Crude By Rail, Derailment, Ethanol, Spill

Wisconsin train derailment: All but 1 auto rack back on tracks

Repost from The Indian Republic

Wisconsin train derailment: All but 1 auto rack back on tracks

Divit Nehru | Wednesday, November 18, 2015
BNSF freight train
Wisconsin train derailment spilled thousands of gallons of ethanol

Twenty five cars derailed, including empty auto racks and tanker cars of denatured alcohol, more commonly known as ethanol. The company said four tank cars each released up to 500 gallons of ethanol, and a fifth vehicle released about 18,000 gallons.

The derailment resulted in 13 tanker cars being knocked off the tracks and spilling oil.

A 13-car Canadian Pacific train crashed on Sunday, resulting in one tank vehicle spilling Bakken crude oil near the Wisconsin town, according to the agency.

Three of the cars have been placed onto a temporary track, with nine more to go.

With the number of trains now traveling through Minnesota and Wisconsin, there are plenty of disaster officials who think it’s a major accident waiting to happen.

Fire Chief Paul Stephans said his department regularly trains to handle the side effects of derailments.

The Federal Railroad Administration is focusing on mechanical and track cause as the reason for derailment.

However, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration did agree with the tribes on one issue: the rule’s effective abandonment of a requirement that railroads hauling large quantities of crude oil notify state emergency officials.

Canadian Pacific tells WKOW that there was a train derailment in Wisconsin Wednesday around 1 p.m. Five freight cars went off of the track at a rail yard near Watertown. On Monday afternoon, new track was installed to replace the damaged track. Six BNSF Railway cars loaded with crude oil derailed in March near Galena, Ill., with two of the cars bursting into flames.

CP said in its statement that it had reserved hotel rooms for all affected families. The spill was contained and the oil did not reach any waterways, he said.

With the Wisconsin accidents, at least 26 oil trains and 11 ethanol trains have been involved in major fires, derailments or spills during the past decade in the USA and Canada, according to an Associated Press tally from data kept by transportation agencies and safety investigators. BNSF expects the tracks to return to service Monday morning.

Air Quality, Crude By Rail, donner, Electronically controlled pneumatic braking (ECP), Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Noise pollution, Oil stabilization, Oil storage, Positive Train Control, Revised Draft EIR, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

Davis Enterprise Editorial: Benicia washes its hands of us

Repost from the Davis Enterprise

Our view: Benicia washes its hands of us

By Our View | November 15, 2015

The issue: Bay Area city can’t see past its own back yard on refinery project

The city of Benicia — the only entity capable of exerting any control over the crude-oil shipments set to arrive at a planned expansion of a Valero oil terminal — has shown in a draft environmental impact report that any impact the terminal has on communities farther up the train tracks is none of its business.

THE PROPOSED project would allow Valero to transport crude oil to its Benicia refinery on two 50-car freight trains daily on Union Pacific tracks that come right through Davis, Dixon, Fairfield and Suisun City on their way to Benicia. The rail shipments would replace up to 70,000 barrels per day of crude oil currently transported to the refinery by ship, according to city documents.

The original draft EIR, released in 2014, didn’t adequately address safety and environmental concerns. Local governments — including the city of Davis, Yolo County and the Sacramento Area Council of Governments — weighed in on the draft, urging Benicia to take a second look.

Benicia withdrew the draft and went back to work, and the new document acknowledges the risks of pollution, noise and, oh yes, catastrophic explosions from oil trains, the likes of which leveled Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in 2013.

Disappointingly, having recognized the issues involved, the report simply says there’s no way to mitigate them and recommends moving ahead. With a bureaucratic shrug of the shoulders, the concerns of communities from Roseville to Suisun City are dismissed.

NATURALLY, SACOG disagrees, and so do we. While it’s true that there’s not a lot Benicia can do itself to mitigate the impact of its project, it can force Valero to do something about it.

SACOG urges a raft of measures that are within Valero’s control: advanced notification to local emergency personnel of all shipments, limits on storage of crude-oil tanks in urban areas, funding to train emergency responders, cars with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, money for rail-safety improvements, implementation of Positive Train Control protocols and, most importantly, a prohibition on shipments of unstabilized crude oil that hasn’t been stripped of the volatile elements that made Lac-Mégantic and other derailments so catastrophic.

Due to federal laws, cities along the railway lines have no ability to control what goes through. Only Benicia, now, while the project is still on the drawing board, has the authority to set reasonable limits and conditions on a project that puts millions of people along the railroad in harm’s way.

We urge the Benicia City Council to use its discretionary authority in this matter to protect those of us who have no say in the process.

Bakken Crude, Clean energy, Climate Change, Climate change denial, Global warming, Tar sands crude

This Changes Everything – The Film

Repost from thefilm.thischangeseverything.org
[Editor:  This excellent film was shown nearby recently.  You can find out where it is showing now, or arrange to have it shown in your community here.    Check out the TRAILER and read more below!  – RS]

This Changes Everything

What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?

