Tag Archives: Anthony Foxx

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Ethanol, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Pipeline transport, Tank car design

DeFazio Blasts U.S. DOT for Failing to Address Rail Tank Car Safety

Press Release from Congressman Peter DeFazio

DeFazio Blasts U.S. DOT for Failing to Address Rail Tank Car Safety

Will request an Inspector General audit of PHMSA safety programs

From Press Release, 22 Jan 2015

Washington, D.C. – Today, Ranking Member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Anthony Foxx, urging him to take immediate action to address rail tank car safety and other significant pipeline and hazardous materials safety hazards.

“Despite numerous incidents involving the transportation of crude oil and other flammable materials by rail, subsequent NTSB safety recommendations, and an industry petition for new tank car design standards, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) failed to take action until a train transporting crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed 47 people and completely destroyed the town center,” said DeFazio. “Here we are almost 15 months later, and we still do not have a final rule.”

DeFazio also takes issue with PHMSA’s failure to address longstanding, significant safety issues that extend to pipelines.

In multiple pipeline accident investigations over the last 15 years, the NTSB has identified the same persistent issues–most of which DOT has failed to address. Each time, Congress has been forced to require PHMSA to take action, most recently in the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011. Yet three years later, almost none of the important safety measures in the Act have been finalized, including requirements for pipeline operators to install automatic shutoff valves and to inspect pipelines beyond high-consequence areas.

“For these reasons, I will soon be sending a letter to the DOT Inspector General (IG), requesting a thorough audit of PHMSA’s pipeline and hazardous materials safety program, including an evaluation of the agency’s effectiveness in addressing significant safety issues, congressional mandates, and NTSB and IG recommendations in a timely manner; the process PHMSA utilizes for implementing such mandates and recommendations; the sufficiency of PHMSA’s efforts to coordinate with the modal administrations and address safety concerns raised by those administrations; and any impediments to agency action, such as resource constraints.”

DeFazio urges DOT to take immediate action to address these serious safety issues. He writes that the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the Federal Government to protect their safety and health and our nation’s natural resources rightly deserve more than proposed rules that languish in the Federal bureaucracy.

The full letter to Secretary Foxx is below:

January 22, 2015

The Honorable Anthony Foxx
Secretary of Transportation
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20590

Dear Secretary Foxx:

I write to express my serious concerns with the repeated failure of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to address longstanding and undisputed pipeline and hazardous materials safety issues.

The rule regarding Enhanced Tank Car Standards and Operational Controls for High-Hazard Flammable Trains is a prime example. The DOT maintains finalizing this rule remains one of its highest priorities, yet the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) now reports that publication of a final rule is not anticipated until May 12, 2015. In fact, the DOT has not even transmitted a draft final rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has raised concerns about the “high incidence of failure” of DOT-111 tank cars since 1991. In fact, over the last 10 years, the NTSB has investigated or is currently investigating seven accidents involving the transportation of crude oil and other flammable materials in DOT-111 tank cars, including an October 2006 train derailment in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, which caused the release of 485,278 gallons of ethanol that ignited and burned for almost 48 hours; an October 2007 ethanol train derailment in Painesville, Ohio; a June 2009 ethanol train derailment and fire in Cherry Valley, Illinois, which killed one person, injured nine others, and resulted in a mandatory evacuation of about 600 residences within a half-mile radius of the accident site; an October 2011 ethanol train derailment in Tiskilwa, Illinois; a July 2012 mixed freight train derailment in Columbus, Ohio, which released 53,000 gallons of ethanol; a December 2013 train derailment and fire in Casselton, North Dakota, which resulted in the release of 476,000 gallons of crude oil and the evacuation of 1,400 residents; and, an April 2014 train derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia, which spilled 30,000 gallons of crude oil in and around the James River.

The NTSB has been made aware of (but is not investigating) five additional train accidents that occurred between August 2008 and February 2014 in the U.S., which involved the release of crude oil, causing significant environmental damage and fires.

In March 2011, the Association of American Railroads petitioned PHMSA to conduct a rulemaking on new tank car design standards, which seemingly languished in the bowels of the agency until 2013, when a train transporting crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed 47 people and completely destroyed the town center. Coincidentally, two months later, PHMSA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on new tank car design standards.

Here we are almost 15 months later, and we still do not have a final rule. Frankly, I am concerned that opposition to the more contentious portions of the rule will only lead to further delays, possibly even litigation. That will end up postponing implementation of a final rule while the concerns of States and local communities are growing.

