Speed limit lowered after defect that could cause derailment found
By Brian Nearing | December 15, 2014
Oil tanker and freight cars at the Port of Albany are seen from Corning Tower Monday afternoon, Dec. 15, 2014, in Albany, N.Y. Speed limits for trains were lowered on tracks near a large industrial park near Voorheesville that are commonly used by massive trains carrying flammable crude oil after state and federal safety inspectors found a faulty switch that could have caused a derailment. (Will Waldron/Times Union)
Trains were slowed on tracks last week near a large Albany County industrial park — where passing trains routinely carry dozens of tankers filled with flammable crude oil — after state and federal safety inspectors found a faulty switch that could have caused a derailment.
That switch, which feeds trains into the 550-acre Northeast Industrial Park, was examined Dec. 9 as part of the eighth statewide inspection of oil trains and tracks ordered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in response to safety concerns about a surge of crude oil shipments through New York from the Bakken fields of North Dakota.
The switch is about three miles north of the village of Voorheesville and feeds trains into the park, which itself contains about 15 miles of tracks.
“We have sent inspection crews to check rail tracks and crude oil cars across New York and we continue to find critical safety defects that put New Yorkers at risk,” the governor said in a statement issued Monday. “We will remain vigilant and will continue to use all available resources to ensure that crude oil transporters are held to the highest safety standards.”
In the Capital Region, the speed limit on the CSX-owned track around the switch was lowered from 50 mph to 25 mph last week after inspectors from the state Transportation Department and Federal Railroad Administration found the switch was too narrow by just an eighth of an inch, said DOT spokesman Beau Duffy.
The switch could have been damaged by passing trains, or could cause a train to derail, he said. Duffy said the switch was repaired and higher speed limits have been restored.
The park is owned and managed by the Schenectady-based Galesi Group. A spokeswoman for company Chief Operating Officer David Buicko said the company was not made aware of the switch issue and learned of it from a Times Union reporter.
“We are committed to strong, ongoing and long-term coordination with state and local officials and will continue our aggressive program of inspection and maintenance of the entire CSX network,” said CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle. “Upon being made aware of the defect, CSX implemented a speed reduction in that area. The switch was repaired over the weekend and the speed restriction has been lifted.”
Cuomo’s office announced that state and federal inspectors examined about 95 miles of track — from Schenectady to Selkirk, and from Albany to Whitehall in the Capital Region, as well as from Plattsburgh to the Canadian border in the North Country.
In addition to the faulty switch, inspectors found about 30 violations on tracks, including “critical problems” like missing bolts from a rail joint and an “insecure switch point heel.”
Inspectors at the Canadian Pacific Railway-owned Kenwood yard at the Port of Albany also examined 478 DOT-111 tanker rail cars, which are commonly used to haul Bakken crude. Found were 16 “non-critical defects,” including worn brake shoes, defective wheels and other issues.
Non-critical rail defects must be repaired within 30 days. Non-critical tank car defects must be fixed before the train departs the yard.
Other inspections were done at rail yards and tanker cars in western New York, uncovering another five “critical defects,” including two broken rails at the Dunkirk and Buffalo-Frontier rail yard, and DOT-111s with defective brakes, a cracked weld and missing bolts.
Repost from The Press Republican, Plattsburgh, NY [Editor: the safety improvements showcased here are far from adequate, nevertheless, it’s a good update on conditions in New York. Sen. Schumer is absolutely right – the DOT-111 tank cars should be taken out of service immediately… and not just in New York. And Bakken crude should be stabilized before it is transported (not just conditioned) … just as it is in Texas. – RS]
Area officials say crude-oil transport is getting safer
Lohr McKinstry, December 6, 2014
A DOT-111 oil tank car sits on a siding in the Midwest. New York state is adopting tougher rules on use of the tank cars, which pass through Essex and Clinton counties enroute to Albany,
LEWIS — New state regulations on crude-oil trains should help make them safer, Emergency Services officials from Essex and Clinton counties said recently.
State agencies have implemented 66 actions designed to strengthen standards, regulations and procedures to make the transport of crude oil by rail and water in New York safer and to improve spill preparedness and response.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo received a status report outlining the progress made by multiple state agencies after they were directed to evaluate the state’s capacity to prevent and address crude-oil accidents.
Local leaders have been concerned about the 100-car-plus oil trains moving through Clinton and Essex counties as the crude oil extracted in North Dakota arrives via Canadian Pacific Railway trains.
The oil is on its way to the Port of Albany, where it is stored for transport to various refineries.
