Tribal leaders, commissioner warn of oil train dangers
November 25, 2014
Increased oil train traffic on Washington’s aging rail system puts the state’s people and ecosystems at risk, according to an opinion piece by 10 tribal leaders and the Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark, published Thursday in the Seattle Times.
“Crude By Rail: Too Much, Too Soon” calls for federal regulators to improve safety protocols and equipment standards on Washington rail lines to deal with a 40-fold increase in oil train traffic since 2008. Trains carrying crude oil are highly combustible and, if derailed, present serious threats to public safety and environmental health, according Goldmark.
Herman Williams Sr., chairman of the Tulalip Tribes; Tim Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Nation; Jim Boyd, chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation; Brian “Spee~Pots” Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community; and other tribes, joined Commissioner Goldmark in urging policymakers to address critical issues around the increase of oil train traffic through the state.
“The Northwest has suffered from a pollution-based economy,” said Cladoosby in a statement. “We are the first peoples of this great region, and it is our responsibility to ensure that our ancestral fishing, hunting and gathering grounds are not reduced to a glorified highway for industry. Our great teacher, Billy Frank, Jr., taught us that we are the voices of the Salish Sea and salmon, and we must speak to protect them. If we cannot restore the health of the region from past and present pollution, how can we possibly think we can restore and pay for the impact of this new and unknown resource?
“We are invested in a healthy economy, but not an economy that will destroy our way of life. We will not profit from this new industry, but rather, we as citizens of the Northwest will pay, one way or another, for the mess it will leave behind in our backyard. We will stand with Commissioner Goldmark and our fellow citizens and do what we need so those who call this great state home will live a healthy, safe and prosperous life,” said Cladoosby.
For Tulalip chairman Herman Williams, Sr., endangerment of fish runs by oil train pollution is a key concern.
“For generations we have witnessed the destruction of our way of life, our fishing areas, and the resources we hold dear,” said Williams in a statement. “The Boldt decision very clearly interpreted the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott to reserve 50 percent of the salmon and management to the tribes. The federal government must now partner with tribes to protect the 50 percent of what remains of our fishing rights. The Tulalip Tribes will not allow our children’s future to be taken away for a dollar today. Our treaty rights are not for sale,” said Williams.
According to Commissioner Goldmark, tribal leadership on the oil train issue is essential.
“Tribal leaders bring unique perspective and concern about threats to our treasured landscapes,” said Goldmark. “It’s an honor to join them in this important message about the growth of oil train traffic in our state and the threat it poses to public safety, environmental sustainability, and our quality of life.”
Jared Margolis, Center for Biological Diversity, (971) 717-6404, JMargolis@biologicaldiversity.org
Leah Rae, Riverkeeper, (914) 478-4501 x 238, LRae@riverkeeper.org
Petition Seeks to Limit Length, Weight of Oil and
Hazardous Material Trains to Prevent More Derailments
Existing Federal Proposals Fail to Sufficiently Protect Public, Environment From “Bomb Trains”
PORTLAND, Ore.— In the face of a dramatic rise in trains carrying explosive crude oil and derailing in a series of devastating accidents, the Center for Biological Diversity and Riverkeeper, Inc. today petitioned the Obama administration to protect the public and environment by significantly reducing the risk of oil train derailments by limiting the length and weight of trains hauling oil and other hazardous liquids.
Federal regulators have acknowledged that the weight and length of oil trains has contributed to derailments and spills in recent years, and that, in all cases, the size of a train compounds the potential significance of a disaster. But agencies have not proposed any solutions to address this concern. In fact the latest federal proposal aimed at improving tanker car safety admits the rule could result in longer, heavier trains.
“One of the quickest ways to make these oil trains safer is limiting how much of this volatile crude oil they can carry,” said Jared Margolis, an attorney at the Center who focuses on the impacts of energy development on endangered species. “The government has acknowledged the dangers of these massive trains — now it needs to take action to protect people and wildlife from spills and derailments.”
Today’s petition calls for oil trains to be limited to 4,000 tons, which is the weight the American Association of Railroads has determined to be a “no problem” train, meaning there would be significantly less risk of derailment. This would limit oil trains to 30 cars. Most oil trains today include about 100 cars — well beyond what the industry has determined to be truly safe.
