California Attorney General Kamala Harris challenges Benicia oil train analysis
By Tony Bizjak, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014
A crude oil train operated by BNSF snakes its way through James, California, just outside the Feather River Canyon in the foothills of Sacramento Valley, on June 5, 2014. The potential environmental and safety risks posed by such trains continues to elicit debate. | Jake Miille / Special to The Bee/Jake Miille
California Attorney General Kamala Harris has joined the list of state and local government officials challenging Benicia’s review of plans to bring crude oil on trains to a local refinery.
In a letter last week to Benicia, Harris said the city’s draft environmental impact report “fails to properly account for many of the project’s potentially significant impacts.”
Benicia is conducting an environmental review of a plan by Valero Refining Company to build a crude oil transfer station on its Benicia plant site, so it can transport two 50-car crude oil trains a day through Northern California to the refinery for processing.
In the report, Benicia officials conclude the project’s oil spill risk along the rail line is insignificant. The state Office of Spill Prevention and Response and state Public Utilities Commission already have challenged the report, calling it inadequate. The Sacramento Area Council of Governments has challenged Benicia’s analysis, as well. All three criticize the Benicia report for only looking at the spill risks between Roseville and Benicia, failing to study rail lines all the way to the state border.
Harris’ letter repeats most of the earlier criticisms, including the contention that the report “underestimates the probability of an accidental release from the project by considering only a fraction of the rail miles traveled when calculating the risk of a derailment.”
“These issues must be addressed and corrected before the City Council of Benicia takes action” on the project,” Harris states.
The letter is one of hundreds Benicia officials said they received in the past few months in response to their initial environmental study. Benicia interim Community Development Director Dan Marks said the city and its consultants would review the comments and prepare responses to all of them, then bring those responses to the city Planning Commission for discussion at an as-yet undetermined date.
Under the Valero proposal, trains would carry about 1.4 million gallons of crude oil daily to the Benicia refinery from U.S. and possibly Canadian oil fields, where it would be turned into gasoline and diesel fuel. Valero officials have said they hope to win approval from the city of Benicia to build a crude oil transfer station at the refinery by early next year, allowing them to replace more costly marine oil shipments with cheaper oil.
Crude oil rail shipments have come under national scrutiny in the last year. Several spectacular explosions of crude oil trains, including one that killed 47 residents of a Canadian town last year, have prompted a push by federal officials and cities along rail lines for safety improvements.
A representative for the attorney general declined comment when asked if Harris would consider suing Benicia to force more study of the project.
“We believe the letter speaks for itself,” spokesman Nicholas Pacilio said. “We expect it will be taken seriously.”
Unfortunately, the DEIR for this Project fails to properly account for many of the Project’s potentially significant impacts pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act(CEQA). Specifically, the DEIR:
1. Underestimates the probability of an accidental release from the Project by considering only a fraction of the rail miles travelled when calculating the risk of derailment, by relying on a currently unenforceable assumption that newer, safer tank cars will be used, by failing to adequately describe the potential consequences of an accident resulting in a release of crude oil, and by improperly minimizing the risk to public safety from increased rail-use;
2. Improperly asserts that the proper baseline for the Project’s impact on air emissions is determined by the Refinery’s maximum permitted emissions;
3. Fails to analyze the impacts on air quality from the foreseeable change in the mix of crude oils processed at the Refinery;
4. Ignores reasonably foreseeable Project impacts by impermissibly limiting the scope of the affected environment analyzed to only the 69-milestretch from Benicia to Roseville;
5. Fails to consider the cumulative impacts on public safety and the environment from the proliferation of crude-by-railprojects proposed in California; and
6. Employs an overly broad determination of trade secrets, which results in the nondisclosure of the types of crude oil to be shipped by rail and refined onsite. As a result, the DEIR fails to provide sufficient information for an adequate analysis of the safety risks from transportation or the air quality impacts from refining the new crude.
These issues must be addressed and corrected before the City Council of Benicia takes action pursuant to CEQA on the DEIR or the Project.
