Tag Archives: Crude by Rail

Seattle emergency planners: Oil train hazard in 100-year-old tunnel

Repost from The Columbian
[Editor: An important local study, calling for better disaster preparedness.  Significant quote – “…oil trains travel through three significant zones in Seattle: passing within blocks of two stadiums, through the downtown tunnel, and along the north end, which has limited access because of high banks along the waterfront.”  – RS]

Oil trains called hazard in old Seattle tunnel

Report says railroad, city must prepare to limit a catastrophe
By PHUONG LE, Associated Press, September 16, 2014
A long line of rail tanker cars sits on tracks south of Seattle, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. In a report to the Seattle City Council, city emergency planners say more must be done to lower the risk of a possible oil train accident and improve the city’s ability to respond. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) (Ted S. Warren/AP)

SEATTLE — With increasing numbers of trains carrying volatile crude oil through Seattle’s “antiquated” downtown rail tunnel, city emergency planners say more must be done to lower the risk of an oil train accident and improve the city’s ability to respond.

In a report to the Seattle City Council, emergency managers warned that an oil train accident resulting in fire, explosion or spill “would be a catastrophe for our community in terms of risk to life, property and environment.”

BNSF Railway can make immediate safety improvements in the mile-long 100-year-old rail tunnel that runs under downtown Seattle, including installing radio communication, a fire suppression system to release water and foam, and a permanent ventilation system, according to the report written by Barb Graff, who directs the city’s office of emergency management, and Seattle assistant fire chief A.D. Vickery.

About one or two mile-long trains a day carrying shipments of crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota, Montana and Canada through the city of about 630,000 residents.

Several refineries in the state are receiving shipments of crude oil, and the others are upgrading facilities to accept oil trains. Once refineries are able to accommodate additional shipments, three or more trains could pass through Seattle each day, the city report said.

Oil trains currently enter Washington state near Spokane, and travel through the Tri-Cities and along the Columbia River before traversing Seattle to refineries to the north. In the state, as many as 17 trains carry about 1 million gallons of crude oil a week through several counties, including Spokane, Benton and Clark, BNSF reported to the state in July.

“We know they can explode. We’ve seen the tragedy in Canada. We know they can derail. That happened two months ago in our own city,” said Councilor Mike O’Brien, whose committee scheduled a special meeting Tuesday night to discuss the report. “We have to treat this as a real threat.”

Oil-train derailments have caused explosions in North Dakota, Virginia, Alabama and Oklahoma, as well as in Quebec, where 47 people were killed when a runaway train exploded in Lac-Megantic in July 2013.

Two months ago in Seattle, three tanker cars derailed as an oil train bound for a refinery in Anacortes pulled out of a rail yard in Seattle. BNSF officials noted at the time that nothing spilled, and a hazardous materials crew was on the scene in 5 minutes, but the incident raised new concerns.

BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said the railway has improved tracks and roadbed to ensure that trains travel the tunnel safely. He said the concrete-lined tunnel is inspected regularly and is “structurally safe.”

“We’ll review the (city) report further,” he said. “We take safety extremely seriously and the operation of trains is a top priority, and we’ll continue to enhance our safety process.”

The railway plans to locate a safety trailer with foam equipment and extinguishers in the Seattle area, and plans to continue to train Seattle firefighters and responders.

Seattle’s report notes that oil trains travel through three significant zones in Seattle: passing within blocks of two stadiums, through the downtown tunnel, and along the north end, which has limited access because of high banks along the waterfront.

“The tunnel runs under all of downtown. What happens if something goes wrong there?” O’Brien said. “We’ve heard the fire department say we aren’t sure we can send firefighters to fight if it’s too dangerous.”

Oil trains typically move at about 10 mph through the tunnel, less than the maximum speed of 20 mph, and do not operate in the tunnel at the same time as a passenger train, BNSF’s Melonas said.

A derailment and fire involving Bakken oil tank cars could stress fire department resources, the report said. It recommends limiting track speeds in high-density urban areas, and that the railroad company help pay for specialized training, sponsor annual drills to respond to tank car emergencies and provide a foam response vehicle to use in case of an oil train accident.

Eric de Place, policy director for Sightline Institute, an environmental think tank, said other local governments should be doing similar reviews.

“Railroads don’t carry near the rail insurance they need,” he said. “If there’s a meaningful risk, the railroads should have to be insured against it and they should have to find private insurance.”

Highly critical reviews at close of public comment period: Valero DEIR fatally flawed

Check out these AMAZING critiques of Valero’s Draft EIR.

Here in Benicia on Friday, September 15, the final day of the public comment period, we congratulated Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community’s DEIR subcommittee for their extraordinary effort – it’s long, but you have to at least scan through it a bit.  Incredible detail and thoroughness, representing untold hours of expert volunteer labor!

If that wasn’t enough, as the day went by we were astounded when we received copies of critical comments from nearby environmental groups.  In light of these studies, no one will be surprised if the City and Valero choose to re-write and recirculate the document.  Some are saying Valero might simply withdraw the proposal.  These highly technical reviews are overwhelming, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Valero’s DEIR is fatally flawed.  See below…  (note: many of these are very large downloads – please be patient!)