“Federal regulators have admitted these oil trains pose a significant risk to life, property and the environment, and granting our petition would significantly reduce those risks,” said Phillip Musegaas, Hudson River Program Director for Riverkeeper. “The government, to date, has left the lid off this explosive industry — setting a cap on train length and weight is a necessary, logical, safety step that is one of the simplest ways to reduce the risks that our communities, first responders and ecosystems are confronted with on a daily basis.”
Oil transport, especially by rail, has dramatically increased in recent years, growing from virtually nothing in 2008 to more than 400,000 rail cars of oil in 2013. Billions of gallons of oil pass through towns and cities ill equipped to respond to the kinds of explosions and spills that have been occurring. A series of fiery oil-train derailments in the United States and Canada has resulted in life-threatening explosions and hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil being spilled into waterways.
The worst was a derailment in Quebec that killed 47 people, forced the evacuation of 2,000 people, and incinerated portions of a popular tourist town. The most recent explosive derailment occurred in April in downtown Lynchburg, Va., resulting in crude oil leaking out of punctured tank cars, setting the James River on fire and putting habitat and drinking water supplies at risk.
Without regulations that will effectively prevent derailments, oil trains will continue to threaten people, drinking water supplies and wildlife, including endangered species.
“This petition directly tackles one of the root causes of these dangerous, unnecessary oil train derailments,” said Margolis. “We’ll continue to push regulators until they step up and ensure the safety of people, wildlife and the environment we all share.”
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 800,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Riverkeeper is a member-supported environmental watchdog organization dedicated to defending the Hudson River and its tributaries and to protecting the drinking water supply of nine million New York City and Hudson Valley residents.
A Union Pacific train traveling through the Feather River Canyon Tuesday morning has derailed, officials confirmed.
According to the Office of Environmental Health, the train derailed around 3:00 a.m. near Virgilia in Plumas County across from Highway 70 mile marker 19.
The train was carrying corn grain. Officials say 11 cars derailed and slid down a large embankment, a significant amount of corn grain is in the river, but all the cars are on land.
No injuries have been reported and officials with the OES, Fish and Wildlife, and Union Pacific are on the scene conducting an investigation. The cause of the incident is unknown at this time.
Train traffic through the area is being routed around the canyon and Union Pacific officials say they do not have estimated time the derailment will be cleared.
Gov’t Data Sharpens Focus on Crude-Oil Train Routes
A ProPublica analysis of federal government data adds new details to what’s known about the routes taken by trains carrying crude oil. Local governments are often unaware of the potential dangers they face.
By Isaiah Thompson, special to ProPublica, Nov. 25, 2014
A crude-bearing train derailed and exploded in Casselton, N.D., in December 2013, prompting the evacuation of most of the town’s 2,300 residents. (Bruce Crummy, File/AP Photo)
The oil boom underway in North Dakota has delivered jobs to local economies and helped bring the United States to the brink of being a net energy exporter for the first time in generations.
But moving that oil to the few refineries with the capacity to process it is presenting a new danger to towns and cities nationwide — a danger many appear only dimly aware of and are ill-equipped to handle.
Much of North Dakota’s oil is being transported by rail, rather than through pipelines, which are the safest way to move crude. Tank carloads of crude are up 50 percent this year from last. Using rail networks has saved the oil and gas industry the time and capital it takes to build new pipelines, but the trade-off is greater risk: Researchers estimates that trains are three and a half times as likely as pipelines to suffer safety lapses.
Indeed, since 2012, when petroleum crude oil first began moving by rail in large quantities, there have been eight major accidents involving trains carrying crude in North America. In the worst of these incidents, in July, 2013, a train derailed at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and exploded, killing 47 and burning down a quarter of the town. Six months later, another crude-bearing train derailed and exploded in Casselton, North Dakota, prompting the evacuation of most of the town’s 2,300 residents.
In those and other cases, local emergency responders were overwhelmed by the conflagrations resulting from these accidents. Residents often had no idea that such a dangerous cargo, and in such volume, was being transported through their towns.
Out of the disasters came a scramble for information. News outlets around the country began reporting the history of problems associated with the DOT-111 railroad tank cars carrying virtually all of the crude.
