adding that as it warms, the U.S. will fall off that peak. The authors calculate a warmer U.S. in 2100 will have a gross domestic product per person that’s 36 percent lower than it would be if warming stopped about now.

But because the U.S. is now at that ultimate peak, there’s greater uncertainty in the study’s calculations than in places like India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria and Venezuela where it’s already hot and there’s more certainty about dramatic economic harm, Hsiang said.

The authors’ main figures are based on the premise that carbon dioxide emissions will continue to rise at the current trajectory. But countries across the world are pledging to control if not cut carbon pollution as international leaders prepare for a summit on climate change in Paris later this year. If the current pledges are kept, the warming cost in 2100 will drop from 23 percent to 15 percent, Burke said.

Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, praised the study as significant and thorough, saying Burke and Hsiang “use the most modern socio-economic scenarios.” But Richard Tol, an economist at the University of Sussex in England, dismissed the study as unworthy to be published in an economics journal, saying “the hypothesized relationship is without foundation.”

Other experts found good and bad points, with MIT’s John Reilly saying it will spark quite a debate among economists.