Repost from Reuters [Editor: Significant quote: “‘Look at the towns. All they’re getting are more trains in their backyard and all the risk with no financial benefits,’ said Dan McCoy, the County Executive in Albany, New York, where taxpayer funds have contributed to growing oil-train shipments.” – RS]
U.S. taxpayers help fund oil-train boom amid safety concerns
By Jarrett Renshaw, Dec 14, 2014
A crude oil train moves past the loading rack at the Eighty-Eight Oil LLC’s transloading facility in Ft. Laramie, Wyoming July 15, 2014. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
(Reuters) – For the past 18 months, Americans from Albany to Oregon have voiced growing alarm over the rising number of oil-laden freight trains coursing through their cities, a trend they fear is endangering public safety.
In at least a handful of places, the public is also helping fund it.
States and the federal government have handed out tens of millions in public dollars to rail companies and government agencies to expand crude oil rail transportation across the country, a Reuters analysis has found.
The public assistance in states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma and Oregon comes as railroads are posting record profits, and as state and federal authorities press for safety overhauls that the oil and rail industries have opposed, following several explosive derailments.
The Reuters analysis identified 10 federal and state grants either approved or pending approval, totaling $84.2 million, that helped boost the number of rail cars carrying crude oil across the nation.
The funds are a fraction of total public funding for railroads each year, and look small compared to the $24 billion railroads themselves are spending annually on infrastructure.
But with oil-train safety under heavy scrutiny, the public grants could be controversial and add to growing strains between the industry and some local communities who say they are ill-prepared to deal with oil spills or derailments.
“Look at the towns. All they’re getting are more trains in their backyard and all the risk with no financial benefits,” said Dan McCoy, the County Executive in Albany, New York, where taxpayer funds have contributed to growing oil-train shipments.
In May, Albany’s sheriff, Craig Apple, warned that regional emergency crews weren’t equipped to respond to any major derailment.
“I am not seeing any increases in tax revenue, but I am seeing an increase in the cost of emergency services,” McCoy said.
Since 2008, there have been at least 10 major oil-train derailments across the U.S. and Canada, including a disaster that killed 47 in a Quebec town last July.
Officials and rail executives offer a counter-argument: the funds help improve safety for an industry that is helping revive the economy in some places.
Last year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo awarded CSX Railroad a $2 million grant to add a second 3.6-mile rail line just south of the state capital in a county that now handles about a fourth of the Bakken’s oil, a light, volatile crude whose vapors have exploded in several past derailments.
CSX spokesman Rob Doolitle said the new line allows the railroad to idle fewer trains in the region, block fewer crossings, and serve at least 200 different businesses more efficiently.
“Local communities benefit from increased capacity,” Doolittle said. CSX posted record revenues of $3.2 billion in the third quarter.
AN INDUSTRY TRANSFORMED
The taxpayer dollars are going to a rail industry that has transformed the U.S. energy market: Amid a shale-drilling boom that has overwhelmed the nation’s pipeline network, oil-train traffic has surged at least 42-fold since 2009, and 415,000 railcar loads of oil plied the nation’s tracks last year.
As oil-trains increasingly make up for a lack of pipelines, they share the tracks with passenger and other freight trains on some of the busiest U.S. rail corridors. Emergency responders in several regions have complained that they lack information to track them and quickly respond to accidents.
While federal law now requires rail operators carrying Bakken crude to report routes and the number of trains that transit through each state, railroads have been reluctant to share specifics publicly, citing security risks.
Philadelphia is one of the unlikely locales that has been both alarmed and enriched by the oil-by-rail industry.
In 2012, The Carlyle Group led a rescue of the East Coast’s biggest refinery, which had been slated for closure, aided in part by a state-backed aid package that included $10 million to build a new rail terminal.
The 335,000-barrel-a-day plant is making money once again thanks in large part to the rail terminal, which receives six miles of oil-laden railcars daily from North Dakota’s Bakken.