As Trains Move Oil Bonanza, Delays Mount for Other Goods and Passengers
By Ron Nixon, October 8, 2014
A Burlington Northern Santa Fe oil train outside Casselton, N.D. The company has committed $5 billion for rail expansion. Credit Dan Koeck for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — An energy boom that has created a sharp increase in rail freight traffic nationwide is causing major delays for Amtrak passenger trains and is holding up the transport of vital consumer and industrial goods, including chemicals, coal and hundreds of thousands of new American cars, rail officials and federal and state regulators say.
American rail lines now move more than a million barrels of oil a day, much of it from the Bakken shale oil field in North Dakota and Montana and from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada. Last year about 415,000 rail cars filled with crude oil moved through the United States, compared with 9,500 in 2008, according to the Surface Transportation Board, a bipartisan body with oversight of the nation’s railroads.
In large part as a result, long-distance Amtrak passenger trains are now late 60 percent of the time, Amtrak officials said, compared with a year ago, when the trains were late 35 percent of the time.
The problems are particularly acute on long-distance passenger lines like the Empire Builder, which shares tracks with freight traffic from Chicago to Portland, Ore., and is late nearly 70 percent of the time. Trains on the 47-hour trip typically run three to five hours behind. Revenue from the line has dropped 18 percent from last year, Amtrak officials said, as word about the sluggish service spread among passengers, most of whom use the Empire Builder for shorter trips between cities on the route.
“Clearly, we’re not getting the level of service that we want to give, or what our customers have been used to getting over the last decade,” said Edward R. Hamberger, president and chief executive of the Association of American Railroads, an industry trade group.
Delays are not as serious for rail service along the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak owns most of the track between Washington and Boston and has more control over passenger service. On long-distance routes, Amtrak passenger trains run on tracks owned by the major freight railroads.
On the long-distance routes, aging tracks and a shortage of train cars, locomotives and crews have also caused delays, rail officials said. In addition, an improving economy has meant more goods shipped by rail over all. Rail accounts for 40 percent of all goods moved in the country as measured in ton-miles, derived by multiplying a cargo’s weight by the distance shipped. Trucks are second at 28 percent.
A proposed pipeline to move oil from Canada would alleviate some of the rail congestion but would not eliminate it, officials said.
Although North Dakota has been known within the industry for a surge in moving oil by rail, and resulting delays in grain shipments for farmers, rail officials say the congestion and late passenger trains have spread to many other states. On Wednesday, the Surface Transportation Board announced that the nation’s largest railroads must file public weekly reports about their performance, which the board said would give rail customers a better sense of the magnitude of the delays.
The problems are only expected to get worse. American coal exports to countries like China, which are picking up as domestic demand falls, will also compete for space on trains, as new coal export terminals are planned at several ports in the Pacific Northwest. (Increased Asian demand for coal reached record levels in 2012 and continues to be high.) In the United States, a record harvest of corn, soybeans and wheat is expected this year, adding to the stress on the nation’s rail network.
“It’s like having a fire hydrant hooked up to a garden hose,” said Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soybean Transportation Coalition in Iowa.
Railroad executives say they are working to unclog the congestion. Michael J. Trevino, a spokesman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe line, owned by Warren Buffett, said the company had committed $5 billion for rail expansion and track maintenance to help improve its service.
The money includes about $300 million over the next three years to improve capacity and beef up the rail system in North Dakota, which Burlington Northern Santa Fe said would bring 300 more employees to the state and lead to smoother operations and faster deliveries. Mr. Trevino said B.N.S.F. was also making improvements to its tracks in Missouri that carry coal trains coming from Montana and Wyoming.
Thomas L. Lange, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad, said the company was buying about 229 new locomotives and hiring about 3,200 additional train crews to help deal with the increase in demand for service.
“We’ve had some delays in our system because demand for freight rail transportation for Union Pacific surged in 2014 to unexpected levels, which we have not seen since 2006,” Mr. Lange said. “We’re upgrading and expanding our system to make sure that at the end of the day, we get the goods delivered.”
