Washington governor nixes Vancouver oil train terminal

Repost from The Oregonian – Oregon  Live / Oregon Business News

Washington governor nixes Vancouver oil train terminal

Updated Jan 29, 5:30 PM; Posted Jan 29, 5:28 PM
By Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian/OregonLive
The Port of Vancouver's rail loop was proposed to serve a 360,000-barrel-a-day oil train terminal under a proposal by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos.  (Courtesy of Port of Vancouver)
The Port of Vancouver’s rail loop was proposed to serve a 360,000-barrel-a-day oil train terminal under a proposal by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. (Courtesy of Port of Vancouver) (Port of Vancouver)

Washington’s governor on Monday put a presumed end to a proposed oil-by-rail export terminal at the Port of Vancouver, notifying state regulators that he agreed with their unanimous decision to reject the controversial project.

The state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council voted in November to recommend that Gov. Jay Inslee deny the Tesoro-Savage proposal. In a letter announcing his decision, Inslee said he found ample support in the record for the council’s decision that the project was wrong for the proposed site, including risks posed by a large earthquake, an oil spill or an explosion or fire at the facility.

Inslee said the facility posed potentially catastrophic risks to the public and there was no way to mitigate the impacts that that an oil spill would have on water quality, wetlands, fish and wildlife.

“The Council found that emergency responders are unlikely to be able to successfully respond to a major incident at the facility,” Inslee wrote.

Vancouver Energy, a joint venture of the Tesoro Corp, now known as Andeavor, and Savage Co.s, has 30 days to appeal the governor’s decision in Thurston County Superior Court. A spokesman for Savage said the company would have a statement, but had not issued one yet.

The companies had proposed spending $210 million on a terminal at Port of Vancouver to transfer 360,000 barrels a day of Bakken crude from trains onto marine vessels for shipment to West Coast refineries. Supporters pointed to the jobs and property taxes that would be generated by the facility.

Dan Serres, conservation director for the advocacy group Columbia Riverkeeper, said the proposal attracted unprecedented opposition from a cross-section of businesses, environmental groups and citizens. And while the company could appeal the decision, Serres said they’d be doing so without a lease as the Port of Vancouver has already signaled its intent to seek other options as of March 31.

“The idea of putting five loaded oil trains a day down the Columbia River Gorge was irresponsible, and after Mosier, that became clear,” said Serres, referring to the fiery derailment of an oil train near the town of Mosier in June 2016.  “We’re just overjoyed to see them go away. This one’s over.”

-Ted Sickinger

3 former MMA rail workers acquitted in Lac-Mégantic disaster trial

Repost from CBC News

3 former MMA rail workers acquitted in Lac-Mégantic disaster trial

Locomotive engineer and 2 others found not guilty of criminal negligence causing 47 deaths
Alison Brunette · CBC News · 19 January 2018
Three former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic railway employees were acquitted in the July 6, 2013, train derailment that destroyed parts of downtown Lac-Mégantic, Que., killing 47 people. (CBC)

Jurors have acquitted the three former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA) railway employees charged with criminal negligence causing death in the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster.

Locomotive engineer Tom Harding, 56, rail traffic controller Richard Labrie, 59, and operations manager Jean Demaître, 53, were all charged after the derailment of a runaway fuel train early on July 6, 2013. Several tankers, carrying highly volatile crude oil exploded, turning downtown Lac-Mégantic into an inferno and killing 47 people.​

There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the verdict was delivered early Friday afternoon.

Labrie couldn’t hold back tears as he described his relief. He said that his thoughts are with the community of Lac-Mégantic.

“I would like to say the people of Lac-Mégantic, what they went through, they showed a huge amount of courage,” he said.

“I wasn’t intending to cry. But I can tell you it was difficult — it was a long process.”

View image on Twitter
Just informed people at this coffee shop of the verdicts. There was an explosion of joy and clapping.  Justin Hayward @CBC_Hayward 

The eight men and four women on the jury have been deliberating since Thursday morning, Jan. 11, at the Sherbrooke, Que., courthouse, after a marathon trial which began last September.

The jurors have endured countless hours of technical testimony from train experts, heard dramatic audio recordings of emergency workers and railway employees from the night of the explosions, and listened to other former MMA employees called as Crown witnesses describe a work environment with little regard for safety standards and no budget for training.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Gaétan Dumas thanked the jury members for their work, telling them that the case wasn’t easy.​

“You are the most enthusiastic jury I have ever seen,” he said.

Former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic locomotive engineer Thomas Harding leaves the court during a break in the trial in September. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

Last, ill-fated journey

Harding, who pitched in on the night of the disaster, helping emergency responders detach the fuel cars that hadn’t exploded, was the driver of the ill-fated fuel train.

He picked up the 73-tanker car train in Farnham, Que., 60 kilometres southeast of Montreal, on the afternoon of July 5, 2013.

Late that evening, he left the train idling on the tracks in the village of Nantes, 13 kilometres west of Lac-Mégantic, where it was to be picked up by an American crew the following day.