In September, Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), an oil refining complex controlled by hedge fund Carlyle Group, announced plans to sell shares in its crude-by-rail terminal, a move that may fetch hundreds of millions of dollars and reduce its corporate tax burden.
Carlyle declined comment, but the company has previously said that government assistance helped to save at least 850 jobs at PES and boost Pennsylvania’s economy.
Earlier this year, six railcars transporting Bakken oil to the PES rail terminal derailed on a bridge over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia’s Center City. No oil spilled from the CSX-operated train, but images of railcars teetering above the city’s vital waterway shocked locals and prompted protests.
“It spooked a lot of people in Philadelphia, and really raised the profile of the issue of crude by rail, an issue most people don’t think about,” said Matt Walker, a director with the local Clean Air Council.
CONGESTION RELIEF
Citing high costs, oil and rail industry groups have resisted some of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s recent proposals to enhance crude-by-rail safety, which include quick retirement or retrofitting of older, accident-prone railcars, lower speed limits, and mandatory electronic railcar braking systems.
Railroads and local transport authorities say public grants are a public good.
Since 2011, Oklahoma has received two federal grants worth $8.6 million that were used to fund privately-held FarmRail System, a regional rail operator, to move more crude by rail out of the state’s Anadarko Basin.
“We see these grants as improving public safety, much like you spend money on improving a highway,” said Gary Ridley, the head of the Oklahoma’s transportation agency. Trains are better than oil trucks, which clog up roads, he said. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin recently announced a $100 million spending package to upgrade rail crossings in the state.
In Oregon, oil terminal giant Global Partners successfully lobbied state and county officials to fund $8.9 million in upgrades to the Portland and Western Railroad, which runs next to the Columbia River. As a result, Global was able to increase the number of oil-trains to its private rail hub in the state by more than a third, to 38 per month. Global declined comment.
“It really doesn’t matter whether the train is carrying crude oil or cotton puffs, they have the right to pass through,” Jerry Cole, the mayor of Rainier, Oregon, where oil-trains pass through daily. “All I can do is to make it as safe as possible.”
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, editing by Jonathan Leff and John Pickering)
CMU, Fractraker teaming up to monitor crude oil trains through region
By Don Hopey, December 13, 2014
Trains carrying millions of gallons of crude oil from Midwestern shale oil fields pass through the region daily and at speeds approaching the limit established to reduce derailment risks, according to a pilot study by Fractracker Alliance and Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab.
The study counted 360 tanker cars bearing the Department of Transportation “1075” and “1267” flammable oil and gas placards on 10 trains passing through the city during 11 daylight hours on Oct. 21. Six of those 10 trains were traveling east with a total of 176 full tanker cars The other four were traveling west with 84 empty tanker cars.
The train spotting and rail car counting was done on Norfolk Southern’s Fort Wayne line, which runs along the Ohio River through Sewickley, Glenfield, Ben Avon, Avalon and the North Side. The study, conducted on just one of seven rail freight lines used by oil trains in Allegheny County, is the first to count the number of oil trains passing through, and there are plans to do several more.
The Fractracker news release about the study states that by tracking and monitoring the transport of oil and gas, “we can begin to understand the risks that these trains pose should an incident occur.”
“We want to study the oil trains issue in several ways across Pennsylvania and beyond, examining the communities and populations affected and evaluating the scale and dynamics of the train traffic, including speeds and volumes of cargo,” said Samantha Malone, a Fractracker spokeswoman.
The count totals are generally in line with estimated oil train numbers for the county provided by Norfolk Southern and CSX to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, information that PEMA was ordered to release in October after a Right to Know request by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Ms. Malone said almost all of the trains were moving “very quickly” past the train spotting and counting location along Norfolk Southern tracks at Riverside Park, on Dawson Avenue in Glenfield. One, heading east with a load of full crude oil tank cars, was traveling much faster than the others at an estimated speed of 50 mph.