A major speed bump in the nation’s rail congestion is Chicago, a transit point for six of the nation’s seven biggest railroads. Nearly half of what is known as intermodal rail traffic — the big steel boxes that can be carried aboard ships, trains or trucks — travels through the city. The congestion in Chicago is also caused by track sharing among freight, Amtrak and commuter trains.
The railroads and local, state and federal officials have committed $3.2 billion for 70 construction projects to replace rail intersections with overpasses and underpasses, in an effort to smooth the flow of traffic for the 1,300 freight and passenger trains that travel through Chicago each day. The project will also separate tracks now shared by freight and passenger trains at critical spots. Officials said about 22 of the projects had been completed.
In total, railroads will spend about $26 billion this year to upgrade the rail network and hire new workers, said Mr. Hamberger of the Association of American Railroads.
Despite the improvements, many industries say they still suffer delays. In April, the auto industry said it had more than 200,000 new cars in storage because of a shortage of trains to move the vehicles.
“Since the summer, we are seeing progress, but automakers are entering the fall with a backlog of new cars to transport by rail,” said Gloria Bergquist, vice president of communications for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the auto trade group. About 70 percent of new vehicles are moved by rail, according to the group. Industry officials say they are moving more cars by truck as a result of the rail congestion. But trucks are a more expensive method of moving the cars, a cost that may eventually be passed on to customers.
Oil train wrecks across nation put Rocklin on alert
South Placer train yards at center of Valero’s proposal
By Scott Thomas Anderson, Editor, October 8, 2014
The train tracks that run between Rocklin and Roseville will be filled with nonstop oil trains if Vallero Refinery’s plan is approved. | Ike Dodson – The Placer Herald
The U.S. and Canada have together experienced seven sizable accidents in the last two years involving oil shipped across rail lines — and Rocklin leaders have no intention of seeing their city become the eighth location on the list as Valero moves forward with plans to push thousands of tanker-cars filled with “black gold” through the region.
Not without a plan, at least.
Two months ago, the Valero Refinery plant in Benicia, some 81 miles from Rocklin, submitted an Environmental Impact Report to California regulators for its Crude by Rail Project. Valero’s plan would bring individual train cars full of crude oil from Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan converging on the Union Pacific rail yard in Roseville, where they would be assembled into 50-car trains and then sent on to Benicia. According to the EIR, Valero hopes to send two of these 50-car convoys plugging through the older sections of South Placer County every day.
Since the release of Valero’s EIR, Rocklin Deputy Fire Chief Richard Holmes has been examining potential dangers for the city. In a recent staff report submitted to council members, Holmes noted that, between 2013 and 2014, seven American and Canadian cities have been forced to respond to serious accident involving crude oil, ethanol or similar petrochemicals being shipped across rails.
“The hazard identification of crude oil is ‘immediately hazardous’ with a highly flammable distinction,” Holmes wrote. “There have been many major accidents involving crude oil in North America … these events demonstrate that accidents can happen.”
Holmes added that Rocklin’s risks are likely softened by the fact its train tracks run only a few miles from Roseville’s Union Pacific yard, thus forcing any oil tankers heading northwest to depart on their way from one city to the other at “relatively slow” rates of speed.
However, even that rare bright spot in Holmes’ report may be of limited consolation to Rocklin city council members. In February, an oil train that crashed in Lynchburg, Virginia, was traveling at only 24 miles per hour, according to its ownership company, CSX. In that case, seven oil cars spilled into the environment — with three plunging directly into the James River.
The Lynchburg oil train wreck is in addition to the seven larger recent disasters Holmes mentioned in his analysis.
Rocklin Fire Department’s immediate conclusions in the face of Valero’s plans involve identifying the community’s specific risks if an oil train accident occurs, and then gearing training and preparedness for those exact scenarios. One asset the fire department currently already has is a foam tender with over 1,000 gallons of Class B foam. If the Valero EIR passes, obtaining more backup resources may be a topic the city council considers.
Rocklin City Public Information Officer Karen Garner said the recent staff report to leadership is, for the moment, an overview.
“The presentation was just about presenting the facts and current status of a topic that’s received a lot of attention lately,” Garner said this week. “No request for additional equipment or resources is being made at this time.”