IMPROVEMENTS
Essex County Emergency Services Director Donald Jaquish said he sees the new procedures as a safety benefit to the North Country.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” he told the Press-Republican. “We’re in a better position than we were a year ago.”
There’s been concern the trains could derail, and the oil burn or explode, as it has in other regions, and Jaquish praised Canadian Pacific for trying to make the tracks and tank cars safer.
“Upgrading the DOT-111 tank cars, rail replacement and maintenance, and specialized training are all beneficial to safety.
“Canadian Pacific has been helping us with training, hands-on-experience, that first responders need for these situations.”
EVACUATION PRACTICE
The tank cars are not owned by Canadian Pacific but by oil companies and vendors, and as a federal common carrier, the railroad is required to transport them.
Both the railroad and federal regulators have pushed for upgrades to the DOT-111 single-shell cars or a switch to the stronger DOT-109 or 112 cars.
“In almost any situation we get, we will be doing evacuations,” Jaquish said. “We’ve been working with Clinton County on planning and implementation.”
Clinton County Emergency Services Director Eric Day said any improvements to the transport of oil cars are welcome.
“At the end of the day, what they’ve done is good, no question,” Day told the Press-Republican. “Any regulatory move to make the DOT-111 cars safer is a plus. It’s a long time coming.”
One problem is that there are thousands of DOT-111 tank cars still in service, he said.
“There are so many of them (DOT-111 cars) out there on the tracks. They’re not going to stop moving the oil before they fix the cars. The oil is not going to stop coming any time soon.”
STATE GUIDANCE
Day said enhanced state regulations on oil shipments will be helpful.
“If there are changes that are pushed upon them (shippers), it can only make it safer. We’ve seen some of the benefits of the state’s work with regard to planning,” he said.
“We have guidance now on firefighting potential on dealing with these things. There are so many variables. Multiple cars of this crude oil on fire are a different animal.”
He said that, thanks to a donation, they now have the foam needed for such fires. The expensive product costs $30,000 for 1,000 gallons of foam but puts out crude-oil-based fires.
VOLATILE GAS
The North Dakota Industrial Commission has proposed draft regulations to remove the volatile gases from the oil before it is shipped, and Day said that provision is a good one.
“One of the things that makes the Bakken crude so volatile are the gases in the oil. The gas works its way out and is stuck in the head space of the car. If they breech, there’s flammable gas; cars that aren’t breeched and heat up, the gas could expand and be a problem.
“Removing that gas is a possibility before they put in the cars and ship it. If they could do that, it’s a big win.”
FEDERAL ROLE
Cuomo called for the federal government to mandate tank-car upgrades or replacement.
“The federal government plays a vital role in regulating this industry, and Washington must step up in order to expedite the implementation of safer policies and rules for crude-oil transport,” he said in the release.
The governor said the oil-production industry has resisted stronger tank-car standards and regulations requiring companies to reduce the volatility of crude before shipment.
A new report from the Brattle Group for the Railroad Supply Institute, a trade group, showed that a proposed federal rule to upgrade rail-tank cars could cost $60 billion.
According to the report, the high price tag is largely due to the costs associated with potential modifications to tank cars, early retirement of existing tank cars, temporarily using trucks instead of rails for transport and lost service time for tank cars under modification or awaiting modification.
‘TIME BOMBS’
U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) has also come out against use of DOT-111 cars.
“These outmoded DOT-111 tank cars … are ticking time bombs that need to be upgraded ASAP,” the senator said in a news release.
“That is why for two years, since the tragedy at Lac-Megantic, I have pushed federal regulators to phase out and retrofit these cars.
“As a result of our efforts, the federal Department of Transportation has put a proposal on the table that could start taking these cars off the tracks within two years, as well as restrict the speeds at which these trains operate.”
On July 6, 2013, a 74-tank-car train carrying Bakken light crude derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and the tank cars exploded, killing 47 people, destroying 30 buildings and spilling 1.5 million gallons of heavy crude oil.
That disaster was followed by oil-train-explosion derailments in Alabama, North Dakota, Illinois and New Brunswick, Canada.
Concerns Raised About Oil Trains In The Adirondacks
By Mitch Wertlieb & Melody Bodette, August 28, 2014
Government offices, track-side warehouses and Monitor Bay Park campground surround the tracks on the south end of Crown Point, New York. The Adirondack Council has raised concerns about oil trains in the Adirondacks. | Adirondack Council
Ever since the train disaster last summer at Lac Megantic, Quebec, people in our region have been taking more notice of the oil trains traversing our rails.
Concerns have been raised on the New York side of Lake Champlain, where the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks run close to the water.