If accurate, that train violated the 40 mph speed limit cooperatively established in July for safety by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Association of American Railroads in urban areas after several recent derailments involving crude oil tanker cars.
“We didn’t have a radar gun, but most of the trains were traveling faster than I would think would be safe for that area,” Ms. Malone said. “The one moving very fast I do believe was unsafe.”
A spokesman for Norfolk Southern, however, disputed that contention, saying it was “guesswork” and that the railroad complies with all state and federal rules and regulations.
As rail transport of shale oil and gases has increased over the last five years, the number of derailments has increased, too, along with concerns about the dangers the trains pose to towns and cities along their routes.
Oil train derailments, sometimes causing explosions and fires, have occurred in the last two years in Virginia, North Dakota, Georgia, Philadelphia and Vandergrift. The worst was the 2013 derailment of 74 tanker cars carrying crude from the Bakken Shale oil play in North Dakota that killed 47 people and destroyed 30 buildings in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
Seventy percent of the tankers wore the DOT 1267 placard, used for “Petroleum Crude Oil, Flammable liquid.” The rest had DOT 1075 placards indicating they contained “butane, liquefied petroleum gas, Flammable liquid”
The longest train bearing the “1267” placard, running east, was hauling 97 full crude oil tanker cars with a total capacity of between 2.5 million and 3.4 million gallons of crude oil, according to the release.
David Pidgeon, a Norfolk Southern spokesman, released a statement saying the railroad doesn’t comment about the routing of specific commodities, like crude oil or gas, and declined comment on the study findings. He called the train speeding allegation “speculation and guesswork.”
“What I can say is that we are in compliance with state and federal regulations and are providing important information and training to first responders,” he wrote in the email statement. “That’s a critical part of operating a safe rail network.”
Henry Posner III, chairman of Railroad Development Corp., a rail industry investment firm, said the high-density freight lines passing through the city are well-maintained and, recent accidents not withstanding, the railroads have a “culture of safety.”
“There is no motivation for the trains to speed, and I’ve never seen it (speeding) permitted in my career,” said Mr. Posner, who has worked in various capacities in the railroad industry since 1977. “No one is going to put their job on the line to speed. It’s just not a part of our culture.”
Ms. Malone said Fractracker, in partnership with CMU’s CREATE Lab, will continue to collect rail shipping data from other states and regions to determine where the crude oil tank cars rolling through Pittsburgh are originating.
Working again with volunteer train spotters from the Group Against Smog and Pollution, Three Rivers Waterkeeper, and Women for a Healthy Environment, the Create Lab and Fractracker plan to conduct additional train tank car counts to confirm their initial count is representative of the train traffic going through the region. She said some of those counts will be held overnight, when some residents of the Glenfield area say trains are more numerous.
Top transportation officials from Canada and the United States are due to meet next week to hash out differences about safety regulations for trains that carry oil, sources familiar with the planned meeting told Reuters.
Both governments are drafting safety rules for trains that move fuel from North Dakota’s Bakken energy patch to refineries.
Federal budget bill sets January deadline on safety rules for oil tanker cars
December 10, 2014 | By Joel Connelly
Tanker cars from a derailed CSX oil train burn after derailing in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, last April. Increasing numbers of oil trains pass through Seattle and other Puget Sound cities en route to four refineries on northern Puget Sound. (AP Photo/City of Lynchburg, LuAnn Hunt)
Hidden away in Congress’ big spending bill, designed to fund the federal government through FY 2015, are stern marching orders to the U.S. Department of Transportation:
Deliver a final rule for new, safer oil tank car design standards by Jan. 15, 2015, and require that all rail carriers put in place comprehensive oil spill response plans.
The budget provisions, inserted by Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are prompted by an oil train disaster in Quebec, and the rapid increase in trains carrying volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to four refineries on northern Puget Sound.