A number of individuals also submitted comments and questions at the close of the comment period.  These will be made available on our Project Review page when they are collated and published by the City.

Letter from railroad attorneys to Governor Brown: in effect, ‘You can do nothing’

Letter from Union Pacific & BNSF attorneys to Governor Brown

By Roger Straw, Editor, The Benicia Independent

On September 15, 2014, San Francisco Baykeeper offered highly critical comments to the City of Benicia on Valero’s Draft EIR. With their comments, Baykeeper attached a VERY interesting letter from attorneys for the two railroads that operate in California, claiming that preemption under The Federal Rail Safety Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act render the State of California pretty much helpless in protecting against oil spill prevention and emergency response.

The letter specifically holds that the Federal Clean Water Act is useless as a preemption workaround.

Addressed to Dana Williamson, Cabinet Secretary in Governor Brown’s office and dated July 3, 2014, the letter addresses issues discussed in a June 18, 2014 meeting between Ms. Williamson and the lawfirm Latham & Watkins.   The letter is signed by Maureen E. Mahoney of Latham & Watkins LLP, Counsel for Union Pacific Railroad Co. and BNSF Railway Co.

Note that this document is lawyer-talk, and I am not versed in legalese, so I hope my interpretation in the previous paragraph is accurate.  I’m advised by a local activist attorney that the document is significant, so am posting it here to highlight the rail industry’s views and their efforts to influence decision-makers in Benicia and elsewhere in California.

Guy Cooper: I hope you like trains a lot…

Repost from The Martinez Gazette

Martinez Environmental Group: Do you like trains a lot?

By Guy Cooper, September 14, 2014

Hope you like trains a lot.  (Kudos to the Fugs, 1965!)

I just did a presentation as part of the Martinez Environmental Group Community Forum held here in town Sept. 8. My focus was on some trends and projections for crude-by-rail (CBR) nationally, statewide and locally. Then it hit me that there were aspects and implications I had not fully appreciated.

Of course, the safety record doesn’t look good. A 2013 spike in CBR traffic nationally led to consequent spikes in accidents and spills.

trainsalot

In fact, more CBR was spilled in this country in 2013 than in the previous 40 years combined. The sheer volume shipped can mask what is actually happening. A projected 7.7 billion gallons of crude is expected to roll into our state annually by 2016. That makes a mockery of the rail industry’s oft touted 99.99 percent safety record, a record based on volume shipped.

Shipping that much volume into the state allows for the spilling or otherwise loss of over 766,000 gallons a year without even breaking a statistical sweat. You bring it, the accidents will come. The rail companies are actually having accidents about once a week now. Two locomotives derailed in Benicia Monday. Third derailment there in the last 10 months. Hey, stuff happens.

I did my walk in the Marina Park this morning. Saw two freight trains go by, one from the north, one from the south. The one from the south had five or six locomotives pulling about a hundred hopper cars. From my vantage, I couldn’t tell if they were loaded. The train easily spanned the entire Carquinez trestle. We’ve seen the same thing lately with 100-car trains of ethanol heading through downtown.

It struck me. Just how many trains do go through downtown Martinez on a given day, or at least take up room on the Union Pacific (UP) and BNSF rail corridors that bracket Martinez? The Amtrak guys at the station told me they have 42 trains a day.

Forty-two! That’s almost one every 30 minutes. All but two of those travel the UP rails to Sacramento through Benicia, Suisun and Davis via the Union Pacific tracks that will also carry most of the crude oil trains into the Bay Area. Add in the freight trains. Amtrak couldn’t tell me anything about them, said they’re unpredictable. Well, I saw two within the space of an hour.

Add in the projected oil train traffic. We do know that one unit train (100- cars) of Bakken crude travels the BNSF line from the east along the Highway 4 corridor, over the Muir trestle into Franklin Canyon every seven to 10 days. I don’t know what other trains use that route. If all of the regional refinery proposals are allowed, we could also see a unit train a day travel through downtown on its way to the Phillips 66 refinery in Santa Maria near San Luis Obispo. WesPac in Pittsburg wants a unit train a day. Valero in Benicia wants 100 cars per day. Add ‘em up and you’re looking at 20 trains, 2,000 cars, 60 million gallons a week impacting our region, kludging up the rails, slowing other freight and passenger traffic, not to mention complicating the mix with highly volatile and toxic cargoes.

Each unit train is over a mile long, weighs over 28 million pounds and carries about 3 million gallons of oil. Remember, for each one coming in, there has to be one going out. I think that’s one of Newton’s laws of motion, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, so double the number of unit trains: 40 a week by 2016.

Add in 294 AMTRAK trains per week, and a conservative estimate of 28 other freight trains a week (4/day). Total: 362 trains per week, each blowing its whistle three of four times at each crossing. Every 30 minutes.

So I hope you like trains a lot.