During the three-month trial, the court heard how a fire broke out in the smokestack of that locomotive shortly after Harding left it unattended.

Firefighters arrived and extinguished the fire, shutting down the locomotive’s engine and breakers, which disabled the air brakes that were securing the train. Jurors heard that less than an hour later, the runaway train barrelled down the tracks, derailing in downtown Lac-Mégantic. The resulting explosions engulfed the town in flames.

Several of the Crown’s 31 witnesses described Harding as an experienced, knowledgeable and helpful co-worker, which the Crown alluded to in closing arguments.

“Despite all comments on Harding, on July 5, he failed to do his job,” prosecutor Sacha Blais told the jury.

“A careful engineer would have foreseen the danger.”

Much of the Crown’s testimony revolved around the seven handbrakes Harding applied to the train, whether the engineer tested them and how many would have been sufficient to secure the train properly.

In closing arguments, Harding’s lawyer, Charles Shearson, countered that the engineer followed the MMA’s general operating instructions.

Shearson listed a number of other factors that contributed to the derailment, including the safety of one-man crews and MMA’s failure to conduct a risk assessment on the consequences of parking a heavy fuel train on a slope at Nantes. The Transportation Safety Board’s report identified the rail line between Nantes and Lac-Mégantic as the second steepest grade of any stretch of track in Canada.

Jean Demaître, the ex-MMA operations manager was charged with criminal negligence. Richard Labrie, far right, is a former MMA rail traffic controller faced the same charge. (Alison Brunette/CBC)

Accused waived right to mount defence

Harding, as well as the other two accused, waived their right to mount a formal defence to the charges.

Labrie, the rail traffic controller on duty that night, was on shift 200 kilometres away in Farnham, relying on information being provided to him by telephone, his lawyer, Guy Poupart, reminded the jury in closing arguments.

Poupart said the Crown failed to “demonstrate in any way that a rail traffic controller placed in the same position as Labrie and given the same information, would have acted any differently.”

Demaître, MMA’s senior manager in Quebec, was at home near Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and on call on the night of the disaster. The Crown argued he had been negligent, ignoring complaints about the lead locomotive’s mechanical defects.

“A supervisor should have ensured all safety,” Blais concluded.

Demaitre’s lawyer, Gaétan Bourassa, urged the jurors to distinguish between his client’s actions and those of his former employer.

“This is the trial of Jean Demaître, not the trial of MMA through Jean Demaître,” Bourassa said in his closing arguments.

“There is a tremendous difference.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alison Brunette is a reporter for CBC Quebec in Sherbrooke, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

Trump uses slurs against poor, non-white nations – time for impeachment

Trump uses slurs against poor, non-white nations

By Roger Straw, January 12, 2018
Editorial Comment

President Trump has repeatedly used crude language and now has used unacceptable trash talk to describe the nations of Haiti and El Salvador, and “Africans.”  His language betrays him and exposes a heart and mind that is ignorant, bigoted and racist.

Here in a small town on the west coast, we may think that our voices are insignificant in the wider picture of U.S. policy and politics.  But, as Chris Carson, President of the League of Women Voters put it, “We can and we must do better to be vigilant about speaking out against racism. We must stand up as a nation and say this is unacceptable.”

My outrage and passion tempt me to make vile comments about our President.  But like the Obamas, and as a person of faith, I will try to take a higher road.

Every single one of us must speak up to confront the ugly head of racism when it surfaces, whether in a school or grocery store or bar in Benicia or in a magnificent meeting room in a white house in Washington, D.C.

When will it be time for American legislators to begin serious conversations about impeachment?

Roger Straw
Benicia, California, USA

The New Yorker satire: Trump Demands Revision of Poem on the Statue of Liberty: No Shithole Countries

Repost from The New Yorker

SATIRE FROM THE BOROWITZ REPORT

Trump Demands Poem on Statue of Liberty Be Revised to Exclude Shithole Countries

By Andy Borowitz, January 11, 2018
Photograph by Drew Angerer / Getty

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump demanded on Thursday that the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty be revised immediately to exclude nations he considered “shithole countries.”

Speaking to reporters, Trump said that the poem as it currently stands “is basically an open invitation that says, like, if you come from a shithole country, welcome aboard.”

“I don’t know the entire poem, but it’s something like ‘Give us your tired, your poor, your yadda yadda yadda,’ ” he said. “We could keep all that but then put in, right at the end, in big letters, maybe, ‘except if you’re from a shithole country.’ ”

“I think if a boat from a shithole country came and saw that poem with those words at the end, they would turn around and go right back to wherever they came from,” he said.

Shortly after Trump made his remarks about “shithole” countries, representatives of the countries he designated as such released a joint response.

“We do not understand President Trump’s aversion to so-called ‘shithole countries,’ since he is doing his best to turn the United States into one,” the statement read.

Andy Borowitz is the New York Times best-selling author of “The 50 Funniest American Writers,” and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes theBorowitz Report, a satirical column on the news, for newyorker.com.