“Purposely unsettling… Ultimately encouraging”
– Variety Magazine

“Genuinely moving”
-Entertainment Weekly

“The realization that a solution is possible, well, that changes everything”
– Globe & Mail

“Klein and Lewis paint a picture of a post-fossil-fueled, post-capitalist future that seems not only within reach, but like a place where we actually want to live”
– YES Magazine

“Klein and those impassioned protesters provide something that has been in short supply in the predecessors — namely, a modicum of hope for the future”
– LA Times

What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?

Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.

Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.

Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.

Over the course of 90 minutes, viewers will meet…

Crystal, a young indigenous leader in Tar Sands country, as she fights for access to a restricted military base in search of answers about an environmental disaster in progress.

Mike and Alexis, a Montana goat ranching couple who see their dreams coated in oil from a broken pipeline. They respond by organizing against fossil fuel extraction in their beloved Powder River Basin, and forming a new alliance with the Northern Cheyenne tribe to bring solar power to the nearby reservation.

Melachrini, a housewife in Northern Greece where economic crisis is being used to justify mining and drilling projects that threaten the mountains, seas, and tourism economy. Against the backdrop of Greece in crisis, a powerful social movement rises.

Jyothi, a matriarch in Andhra Pradesh, India who sings sweetly and battles fiercely along with her fellow villagers, fighting a proposed coal-fired power plant that will destroy a life-giving wetland. In the course of this struggle, they help ignite a nationwide movement.

The extraordinary detail and richness of the cinematography in This Changes Everything provides an epic canvas for this exploration of the greatest challenge of our time. Unlike many works about the climate crisis, this is not a film that tries to scare the audience into action: it aims to empower. Provocative, compelling, and accessible to even the most climate-fatigued viewers, This Changes Everything will leave you refreshed and inspired, reflecting on the ties between us, the kind of lives we really want, and why the climate crisis is at the centre of it all.

Will this film change everything? Absolutely not. But you could, by answering its call to action.

 

Climate Change, Crude By Rail, Fossil fuels, Local Regulation, Rail accidents

Portland votes to oppose any new projects that would increase the transportation or storage of fossil fuels

Repost from OPB.org, Portland OR
[Editor:  Significant quote: Thursday’s vote was the second climate change resolution city commissioners have voted on in as many weeks. Last week, the council voted to oppose projects that would increase oil train traffic in the metro area.   – RS]

Portland Approves ‘Landmark’ Fossil Fuel Limits

By Ryan Haas OPB | Nov. 13, 2015 1:45 p.m.
A large crowd cheered Wednesday night as the Portland City Council voted 4-0 to approve a resolution opposing projects that would increase the number of oil trains traveling through Portland and Vancouver, Washington. Alan Montecillo/OPB

Portland city commissioners on Thursday voted unanimously to oppose any new projects that would increase the transportation or storage of fossil fuels in the city.

The vote followed hours of testimony that mostly supported the resolution. Among the people testifying were students, who in recent years have filed lawsuits that asked the federal government, states and cities to take action on climate change.

Environmental groups praised the move by Portland commissioners as a “landmark,” and the most stringent action taken by any city against climate change.

Mayor Charlie Hales delivered the final vote for the resolution before the chamber erupted in loud cheers. He said the council’s decision shows a clear commitment to counteract climate change.

“It feels like things are accelerating,” the mayor said, referring to recent action by the White House and a climate summit earlier this year hosted by Pope Francis. “We have one route through those rapids that are just ahead.

“The future is not that far away, but if we are aware,” Hales said, “and we steer where we want to go, we can get to a safe and wonderful future.”

While all of the city commissioners eagerly endorsed the resolution, Commissioner Dan Saltzman noted that the vote took place before a friendly crowd.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Saltzman said. “It’s easy to proselytize among ourselves and feel a sense of excitement in the city hall chamber that’s packed with advocates. But when you step outside, we have a real world that needs to be persuaded and convinced.”

Thursday’s vote was the second climate change resolution city commissioners have voted on in as many weeks. Last week, the council voted to oppose projects that would increase oil train traffic in the metro area.

That was a largely symbolic vote, however, because the city doesn’t have jurisdiction over railways.

Both resolutions are a response to the rapid expansion of fossil-fuel development nationwide and numerous oil train accidents in recent years.

Vancouver Energy Project wants to build the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal at the Port of Vancouver. If completed, it would ship an average of 360,000 barrels of oil daily to refineries along the West Coast.

While opponents to the resolutions were greatly outnumbered, they urged the commissioners to consider how limiting fossil fuels in the region could hurt jobs.

“I wish the people in this room had the same passion for income inequality as they have for fossil fuels,” said electrical worker Joe Esmond at least week’s hearing.