“In Washington state, we’ve seen a startling increase in oil train traffic through communities of all sizes, from downtown Seattle to smaller, rural communities across the state,” said Murray, who has chaired the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on transportation.
“That’s why I worked to set a deadline for the Department of Transportation to issue new safety standards for tank cars next month and worked to fund a Shirt Line Railroad Safety Institute that will help protect smaller communities without sufficient resources to respond to oil trains.”
An old adage applies to the oil train issue: There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus the mind.
In July of 2013, brakes failed and an unmanned runaway train sped into the small town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just over the border from Maine. It blew up, killing 47 people and leveling downtown.
The train was using 1960′s-designed DOT-111 tank cars. Another train, using DOT-111 cars, exploded into mushroom-cloud flames last December outside Casselton, N.D.. It forced evacuation of more than 2,000 people from the small town.
While promising new safety measures, the Department of Transportation has been criticized for giving railroads too much wiggle room.
The DOT said last summer it is setting a two-year deadline for getting DOT-111 tank cars off the rails. In reading the fine print, however, the clock would begin ticking in September of 2015 — giving rail carriers more than three years to stop use of the explosion-prone tank cars.
The federal budget bill would make available $10 million in grants to improve safety at railroad grade crossings that handle crude oil or other hazardous flammable liquids.
The DOT gets resources to hire 15 new hazardous-materials and rail-safety inspectors and $3 million to expand the use of automated track inspections to make sure rail tracks are maintained on crude oil transportation routes.
Refiners and shippers have responded.
Tesoro has stopped use of DOT-111 tank cars to supply its Anacortes refinery. The Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad has announced a purchase of new, safer tank cars.
But the railroads have continued to resist making full, up-to-date information on oil shipments available to state and local emergency responders. They are fearful the information will be made public.
While Murray is touting its oil train provisions, the $1.1 trillion spending bill has drawn some fire from the political left.
Republicans have secured concessions, loosening Wall Street regulation and letting wealthy donors give more to political campaigns. The bill has slightly weakened school lunch nutrition standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama.
Liberal Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., is voting against the bill.
“It is inconceivable that Congress would cut crucial regulations in the Dodd-Frank Act, when risky derivatives trading was at the center of the 2008 financial crisis,” said McDermott.
“Why is Congress giving Wall Street a massive Christmas present, when so many hard-working Americans are struggling to make ends meet?”
Repost from Faces of Fracking [Editor – This is much more than a story about our friend Ed Ruszel. Author Tara Lohan packs background and detail into this piece like a great storyteller. Another MUST READ, including almost everything you need to know about crude by rail in Benicia…. (This story also appears on Grist and DeSmogBlog.) – RS]
Faces of Fracking
Stories from the front lines of fracking in California
Ed Ruszel’s family business is in an industrial park in Benicia, CA, where Valero Energy is hoping to build a new rail terminal at its refinery to accept 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day. (Sarah Craig)
Ed Ruszel’s workday is a soundtrack of whirling, banging, screeching — the percussion of wood being cut, sanded, and finished. He’s the facility manager for the family business, Ruszel Woodworks. But one sound each day roars above the cacophony of the woodshop: the blast of the train horn as cars cough down the Union Pacific rail line that runs just a few feet from the front of his shop in an industrial park in Benicia, California.
Most days the train cargo is beer, cars, steel, propane, or petroleum coke. But soon two trains of 50 cars each may pass by every day carrying crude oil to a refinery owned by neighboring Valero Energy. Valero is hoping to build a new rail terminal at the refinery that would bring 70,000 barrels a day by train — or nearly 3 million gallons.
And it’s a sign of the times.
Crude by rail has increased 4,000 percent across the country since 2008 and California is feeling the effects. By 2016 the amount of crude by rail entering the state is expected to increase by a factor of 25. That’s assuming industry gets its way in creating more crude by rail stations at refineries and oil terminals. And that’s no longer looking like a sure thing.
