UPDATE: Oil tank cars leaking oil after another derailment near North Dakota-Montana border
By Forum News Service on Jul 16, 2015 at 10:10 p.m.
CULBERTSON, Mont. – A train carrying oil derailed in northeast Montana Thursday, hours after the tracks reopened from another train derailment that occurred on Tuesday in the same county.
The westbound train derailed about 6:05 p.m. Mountain Time east of Culbertson, Mont, said BNSF Railway spokesman Matt Jones.
The westbound train contained 106 loaded crude oil tank cars and two buffer cars loaded with sand. Twenty-two cars derailed and two of those remained upright, Jones said.
The other rail cars were still on the track in the desolate area near the North Dakota and Montana border.
Roosevelt County Sheriff Jason Frederick, who said he was expecting another long night, said about that two of the cars were verified as leaking oil, but there were no fires as of about 11 p.m. Central Time.
No injuries have been reported. Local firefighters and law enforcement officers are at the scene as a precaution, Jones said.
Also as a precaution all of the rural ranch homes within a mile radius of the derailment were evacuated, said Frederick.
Also traffic has been rerouted off of U.S. Highway 2, which is only about 50 yards from the derailed oil tankers, said the sheriff.
Frederick said a hazmat crew from BNSF was on a jet and on its way from Fort Worth, Texas, to the scene of the derailment. They had not arrived yet at 11 p.m.
“It’s absolutely going to be a long night,” the sheriff said. “It’s very unfortunate.”
Nine rail cars derailed Tuesday afternoon near Blair, Mont., about 20 miles to the west of the Thursday derailment, said the sheriff.
Both derailments were within about 50 miles of Williston, N.D.
The tracks had reopened about 12:15 p.m. Mountain Time on Thursday after crews repaired 1 mile of damaged track from Tuesday’s accident.
Tuesday’s derailment disrupted Amtrak service between Whitefish, Mont., and Minneapolis, and the sheriff said he expects more delays are likely.
U.S. likely to bar oil-waste dumping into 10 California aquifers
By David R. Baker, July 16, 2015 7:26pm
Oil companies will probably have to stop injecting their wastewater into 10 Central Valley aquifers that the state has let them use for years, in the latest fallout from a simmering dispute over whether California has adequately protected its groundwater from contamination.
The aquifers lie at the heart of a decades-old bureaucratic snafu whose discovery has upended the state office that regulates oil-field operations and prompted lawmakers to demand reform.
Starting in 1983, California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources let companies dump water left over from their drilling operations into 11 aquifers that the state believed had received federal exemptions from the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act, which shields groundwater supplies from pollution. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency insisted it had never granted the exemptions. The aquifers, according to the EPA, should have been protected.
After the disagreement came to light, the division agreed to stop oil-company injections into the disputed aquifers or ask the EPA for formal exemptions, which would allow oil companies to continue using the aquifers for disposal. But in an update to the EPA on Wednesday, the division said 10 of the 11 aquifers probably would not meet the legal standards for exemption. They lie too close to the surface — in one case, as shallow as 200 feet — and their water isn’t salty enough.
One of the 10 aquifers may still be eligible for an exemption, because it may be part of an oil reservoir, said division spokesman Donald Drysdale. The division is still seeking more information.
“We’re trying to run that to ground right now,” he said.
Five of the aquifers are no longer being used for wastewater disposal, according to the division. If the others don’t receive exemptions, wastewater injections there must stop by Dec. 31, 2016.
California’s oil fields contain large amounts of salty water mixed with the oil, the remains of an ancient sea. That water must be stripped from the petroleum and disposed of, usually by pumping it back underground. Often, it goes back into the same oil reservoir it came from.
But over time, the division has allowed oil companies to inject billions of barrels of this wastewater into aquifers that had relatively clean water — water that with treatment could have been used for drinking or irrigation. So far, the state has not found any instances in which the injections contaminated drinking-water supplies. But the division has shut down 23 injection wells that it considered high-risk, due to their close proximity to drinking-water wells.