Moreover, these delays have significant implications for rail car manufacturers. It will take time for them to adjust to the standards proposed in the rule, which in turn will have a rippling effect on shippers who are putting off purchases of new tank cars until the new design standards are finalized. As I have said before, I believe that you should seriously consider severing this rule and propose one rule on stronger tank car design standards and another rule to address the operational changes proposed in the NPRM. That is sure to move this issue forward and address the more immediate dangers posed by the current DOT-111 tank cars.

Additionally, my concerns regarding PHMSA’s failure to address longstanding, significant safety issues extend to pipelines, as well. In multiple pipeline accident investigations over the last 15 years, the NTSB has identified the same persistent issues, most of which DOT has failed to address on its own accord. Each and every time, Congress has been forced to require PHMSA to take action, most recently in the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-90). Yet, three years later, almost none of the important safety measures in the Act have been finalized, including requirements for pipeline operators to install automatic shutoff valves and to inspect pipelines beyond high-consequence areas.

For these reasons, I will soon be sending a letter to the DOT Inspector General (IG), requesting a thorough audit of PHMSA’s pipeline and hazardous materials safety program, including an evaluation of the agency’s effectiveness in addressing significant safety issues, congressional mandates, and NTSB and IG recommendations in a timely manner; the process PHMSA utilizes for implementing such mandates and recommendations; the sufficiency of PHMSA’s efforts to coordinate with the modal administrations and address safety concerns raised by those administrations; and any impediments to agency action, such as resource constraints.

In the interim, I urge you to take immediate action to address these serious safety issues. The tens of millions of Americans who rely on the Federal Government to protect their safety and health and our nation’s natural resources rightly deserve more than proposed rules that languish in the Federal bureaucracy. If you need additional information or have questions regarding this letter, please have your staff contact Jennifer Homendy of my staff at 202-225-3274.

Sincerely,

PETER DeFAZIO
Ranking Democratic Member

 

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Insurance Industry, Rail industry

DOT: Rail insurance inadequate for oil train accidents

Repost from Politico
[Editor: Significant quote: “For ‘higher-consequence events’ — such as the one in Lac-Mégantic — ‘it appears that no amount of coverage is adequate,’ the analysis says. That’s because the maximum amount of coverage available on the market is $1 billion per carrier, per incident….’You should know the railroads are used to running bare — without adequate insurance,’ said Fred Millar, an independent rail consultant who has criticized the government’s oversight of oil trains.”  – RS]

DOT: Rail insurance inadequate for oil train accidents

By Kathryn A. Wolfe | 8/6/14
Several CSX tanker cars carrying crude oil in flames after derailing in downtown Lynchburg, Va. | AP Photo
The maximum amount of coverage available is $1 billion per carrier, per incident. | AP Photo

Most freight railroad insurance policies couldn’t begin to cover damage from a moderate oil train accident, much less a major disaster. And the Department of Transportation’s own database of oil train incidents is flawed because some railroads and shippers provide incomplete information that far understates property damage.

Those conclusions come from a DOT analysis of its own rule proposed to address the series of troubling derailments across North America as shipments of oil by rail surge.

The department issued the analysis Aug. 1, the same day it published its proposed oil train safety rule that is meant to create what Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx calls a “New World Order” in oil trains regulations, including by requiring sturdier tank cars, tightened speed limits and improved brakes for the trains carrying an ever-greater amount of crude oil through communities from Southern California to Albany, N.Y.

The rule would not expressly address the insurance issue, except to cite the general liability landscape as part of the need for the rule, which seeks to prevent the worst disasters from happening and mitigate damages from those that do.

Gaps in insurance coverage became an issue after the July 2013 disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, which occurred when a train that had been left unattended careened down an incline, derailed and charred much of the downtown area, killing 47 people. The damages from that wreck could stretch into the billions of dollars, but the railroad responsible for the derailment carried only $25 million of insurance and wound up declaring bankruptcy.

DOT’s analysis says most of the largest railroads commonly carry around $25 million in insurance, though that can rise to as much as $50 million for trains hauling certain kinds of hazardous chemicals. Smaller railroads — such as the one in the Lac-Mégantic disaster — often carry much less than that.

But the agency’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration estimated that the average derailment that spills crude oil will mean $25 million in total costs — bumping up against most of even the largest railroads’ current insurance limits.

For “higher-consequence events” — such as the one in Lac-Mégantic — “it appears that no amount of coverage is adequate,” the analysis says. That’s because the maximum amount of coverage available on the market is $1 billion per carrier, per incident.