Valero’s proposed project in Benicia is just one of many in the area underway or under consideration. All the projects are now facing public pushback — and not just from individuals in communities, but from a united front spanning hundreds of miles. Benicia sits on the Carquinez Strait, a ribbon of water connecting the San Pablo and Suisun Bays in the northeastern reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, about 20 miles south of Napa’s wine country and 40 miles north of San Francisco, the oil industry may have found a considerable foe.
The Geography of Oil
The heart of California’s oil industry is the Central Valley — 22,500 square miles that also doubles as the state’s most productive farmland. Oil that’s produced here is delivered to California refineries via pipeline. For decades California and Alaska crude were the main suppliers for the state’s refineries. Crude came by pipeline or by boat. Over the last 20 years imports from places like Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Iraq have outpaced domestic production. But a recent boom in “unconventional fuels” has triggered an increase in North American sources in the last few years. This has meant more fracked crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale and diluted bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands.
A Union Pacific train engine is parked in front of the Valero refinery in Benicia, CA. Union Pacific has the final say over the logistics of trains arriving to the refinery. (Sarah Craig)
Unit trains are becoming a favored way to help move this cargo. These are trains in which the entire cargo — every single car — is one product. And in this case that product happens to be highly flammable.
This is one of the things that has Ed Ruszel concerned. He doesn’t think the tank cars are safe enough to transport crude oil (or ethanol, which is also passing through his neighborhood) in the advent of a serious derailment.
But he’s also concerned not just with the kind of cargo, but the sheer volume of it. If a derailment occurs on a train and every single car (up to 100 cars long) is carrying volatile crude, the dangers increase exponentially. The more trains on the tracks, the more likely something could go wrong. In 2013, more crude was spilled in train derailments than in the prior three decades combined, and there were four fiery explosions in North America in a year’s span.
This risk Marilaine Savard knows well. I met her in February of 2014 when she visited the Bay Area to tell residents about what happened in her town of Lac Megantic, Quebec. The closest word to describe the experience was “apocalypse,” she said, through tears.
Most people by now know of the train derailment that killed 47 people and incinerated half of Lac Megantic’s downtown in the wee hours of the morning on July 7, 2013. The fire was so hot the city burned for 36 hours. Even the lake burned.
Just two days before the disaster in Lac Megantic, Ed joined a community meeting in Benicia about the Valero project. For many residents, it was the first they were learning of it, but Ed had known months before.
In January 2013 a train carrying petroleum coke leaving Valero’s refinery derailed. It was minor — no cargo spilled — but it did rip up a piece of track, and the stalled train blocked the driveway to Ruszel Woodworks for hours. It was one of three minor derailments in the industrial park in the span of 10 months.
Ed came outside to see what the problem was. “The Valero people told me ‘get used to it, because we’re really going to be bringing in a lot of cars soon,’” Ed says. “At that point I really started paying attention and I got really scared.” Ed soon learned about plans for Valero’s new terminal, the 100 train cars that would pass by his business each day, and that it appeared the city was ready to rubber stamp the project — no Environmental Impact Report required.
The fire was so hot the city burned for 36 hours. Even the lake burned.
To explain one of the reasons for his concern, Ed shows me around his property where the lands comes to a V and two rails lines intersect. The main line of Union Pacific’s track passes along the back of Ed’s property, about 75 feet from his building. Here trains can get off the main line and switch to the local line that runs inside the industrial park. The local track passes by the front of Ed’s property, about 20 feet from the building.
The tracks into the industrial park were not designed for a crude by rail facility, Ed says. There are no loops. For Valero to get crude tanks into the refinery, the train must pass by the back of Ed’s property on the main line, pull all the way forward (usually about a mile), and then back up onto the local line, past the front of Ed’s property and into the refinery. The process is reversed when the train leaves. The 100 train cars a day that Valero hopes to bring in will come by his business up to four times per day.