The division has now established a timetable for phasing out all of the injections into aquifers that should have been protected by the Safe Drinking Water Act, with the last injection wells scheduled to close in February 2017. That long time frame will give the oil companies a chance to find other ways to deal with their “produced water.” But it has infuriated environmentalists, who have sued the state to force an immediate shutdown of the injection wells.
The federal EPA can exempt aquifers from the law, but only under stringent conditions. The aquifer must be salty enough or deep enough that tapping it for drinking water isn’t practical. If it contains significant amounts of oil or minerals, it’s considered a strong candidate for exemption.
If, however, someone already uses it for drinking, it cannot receive an exemption.
David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.
Repost from The Center For Biological Diversity [Editor: Significant paragraph: “Thirteen school boards and five teachers’ unions in California have publicly opposed the Phillips 66 project, including in Ventura, Martinez and Oakland. Last month both the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers sent letters to county officials urging them to deny the project….” See more below. – RS]
NEA Opposes California’s Phillips 66 Oil-train Project Over Risks to Students
Dangerous Bomb Trains Would Threaten Hundreds of California Schools
For Immediate Release, July 15, 2015
WASHINGTON— Out of concern for the safety and wellbeing of students and teachers, the National Education Association today opposed the proposed Phillips 66 oil-train offloading facility in San Luis Obispo County. If approved the project would bring millions of gallons of hazardous crude oil nearly every day through highly populated areas near hundreds of schools.
With nearly 3 million members in 50 states and the District of Columbia, NEA is the nation’s largest professional employee organization and union. Its Representative Assembly voted earlier this month to send a letter urging the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors to reject the project permit.
The NEA letter notes that at least 29 schools in San Luis Obispo County alone are close enough to the planned crude-by-rail route to suffer catastrophic consequences from a train derailment or an oil spill. “Please put student safety first,” the letter urges.
“Our members are concerned for the safety, health and wellbeing of their students,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “Hundreds of schools across California are within a mile of the potential ‘blast zone’ and could suffer catastrophic consequences in the event of a train derailment or oil spill.”
The county’s planning commission is expected to vote on the project in the coming months.
Thirteen school boards and five teachers’ unions in California have publicly opposed the Phillips 66 project, including in Ventura, Martinez and Oakland. Last month both the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teacherssent letters to county officials urging them to deny the project, citing the high risk of train derailment and toxic diesel emissions, which are especially harmful to children.
“Our schoolchildren at these schools are in extreme risk if there is a major oil-train accident,” said Kathleen Minck, 30-year elementary school teacher and member of the Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association, which sent a letter of opposition to the project last month. “Also, increasing air pollution from the trains will affect all our children with asthma, even in the absence of a major accident.”
Nearly 20 local governments along the rail route affected by the Santa Maria Phillips 66 project have also submitted letters or passed resolutions against the project, including San Jose, Berkeley, Davis and Ventura County. More than 23,000 people from across California have also voiced opposition to the project.
“Teachers across America want San Luis Obispo’s dangerous oil-train project stopped in its tracks,” said Valerie Love with the Center for Biological Diversity. “County officials must understand that approving this facility would endanger hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across California and beyond. It’s critical not to put schools and communities in the path of these explosive bomb trains.”
Background
The nearly 3 million-member NEA is the largest professional employee organization and labor union in the country — representing public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers, retired educators, and college students preparing to become teachers — with affiliate organizations representing 14,000 school communities in every state and the District of Columbia as well as educators working on military bases in the United States and abroad.
Shipments of crude oil by rail have increased by 4,000 percent since 2008. More oil was spilled in train accidents in 2013 than in the previous 38 years combined, and in 2014 there were more oil train accidents than in any other year on record.