“You should know the railroads are used to running bare — without adequate insurance,” said Fred Millar, an independent rail consultant who has criticized the government’s oversight of oil trains. “And the situation that is described in the [analysis] from Lac-Mégantic is only just the tip of the iceberg. The railroads basically know that they have cargoes that can cause massive, enormously greater death and destruction than what happened in Lac-Mégantic.”

Devorah Ancel, an attorney for the Sierra Club, said insurance coverage “needs to catch up with the heightened risk that is part of this industry now,” because otherwise “taxpayers end up covering it.”

The Association of American Railroads declined to comment, saying the group is still reviewing the pending rule and its supporting documents, including the regulatory analysis, and the American Petroleum Institute said it would file its comments as part of the public comment period.

“We are working closely with regulators and the rail industry in a comprehensive effort to enhance safety through accident prevention, mitigation and response,” API said.

But railroads know they’re underinsured and have groused about the status quo, particularly considering the fact that energy companies that ship oil and ethanol largely do not bear any liability for an incident once their product is loaded onto a train. And under “common carrier” regulations, railroads cannot refuse a shipment any kind of material assuming it meets proper regulations.

Warren Buffett’s BNSF railroad, the pioneer in the oil train industry, has been requesting that railroads get some of the same protections now afforded to the nuclear power industry, using the Price-Anderson Act as a model. That law requires power companies to contribute to an insurance fund that would be used in the event of an accident, and it also partially indemnifies the nuclear power industry.

The DOT analysis also points to a systemic weakness in the way the federal government collects data on derailments of crude oil and ethanol trains. In the section dealing with the probability of major rail accidents, the analysis observes that it’s “impossible to isolate the derailment rate of only crude oil and ethanol trains” due to “limitations in the reported data.”

That’s because PHMSA requires an incident report to be filed only if the incident led to the release of a hazardous material — so derailments that did not result in a spill aren’t included. As a result, even some dramatic accidents aren’t included in the database — for instance, one earlier this year that resulted in a crude oil train dangling over Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River.

Separately, DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration maintains data on derailments, including how much hazardous material was released — but doesn’t identify what type of substance it was. “As a result, it is impossible to use FRA data to identify crude and ethanol derailments,” the department said.

And the data that is reported, particularly to PHMSA, is often inaccurate, largely because it is self-reported by railroads or shippers, according to the analysis. And these self-reports often underestimate the damages done in spill incidents.

According to the analysis, damage information reported to PHMSA is typically “only the most basic costs” such as the value of spilled petroleum and damage to tracks and cars.

“PHMSA believes that response costs and basic cleanup costs, when they are reported, do not represent the full costs of an accident of the response,” the report said.

Underreporting damages, particularly for environmental cleanup costs, ends up hiding the true impact of a spill from policymakers, Sierra Club’s Ancel said. She hopes the pending rule will address the issue.

“It is extremely important that the industry is required to adequately report — and there should be some sort of mechanism in the rule where the agency has inspectors that are ensuring that they are,” she said. “So not only should the industry be on the hook for reporting, but the agency needs to be able to have the resources to ensure that they are.”

Bakken Crude, Climate Change, Crude By Rail, Derailment, donner, DOT-111, Rail routing, Tank car design, Tar sands crude, Uprail communities

Open letter from Davis to Benicia: Stop crude by rail

Repost from The Benicia Herald
[Editor: A year ago, almost to the day, I wrote an Op-Ed for The Benicia Herald titled, “Valero crude-by-rail: ‘Down-wind’ and ‘up-rail’.”  A few months later, I was contacted by Milton Kalish and Lynne Nittler of Davis, and we’ve stayed in touch.  They – and their wonderful group of activist friends in Cool Davis, Yolano Climate Action and 350 Sacramento – have continued their CBR organizing efforts with great energy and creativity.  This open letter by Lynne serves as a detailed primer of all the reasons why CBR must be stopped.  A must-read.  – RS]

Open letter to Benicia: Stop crude by rail

July 10, 2014 by Lynne Nittler

IN RESPONSE TO JIM LESSENGER’S OPED OF JULY 4, “Open letter to the City Council: Support CBR,” I write today urging Benicia to deny the proposed Valero Refinery Crude-by-Rail Project until all safety measures listed below are in place.

I have been carefully following the proposed Benicia project, reading articles from a wide variety of sources including many reports and, most recently, the Draft Environmental Impact Report.