That’s a concern not just because of potential dangers from derailments and diesel fumes from idling trains, but also because the industrial park has a rail traffic problem.
“My big concern here is specifically with the rails — I realize there are other huge environmental issues and global issues with the kinds of fossil fuel production we’re dealing with now and where it’s going,” Ed says.
Already trains servicing the Valero refinery and other industry neighbors can cause traffic nightmares. The trains block driveways to businesses and sometimes major roadways. An off ramp from Interstate 680 empties into the industrial park. Ed has photos of cars trying to exit the highway but are backed up on the interstate because of train traffic.
The reason has to do with the area’s history.
The tracks that come through the industrial park were not built for industry, but for the U.S. Army.
From 1851 to 1964, part of the land now claimed as an industrial park was home to the Benicia Arsenal. Bunker doors in the hillsides and buildings from the 1800s are part of the area’s colorful history. The rail lines moved around troops and armaments from the Civil War through the Korean War, Ed says, but it’s ill-suited to servicing a busy commercial rail terminal.
The Public Comments
Ed’s family moved their woodworking business to the industrial park in 1980. His brother Jack and their father started the company when Jack was still in high school, and it’s grown to over 20 employees. They’ve always played nice with the other businesses, including the refinery, which was built in 1968 and bought by Valero in 2000.
But the Ruszels felt the crude by rail issue demanded they take a stand. While not aligned with any local activist groups, Ed and other members of his family have spoken publicly about their concerns.
“In some ways, getting outspoken we feel like we’re sticking our neck out,” Ed says. “There are four generations of my family here in Benicia — I’ve got my 80 year-old mother, tiny little grandnieces and nephews, and they all have to live with it. But it is important enough.”
Their voices are part of a growing chorus in the area.
On May 31, 2013 the City of Benicia issued a Mitigated Negative Declaration, which means an initial study by the city concluded there were no significant environmental problems with the project that couldn’t be mitigated.
But many residents felt differently and commented on the initial study or voiced concerns at a July 9 city planning department meeting, which occurred just two days after the disaster in Lac Megantic drove home the reality of a catastrophic accident.
By August the city sided with concerned residents and decided that a draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) needed to be prepared to further review the project. An outside consultant was hired for the job but paid for by Valero. After much delay, the DEIR was released in June 2014 and promptly slammed by everyone from the state’s Attorney General Kamala Harris to the local group Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community because it left out crucial information and failed to address the full scope of the project.
Even the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which represents 22 cities in six counties that are “uprail” from the project, weighed in. It noted the draft EIR doesn’t offer any recommendations for safety measures because it concludes there is no “significant hazard.”
“We believe that conclusion is fundamentally flawed, disregards the recent events demonstrating the very serious risk to life and property that these shipments pose, and contradicts the conclusions of the federal government, which is mobilizing to respond to these risks,” the comment states. It even quotes a U.S. Department of Transportation report from May 2014 that says that Bakken crude by rail shipments pose an “imminent hazard.”
One of the biggest omissions in Valero’s DEIR was Union Pacific not being named as an official partner in the project. With the trains arriving via its rail lines, all logistics will come down to the railroad. Not only that, but the federal power granted to railroad companies preempts local and regional authority.
This preemption is one of the biggest hurdles for communities that don’t want to see crude by rail come through their neighborhoods or want better safeguards. An October 2014 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle lamented, “What’s really crazy is the federal law that allows preemption of municipal and state law when it comes to critical decisions on rail safety. Affected communities deserve a say over what rolls through their towns.” With preemption, that may be impossible.
The DEIR also doesn’t identify exactly what kind of North American crudes would be arriving and from where, deeming it “confidential business information.” Attorney General Kamala Harris called that omission an “overly broad determination of trade secrets.”