Local officials, environmental groups, and concerned citizens began to ask what routes these trains were taking and whether the towns in their paths were ready should an accident occur.
In July, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation ordered railroads to disclose route information to state emergency management officials. Railroads had fought hard to keep this information private, citing security concerns. Even after federal regulators required more disclosure, railroads pressured many state governments to withhold their reports from the public. Some have come out, often as a result of public records requests by news organizations: The Associated Press has obtained disclosures in several states initially unwilling to release them.
Map: Where Do Trains Carry Crude Oil?
Our interactive map uses federal government data to show where safety incidents on trains were reported, where each train began its journey, and where it was ultimately headed. Explore the app »
(Yue Qiu, Eric Sagara and Lena Groeger, ProPublica, and Isaiah Thompson, special to ProPublica)
Still, those disclosures offer scant detail, often consisting of little more than a list of counties through which crude oil is passing, without further specifics.
There have been attempts to fill in the blanks. KQED in Northern California, for example, combined the information disclosed in federal route reports with maps of the major railroads to show where trains carrying crude passed through California. The environmental group Oil Change International superimposed major refineries and other facilities that handle crude oil onto a national railroad map.
A ProPublica analysis of data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration adds new details by plotting out where trains carrying crude have experienced safety incidents, most of them minor. The data shows such incidents in more than 250 municipalities over the last four years. We’ve used the data to create an interactive map showing where safety incidents on trains were reported, where each train began its journey, and where it was ultimately headed.
The data also shows that factors that contributed to major, or even catastrophic, accidents have also been present in hundreds of minor ones: outdated tank car models; component failures; and missing, damaged and loose parts.
Bit by bit, a more realistic notion of where the dangers of crude-bearing trains are most substantial is emerging.
“Frankly, the [previous] disclosures weren’t of that much use,” says Kelly Huston, a spokesman for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, one of the first state agencies to make those disclosures available for anyone on its website. When it comes to a detailed picture of where crude is moving, Huston says, “The expectation of the public is very far from the reality of what we’re actually getting.”
The hazardous materials data reviewed by ProPublica adds to that picture.
Only a handful of places around the country have the refinery capacity and infrastructure necessary to handle the massive amounts of oil being extracted from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale: Bakersfield, Carson, and Long Beach in California; St. James, Lake Charles, Lacassine in coastal Louisiana; Philadelphia, Paulsboro, New Jersey. Delaware City, Delaware in the Mid-Atlantic.
These cities have become the terminuses for “unit trains” carrying up to 100 tank cars, each containing as much as 30,000 gallons of crude oil. These endpoints also have shaped the paths along which crude-bearing trains now cross hundreds of communities, many of which have never seen such traffic. Tracks all but abandoned for years have sprung back to life on account of the oil boom.
The vulnerabilities of the DOT-111 tank cars in which much of the oil is moved are well known by now. For decades, federal officials have cited concerns over their relatively thin shells, which are prone to puncturing or rupturing in an accident and releasing the hazardous material inside. They also have other components prone to damage, including protruding fittings often left unprotected, and hinged lids held on by bolts that have a history of coming loose, especially if not properly tightened by the original shipper.
Firefighters douse blazes after the oil-train derailment in Lac-Megantic in Canada. (FranÁois Laplante-Delagrave/AFP/Getty Images)
When a tank car full of oil ruptures, the consequences can be dire. At a panel held by the National Transportation Safety Board in April, one technical expert with the agency described a “fireball release,” in which “the entire content of the tank car, up to 30,000 gallons, is instantly released, along with the potential for rocketing car parts.” When one tank car ignites, the heat can set off a chain reaction, causing other cars to explode as well.
In most cases, the tanks cars used to transport crude are supplied by railroad shipping companies, not railroads themselves. Railroads have typically pushed for more stringent safety requirements since they have to move the cars. Shipping companies and oil producers have pushed back against stricter proposals.
In 2011, as the crude-by-rail industry was ramping up and federal regulators were preparing to introduce new rules, industry groups adopted voluntary safety modifications to add thicker shells and other protections to new tank cars. But roughly 85 percent of the fleet currently carrying flammable liquids still consists of the older models. And while PHMSA is expected to issue rules requiring safer tank cars, railroads will have years to phase in the upgrades and it’s not yet clear to what extent they will be required to retrofit existing cars.