“In some places they are literally right next to the water,” said Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity. “They run through towns like Plattsburgh, Essex, and Westport, and then eventually they end up down in Albany. From there they go on down south either to refineries or to other places by ship.”
The shipments are relatively new, having begun in the past two years. Matteson said the trains were brought to the attention of more people by the disaster in Lac Megantic. The unit trains, as they are sometimes called, are trains entirely of tank cars of crude oil.
“What’s unique is this cargo and this new phenomenon of carrying crude oil by rail. And it’s something that’s been happening all around the country, but only just in the last couple years we’ve seen tremendous growth around the country,” Matteson said. “What’s happening here locally is that we have this new cargo, that has proven to be highly dangerous explosive and obviously if there’s a derailment and a spill it could severely damage our aquatic ecosystems and drinking water for thousands and thousands of people.”
A demonstration was held in Plattsburgh in July and some protestors expressed concern about whether the local emergency services are prepared to deal with a potential derailment and disaster.
Matteson said a starting point would be to make sure the transportation is safer. “These tank cars have been known for 20 years to be very puncture prone in any kind of derailment, even a low speed derailment. We need to get the oil off the rails. It’s simply not a sensible way to be transporting a hazardous material through thousands of small towns and cities around the country, exposing millions of people to this risk.”
The bigger question, Matteson said is should we be extracting more fossil fuels from the ground?
“Really what we need to be looking at is transitioning to a different energy regime.”
There are proposed rules to require upgrades to safer tank cars, but they would be phased in over a number of years and Matteson said, the Center for Biological Diversity believes the trains need to be off the rails immediately until there are safer cars in place, and there needs to be adequate oil spill response plans.
This oil is coming from the North Dakota Bakken oil fields to the terminal in Albany, a company called Global Partners. They are looking to expand their operations in the port. The Center for Biological Diversity has been involved in lawsuit against the company and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation over the proposed expansion plans.
Global Partners did not respond to a request for comment.
A community forum on the oil trains will be held on Thursday, August 28, from 7-9 p.m. at the Plattsburgh City Hall.
Repost from Poughkeepsie Journal [Editor: Significant quote: “The U.S. Department of Transportation acknowledged in its proposed rule that an another accident isn’t a question of if, but when. “Absent this proposed rule, we predict about 15 mainline derailments for 2015, falling to a prediction of about 5 mainline derailments annually by 2034,” the department’s proposal stated. Reviews and lawsuits mean it could be years before the rule is implemented.” – RS]
Oil train risks push communities to prepare for worst
Khurram Saeed | August 21, 2014
The home of Doris Quinones is less than 100 feet away from the CSX railroad track, on which as many as 4 oil trains pass by every day, not to mention freight trains carrying other hazardous chemicals. An oil train is seen passing from the yard of Doris Quinones, July 31, 2014 in Haverstraw.(Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News)
Little black bullets.
That’s what Doris Quinones calls the dozens of outdated tank cars filled with crude oil that rumble yards away from her Haverstraw home every day.
One train hauling oil can have up to 100 cars, and as many as 30 oil trains pass through Rockland each week on the way to refineries. That’s twice the number from just six months ago as demand continues to grow for the volatile crude oil drawn from the Bakken region in North Dakota.
Those trains also pass through Ulster County.
In Highland, the trains roll past a restaurant and a Hudson River waterfront park that is being outfitted with a new deep-water dock for tour boats.
Ulster County’s vulnerable infrastructure includes drinking water intakes for Port Ewen and the Town of Lloyd.
A 100-car oil train can carry 3 million gallons of crude oil, and because so many more are on the rails, the number of derailments and accidents is rising.
The oil trains, which do not travel on a set schedule, roll through four of Rockland’s five towns on CSX Railroad’s River Line. Fully loaded trains run north to south, less than a mile from Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw, Lake DeForest reservoir in Clarkstown, the Palisades Center in West Nyack and Dominican College in Blauvelt, not to mention dozens of neighborhoods, scores of schools and day care centers and right past key highways like the Thruway.
Given her proximity to the tracks, Quinones said a derailed train would “land in my living room.”
“We’re all realists,” Quinones said recently in her backyard, where she sometimes lounges in her swimming pool and tends to her cucumbers. “They got to get something somewhere. It’s got to go on the freight train but they got to take extra measures even if it costs them more money.”
The oil trains are hard to miss, and the safety issues surrounding them, particularly their tank cars, have become harder to ignore. There have been a number of fiery explosions and accidents since 2013 that have caused officials at all levels to look closer at the dangers of shipping oil by rail.