Different kinds of crude have different health and safety risks. A pipeline rupture carrying Canadian diluted bitumen in a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010 showed that the thick, corrosive crude is much harder (perhaps impossible) to clean up adequately and is different than conventional crude, which sheens on the surface of water. And Bakken crude has proved more explosive than other crudes because of its chemical composition. It’s likely that some of the crude coming to Valero’s refinery would be from either or both sources.
Consider the numbers: In 2013 the total crude by rail brought into California was nearly 6.3 million barrels, and in the first nine months of 2014, the numbers were 4.3 million barrels. The top two sources have been North Dakota and Canada.
Further, the DEIR only examines the risks of a minor derailment along a 69-miles stretch of track between Benicia and Roseville. It doesn’t address the hazards (which could be catastrophic) of the three potential routes that the Union Pacific trains may take entering California, which involve passing over mountains, through tinderbox-dry forests, and along critical water sources.
Just a week ago a train derailed along one such route in the Feather River Canyon. Eleven cars plunged off the track and down the canyon. Had the cargo been crude instead of corn, its contamination could have made its way down the Feather River to Lake Oroville, a reservoir for millions of Californians.
Public comments on the DEIR closed on September 15, and now it’s a waiting game to see what happens next in Benicia. The planning commission will vote on whether to accept or deny the permit for the project. If the commission denies the permit, Valero can appeal to the city council. Either way, it’s likely to end up in court.
Cumulative Impacts
Ed spends his weekdays on land in Benicia and his weekends on the water, sailing out of nearby Richmond. He has shaggy brown hair, a neatly trimmed salt and pepper goatee, and looks every bit the weathered sailor that he is.
Having worked professionally as a boat captain and even as a solo sailor to Hawaii, Ed is a bit overqualified for the nearly windless fall Sunday we set sail with local activist Marilyn Bardet, a member of Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community.
Ed Ruszel and Marilyn Bardet, an activist with Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, sail outside of the Richmond Harbor to investigate the presence of the oil industry along the Bay Area’s shoreline. (Sarah Craig) “Richmond Sailing” by Faces of Fracking, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Marilyn has been a refinery watchdog in Benicia for years and worries about more than just the transportation of fossil fuels. “For me it’s not only about whether they were going to bring it by rail, but whether they were going to bring it at all,” she says.
Sailing from Richmond, we get a good perspective of how pervasive the oil industry is in this area. We pass a couple of blue and white docked ships with their decals reading “Marine Spill Response.” Ever since the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Ed explains, the industry pays into a fund that keeps ships at the ready in case of an accident.
No such thing exists for the crude by rail industry. In fact, the National Transportation Safety Board reported in January 2014, “Current regulations do not require railroads transporting crude oil in multiple tank cars to develop comprehensive spill response plans and have resources on standby for response to worst-case discharges.”
Ed points the bow of the boat toward the Long Wharf in Point Richmond where hulking oil tankers sidle up to be unburdened of their cargo.
We also have a clear view of the large terra cotta-colored storage tanks nesting above neighborhoods in the hillsides of Richmond. These are part of the sprawling refinery operations run by Chevron, but first begun by Standard Oil in 1901.
And it’s not the only refinery around here. In the North Bay, there are five along a 20-mile crescent, with Richmond and Benicia being the bookends. In between, Phillips 66 operates a refinery in Rodeo, and two other refineries (Shell and Tesoro) straddle Martinez.
Residents of these towns have joined in the crude-by-rail fights as well — lending their comments to Environmental Impact Reports, attending community meetings, and joining together for “healing walks” between communities.
Oil storage tanks used by the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA are seen from the water’s edge. A fire at the refinery in 2012 caused thousands of nearby residents to seek medical treatment. (Sarah Craig) “Chevron Refinery By the Bay” by Faces of Fracking, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The network of support has even extended hundreds of miles south. The Phillips 66 refinery has two parts — one in Rodeo and the other 200 miles away, just outside the town of Nipomo in San Luis Obispo County. A pipeline joins the operations. The refinery has expansion plans that are currently being reviewed. One part of those plans involves building a new rail unloading facility in Nipomo that would bring in five unit trains of crude a week, with 50,000 barrels per train.