I follow a number of environmental topics closely, particularly those related to climate change. I am on the board of Cool Davis, a nonprofit organization that helps the city of Davis implement its Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.

I have an “uprail” perspective that is important to add to the conversation on the Valero proposal, as the impact of the daily trains would be significant in my community.

I have six reasons Benicia should deny the CBR project. They are as follows:

1. The project is far from contained within Benicia’s 3,000-acre Industrial Park.

Benicia is fortunate to have a buffer area of industries and vacant land around Valero Benicia Refinery. Valero has even promised that the oil trains will not cross city streets during Benicia’s rush hours (though neither Valero nor the city of Benicia can enforce that promise).

Davis and other uprail communities are not so fortunate. The trains will pass through downtown Davis, including residential neighborhoods, the center of downtown, university housing and the entire Mondavi Performing Arts Complex and Conference Center.

Train travel through Davis is made more dangerous because there is a curve with a 10-mph left-handed cross-over between the main tracks several hundred feet east of the Amtrak station, right downtown. All other crossovers on the line are rated for 45 mph. This 10-mph spot in particular is an accident waiting to happen.

While the trains would hopefully avoid rush hour in Benicia, that will surely not be the case for all uprail communities.

2. Valero owns the property but should not be allowed to set profits ahead of public health and safety.

No corporation operates in a vacuum. Valero’s decision to import North American crude has profound effects beyond its own improvement that cannot be ignored.

Valero’s change to crude by rail from crude by ship would allow it to import both Canadian tar sands and Bakken crude, and would add additional dangerous trains to the tracks all the way back to their points of origin, most likely in North Dakota or Alberta, Canada. That means the trains endanger and disrupt towns and cities across our country on their way to Benicia. These tracks are already impacted by oil trains taking precedence over trains transporting grain and other local crops and commuter trains. More importantly, people are endangered by the highly volatile Bakken crude — there have been 12 significant derailments since May 2013, with six explosions — and our precious marshes and waterways are threatened by the possibility of toxic spills of tar sands bitumen, which quickly sinks to the bottom and cannot be removed. The Kalamazoo River, Mich. cleanup of 1 million gallons of leaked tar sands dilbit is still unsuccessful after four years and $1 billion.

In California, the trains would come over the Sierra Nevada Mountains or wind through the Feather River Canyon (rated as a “rail high-hazard area” by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services), or possibly even come from Oregon down through Redding and Dunsmuir, site of a 1991 derailment of a fertilizer tank car that killed fish for 40 miles. In any of these routes, major rivers would be crossed where an accident could contaminate much-needed drinking and irrigation water.

3. The project will clearly affect the environment.

A wider view of “environment” raises serious concerns. California considers the cradle-to-grave lifecycle of products. Extracting, refining and burning heavy, sour crude is a nasty job, start to finish.  That’s why tar sands is called a “dirty” fossil fuel, noted for its energy-intensive carbon footprint. This deserves a full discussion which is beyond the scope of this letter. The recently completed Valero Improvement Project was intended to allow the refinery to handle refining the heavy, sour crude as efficiently as possible, which is laudable, but that is not to say it is a clean process. Setting aside the forests destroyed and the unlined toxic tailing ponds leaking into the waterways in Canada at the point of extraction, we must note that processing tar sands bitumen will produce more of the byproduct petcoke that is so polluting it cannot be burned in the U.S. (It can be sold abroad and burned for energy there. Ironically, when it is burned in China, some of the smog blows back across the ocean to Southern California.)

The heavy crude is high in sulfur and toxic metals, which corrode refinery pipes. The Richmond refinery fire in 2010 was traced partly to corrosion from refining tar sands. Emissions must be carefully monitored to ensure toxic fumes do not escape to neighborhoods or endanger workers.

The 2003 “improvement” project enabling Valero to refine heavy crude opened the door for California to refine more of the world’s dirtiest bitumen, running contrary to our state goals under AB 32 to conserve energy and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by moving to renewable energy sources. In fact, according to California Energy Commission figures, California reduced its total consumption of oil from 700 million to 600 million barrels in the last year, primarily through conservation — i.e., adopting lower-emissions vehicles and Energy Star appliances, changing transportation habits to walk-bike-public transport, and making our buildings more energy efficient. We are moving away from our dependence on oil by reducing our consumption of it.

4. The project will be safer, but not safe.

The outgoing chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has some strong words for the rail industry and the way certain hazardous liquid is transported.