Just over a year ago, 47 people died when an unattended oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Rockland had a close call in December when an oil train transporting 99 empty tank cars from Philadelphia to North Dakota hit a truck stuck on the crossing in West Nyack, sending the truck’s driver to the hospital.
Planning for worst
Peter Miller, chief of the Highland Fire District, said firefighters took part in a drill in Kingston on May 30, along with other fire departments. The drill was sponsored by the Ulster County Emergency Services Department and CSX.
He said the district’s response plans are constantly being updated, particularly now that the Bakken crude is rolling through.
“We upgrade our training and our response plans to cover what we would do, depending on where the incident is,” he said.
Even as federal transportation officials are proposing more stringent requirements for tank cars to make them safer, Rockland’s first responders are planning for nightmare scenarios and how to evacuate thousands of people quickly in a catastrophe or have them stay where they are.
“Our job is to really plan for the worst,” said Chris Jensen, Rockland County’s hazardous materials coordinator.
Rockland emergency officials are finishing the evacuation map for residents and businesses within a mile of the River Line.
It covers a mile on either side of the rail line, broken into half-mile sections, from Bear Mountain to the New Jersey border.
Gordon Wren Jr., director of Rockland’s Office of Fire and Emergency Services, said the map “allows us to make the decisions quicker, faster.”
“Do you evacuate or not? If so, how far?” Wren said.
The map identifies schools, day care centers, nursing homes and senior housing, among other landmarks.
“(A police officer) can look at that and say, ‘Let’s get the people out of here,’ ” said Dan Greeley, assistant director of the county Office of Fire and Emergency Services. “It happens instantaneously.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation acknowledged in its proposed rule that an another accident isn’t a question of if, but when.
“Absent this proposed rule, we predict about 15 mainline derailments for 2015, falling to a prediction of about 5 mainline derailments annually by 2034,” the department’s proposal stated. Reviews and lawsuits mean it could be years before the rule is implemented.
In 2008, just 9,500 carloads of crude oil moved by rail. Last year, the figure exceeded 400,000, the Association of American Railroads said.
Rail industry officials note that 99.9 percent of all hazardous rail shipments reach their destinations safely and that only rail has afforded the nation the flexibility to move large volumes of oil so quickly and freely, letting the United States wean itself off foreign oil.
Susan Christopherson, chair of Cornell University’s city and regional planning department, said though pipelines are safer, oil shippers from western Canada and the Bakken shale region prefer trains because they provide flexibility from different points of origin to refineries nationwide.
The problem, she said, is the Federal Railroad Administration has “little capacity” to regulate the rail industry or monitor rail infrastructure safety.
“Costs for emergency preparedness have to be absorbed by state and local government,” Christopherson wrote in an email. “There is little or no compensation for these costs, which can be significant.”
Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state has become increasingly proactive, carrying out inspection blitzes of rail yards and leveling fines.
‘Witches’ brew’
The River Line, part of CSX’s rail network, runs from outside Albany. In February, the railroad told The Journal News that two oil trains used the line daily, or 14 a week. By June, the railroad fixed the number of trains hauling 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude at 15 to 30, or up to four each day, according to documents it had to file with the state.
CSX spokesman Gary Sease said there have been incremental increases in crude oil volume over the past several weeks with likely more to come. The railroad recently completed double-tracking work in north Rockland to increase capacity on the track.
“It is a result of market conditions and can fluctuate,” Sease wrote in an email.
“We see customers investing in additional crude oil terminals over the next couple of years.”
Bakken crude oil is just the latest dangerous substance to travel the line, Jensen said. Toxic substances such as chlorine, ethanol, propane and vinyl chloride have moved on the former West Shore line for decades.
“It’s a witches’ brew of stuff,” Jensen said.
But one big difference is the amount of Bakken crude that passes through Ulster, Rockland and, for that matter, 15 other counties in New York.
Aside from CSX, Canadian Pacific Railway hauls Bakken crude from the Midwest to Albany, with an average of one train a day with a million-plus gallons.
In May, CSX began a first responders training program by bringing equipment and experts to communities to teach them about incidents involving crude oil. More than 1,000 people have been trained, he said.
That’s a good start but more needs to be done, said Jerry DeLuca, executive director and CEO of the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs.
“You don’t fight an oil fire with water. We need to have foam and a lot of it,” said DeLuca, whose group represents more than 11,000 professional and volunteer fire chiefs. “It’s not something we utilize every day, so you have to be trained.”
Poughkeepsie Journal staff writer John Ferro contributed to this report.
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