For most local fire departments, a blaze involving even a single tank car, let alone many, would be too much to handle, emergency response officials acknowledge.
“[Most] fire departments don’t have the capacity to deal with more than a standard gasoline tank [fire], which is about 9,000 or 10,000 gallons of fuel,” said Richard Edinger, vice chairman of the International Association of Fire Chief’s hazardous materials committee. “Well, one DOT-111 car holds about 30,000 gallons — that pretty much exceeds our capacity.”
Complicating matters, many towns don’t even know that trains carrying crude oil are passing through.
Along the journey south from North Dakota, for example, many trains now make a stop in the tiny town of El Dorado, Arkansas, population 18,500, bound for a refinery that recently added capacity to accommodate Bakken crude. The PHMSA hazmat data includes more than a dozen leaks found on trains headed for the town.
Yet Union County Emergency Management Services deputy director Bobby Braswell, a former Chief Deputy for the El Dorado Fire Department, was unaware of the new crude traffic and its potential risks.
“We’ve got a little old railroad here, but if they transport crude, I don’t know,” said Braswell in an interview. If state emergency management officials have a plan to respond to oil train derailments, they haven’t shared it with El Dorado yet: “I don’t remember anybody calling about crude,” Braswell said.
Along the trains’ route to the Mid-Atlantic, according to PHMSA’s hazmat data, is Mineral City, Ohio, where Tuscarawas county emergency services director Patty Levengood said she didn’t know whether fire departments in her jurisdiction had been trained or otherwise advised on the new oil traffic. Such planning was “pretty much left to the individual chiefs,” she said.
Other responders said they are acutely aware of the new risks facing their towns, and some expressed alarm. Asked whether his fire department had the capacity to handle a single tank car fire, Duane Hart, fire chief for Juniata County, Pennsylvania, answered with an emphatic “I know we don’t!” Crude trains now pass through Port Royal, a town of 925 in Juniata County for which Hart’s department provides services.
In many circumstances, all local responders would be able to do in the event of a large tank car fire is simply let it burn, experts say. At the recent NTSB rail safety panel, Gregory Noll, a chairperson for the hazardous materials committee of the National Fire Protection Association, summarized the situation bluntly.
“There’s very little that we as a responder are going to do,” he said, “other than… to isolate the area, remove people from the problem, and allow the incident to go its natural course until it essentially burns down to a level where we can extinguish it.”
But that approach would still involve tremendous damage in the many densely populated areas through which crude is now moving by rail, officials acknowledge.
“The standard evacuation is typically a half-mile,” said Jeff Simpson, a 30-year firefighter who lives in North Virginia and teaches a course called “Training for Railroad Emergencies.”
“But if you’re in the middle of a big city, the footprint is going to be much bigger.”
The Pittsburgh-based nonprofit news organization PublicSource reported in August that up to 40 percent of that city’s roughly 300,000 residents live within the potential evacuation zone of trains carrying crude through the city.
Another Pennsylvania metropolis, Philadelphia, has become one of the biggest destinations in the U.S. for Bakken crude thanks to newly retrofitted refineries and a brand new rail unloading facility opened just two years ago.
The city appears frequently in hazmat reports: In at least 65 cases over the last two years, tank cars bound for or arriving in Philadelphia were found to have loose, leaking or missing safety components. These parts are meant to prevent flammable contents from escaping in the event of an accident.
There was a more serious incident last January, when a train full of oil derailed a few miles from the city’s downtown. Luckily, no one was injured. The train was soon righted and the railroad made repairs, assuring city officials that the danger had passed.
But even after the derailment, Philadelphia “has not issued new plans, directives, or protocols in response to the increase of crude oil shipments,” wrote city director of Emergency Management Samantha Phillips in an email to ProPublica.
The Philadelphia County Local Emergency Planning Committee “has not been active on the transportation of Bakken crude oil,” Phillips added.
The agency’s website contains no emergency information specific to a fire involving crude oil, or any other hazardous substance, other than a video featuring ” Wally Wise-Guy, the Shelter in Place Turtle.”
The video advises that “in the event of a hazardous materials emergency … do what Wally Wise Guy does — go inside.”
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