But the crude-by-rail projects in the area don’t end there. In nearby Pittsburgh, 20 miles east of Benicia, residents pushed back against plans from WestPac Energy. The company had planned to lease land from BNSF Railway and build a new terminal to bring in a 100-car unit train each day of crude. But WestPac’s plan has stalled after Attorney General Kamala Harris commented on a recirculated Draft Environmental Impact Report and said the project had “significant legal problems” and “fails to disclose the sources and analyze the environmental impacts of the new crude.”
Further south in Kern County in the heart of oil country, Plains All American just opened a crude-by-rail terminal that is permitted for a 100-car unit train each day. Another nearby project, Alon USA, received permission from the county for twice as much but is being challenged by lawsuits from environmental groups.
Closer to home, though, unit trains are already arriving. In March, an investigation by local TV station KPIX revealed that Kinder Morgan, a “midstream” company which is in the business of transporting crude (usually by pipeline or rail), received a change of use permit for a rail terminal in Richmond. Kinder Morgan had been transporting ethanol, but the Bay Area Air Quality Management District OK’d Kinder Morgan to offload unit trains of Bakken crude into tanker trucks. KPIX journalists followed the trucks to the Tesoro refinery in Martinez, just across the Carquinez Strait from Benicia.
Aimee Durfee is part of the Martinez Environmental Group. Not only is Martinez flanked by two refineries, but it’s also bisected by Union Pacific rail lines. Now, the residents also know that crude is arriving by truck. “We came to understand that we are collateral damage,” she said. “We get it coming and going.”
Aimee says her group’s biggest fear is the threat of derailment and explosion. The same is true for many Richmond residents near Kinder Morgan’s rail terminal.
“The permit was given illegally by the air district, without concern for the health and safety of the community,” says Andres Soto, an organizer with Communities for a Better Environment. “Should there be a catastrophic explosion — there are residences and two elementary schools across the street from the railyard.” He also says that the blast zone in Richmond contains a total of 27 schools. The blast zone is defined as a half mile away for evacuations if there is a derailment and one mile away if there is an explosion and fire.
Train cars are parked at the Kinder Morgan rail facility in Richmond, CA. The facility is currently permitted to offload Bakken crude from unit trains. (Sarah Craig) “Rail Terminal” by Faces of Fracking, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Earthjustice, a nonprofit that litigates on behalf of environmental causes, has led legal efforts trying to block the permit for Kinder Morgan, but in September, Judge James Bush threw out the suit because it was not filed within 180 days of the permit issuance. (The catch-22 of course being that it hadn’t been filed in the proper window of time because no one knew it had even happened, since public notice was not given.)
Earthjustice has appealed Judge Bush’s decision, but residents are continuing to fight the permit in other ways. On October 28, the Richmond City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to review and “if feasible, revoke the permit and subject the project to a complete CEQA process,” which would be a full environmental review.
The Big Picture
With all this crude by rail activity, some big picture thinking would be helpful. As Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote about the Benicia project, “There’s no consideration of cumulative impacts that could affect public safety and the environment by the proliferation of crude-by-rail projects proposed in California.”
Ed has come to a similar understanding. He is focused on the trains passing by his shop, but the process has opened his eyes to a lot more. He’d heard about the impacts of tar sands and Bakken crude but didn’t have a personal connection to it until unit trains began arriving in California.
“Just focusing on what’s happening in my little neck of the woods has led me to spend more time really looking at the big picture,” he said. “The climate is rapidly changing for one reason or another and probably a good portion of it is what we’re doing with the burning of fossil fuels and so forth, especially this rapid extraction.
“I can’t go to New York and demonstrate or deal with the Keystone XL pipeline, but we can look around here, keep our eyes open, and try to articulate what we’re seeing locally,” says Ed.
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