At time of oil train wrecks and record auto recalls, GOP bill would roll back safety rules
By Joan_Lowy & Tom Krisher, July 16, 2015, Associated Press
FILE – In this May 12, 2105 file photo, emergency personnel work the scene of a deadly train wreck in Philadelphia. An Amtrak train headed to New York City derailed and tipped in Philadelphia. Despite several years of horrific oil train wrecks and record car and truck recalls, congressional Republicans have decided that the auto and railroad industries suffer from too much safety regulation, not too little. (AP Photo/ Joseph Kaczmarek, File) (The Associated Press)
WASHINGTON – At a time of record auto recalls and high-profile train wrecks, Republicans are working on legislation to roll back safety regulation of the auto and railroad industries.
A bill approved this week on a party-line vote by a Senate committee brims with industry-sought provisions that would block, delay or roll back safety rules. The measure is to be part of a must-pass transportation bill that GOP leaders hope to put to a vote in the Senate as early as next week.
They are under pressure to act quickly because authority for transportation programs expires on July 31. Without a cash infusion, the government will have to delay highway and transit aid to states.
One provision would block a new Department of Transportation rule requiring that trains hauling crude oil are equipped with electronically controlled brakes that affect cars all at the same time, rather than sequentially. The bill calls for a study of the technology and puts off any regulatory mandate, which could delay implementation for years.
The brake rule was prompted by a series of train wrecks in which cars of crude oil and ethanol exploded, igniting fires that burned for days. Freight railroads oppose the rule, which could cost them billions of dollars.
Another provision would give freight and commuter railroads and Amtrak more time to install a safety system called positive train control. The technology relies on GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor train position and slow or stop trains in danger of derailing because they’re traveling too fast, are about to collide with another train or are about to enter an area where crews are working on tracks.
A 2008 law requires railroads to have the technology installed and operating by the end of this year. Most are not expected to make that deadline.
The National Transportation Safety Board says that if the technology been in operation, it could have prevented an Amtrak derailment in May that killed eight people and injured about 200 others in Philadelphia, and a derailment that killed four passengers and injured 64 others in New York City in December 2013, as well as other fatal accidents.
Railroads say they have spent billions of dollars on the technology but have been hampered by technical and financial difficulties and need more time.
The bill would effectively allow states to lower the qualifying age for interstate commercial truck drivers from 21 to 18. The provision was sought by the trucking industry, which says there is a shortage of drivers.
Another provision sought by the industry would require the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to remove safety ratings of truck and bus companies from its public website. The companies disagree with the methodology the agency uses for the ratings.
The bill would impose requirements on the motor carrier agency that safety advocates say could stymie new safety regulations by making an already lengthy rulemaking process even more difficult.
Following record auto recalls last year totaling almost 64 million vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked that its staff be increased and the limit on fines levied on offending automakers be raised to $300 million, from the current $35 million.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee agreed to increase the agency’s budget and double the maximum fine to $70 million, but only after it satisfies 17 recommendations made by the Transportation Department’s inspector general and comes out with regulations identifying all the factors that go into calculating fines. That could effectively delay action on both matters by a year or more.
The chairman, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and other Republicans on the committee said the changes were necessary reforms to federal agencies that have overstepped their bounds or have issued regulations that unfairly penalize industry without improving safety. Thune noted the bill contains several provisions sought by Democrats and safety advocates.
One of the biggest would prevent rental car agencies from renting vehicles that are under a safety recall, but have not been repaired. Initially, the bill had said rental car agencies could rent unrepaired cars if they first informed customers.
That was not enough to sweeten the bill for safety advocates.
The GOP bill is “loaded down with giveaways to special interests that will set back safety for years to come,” said Jackie Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. “The influence of corporate lobbyists had more sway than commonsense and cost-effective solutions to deadly problems.”
CULBERTSON, Mont. – A train carrying oil derailed in northeast Montana Thursday, hours after the tracks reopened from another train derailment that occurred on Tuesday in the same county.