Deborah Hersman’s strong remarks are tied to older-model rail tank cars known as DOT-111s, which carry crude oil and ethanol through cities across the U.S. and Canada. Hersman told an audience that DOT-111 tank cars are not safe enough to carry hazardous liquids — in fact, she said her agency issued recommendations several years ago. “We said they either need to remove or retrofit these cars if they’re going to continue to carry hazardous liquids,” Hersman said on April 22, 2014.

Right now, four California legislators are urging the Department of Transportation to take action on critical safety measures. After a hearing of the joint houses of the Legislature on June 19 chaired by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, Congressmembers John Garamendi, D-Davis, Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, Mike Thompson, D-Napa, and George Miller, D-Martinez, sent a letter to Anthony Foxx, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, stating that “we cannot allow communities to be in danger when viable solutions are available.”

The summary of their requests, dated July 1, 2014, is as follows:

• Provide a report on the level of compliance by the railroad and petroleum industry to the May 7 Emergency Order.

• Issue rulemaking that requires stripping out the most volatile elements from Bakken crude before it is loaded onto rail cars.

• Expedite the issuance of a final rulemaking to require the full implementation of the Positive Train Control (PTC) technology for all railroads transporting lighter crude, and provide a status report on the progress of PTC implementation to date.

• Expedite the issuance of rulemaking that requires phasing out old rail cars for newer, retrofitted cars.

The Benicia decision comes at a critical moment. Benicia’s approval of the Valero proposal before DOT takes action would undercut what our legislators are trying to do to protect not just Benicia citizens, but all uprail citizens all across the U.S. Regulating that the volatility of crude be reduced will force the industry to build small processing towers — aptly called stabilizers — that remove natural gas liquids (a product that can be saved and sold) from the crude before it is loaded, as they do in other parts of the country (Eagle Ford shale reserves in Texas, for example).

Obviously, creating this necessary infrastructure will increase the cost of Bakken crude. The industry will no doubt balk at the additional expense, as will the refineries. On the other hand, it’s immoral to expose many millions to explosive trains of Bakken crude when there is a remedy! One Lac-Mégantic tragedy is enough.

The trains rumbling into Benicia are the first trains to pass daily through our region to the Bay Area, but others will follow. The approval of this project cannot be viewed in isolation. This fall the DEIR will be available for review for the Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery Rail Spur Project that would bring another daily train through my community in Davis, through yours in Benicia, across the aging Benicia rail bridge, along the beautiful Carquinez Strait, through the East Bay and on down the Capitol Corridor to San Luis Obispo County. Based on California Energy Commission data, the Sacramento Bee says we can expect five to six trains daily in the next few years as California receives 25 percent of its crude by rail.

We put ourselves at grave risk to proceed with any rail projects now until we firmly lock in place the safety measures requested by our U.S. congressmembers. In this country, protection for the public must come first.

5. The CBR proposal makes no economic sense for Benicia and for the nation.

We live in a WORLD economy. Rather than destined for domestic purposes, the refined oil from all five Bay Area refineries is sold on the world market for greatest profit. That’s why gasoline rates at the pumps have not decreased during this oil boom.

Considered from the perspective of the weather of our planet, which will become a pivotal concern in the coming years, it makes no sense, financial or otherwise, to extract another drop of fossil fuel from the Earth. We need to put all our attention on renewables and conservation, and cut back drastically on our oil consumption. Realistically, this means refineries will need to produce far fewer products, and the oil extraction frenzy will die down.

6. The Valero refinery cannot befriend Benicia and then turn around and foul the air, risking the health and safety of our children.

Valero may mean well when it makes charitable contributions, but its intentions mean little if it then creates unsafe conditions for those who are in receipt of its generosity. It is not surprising that salaried employees, wage earners and grant recipients would stand up in favor of most anything proposed by the “friendly giant.” But it is incumbent on us all to look at the big picture — and a big picture that contains oil trains is not a pretty one.

In summary, I recommend a “no” vote on the Valero Crude-by-Rail Project until all safety measures requested by our four local congressmembers in Washington are firmly in place, and enough new tank cars are designed and produced to safely convey the crude oil from its source to Benicia, ensuring that no communities or waterways are in danger.

This “no” vote would send a strong message to DOT that their work is urgent, and that the regulations they make will be closely monitored. A “yes” vote, however, would undercut the important work our legislators are doing on our behalf.

Lynne Nittler lives uprail from Benicia in Davis. She devotes much of her time to Cool Davis, a nonprofit that focuses on helping Davis reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to a changing climate and improve the quality of life for all. She has followed the oil train issue closely since last September.