Tag Archives: Crude by Rail

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Lac-Mégantic, Valero Benicia Refinery

NPR: First Responders Unprepared For Another Train Disaster

Repost from National Public Radio
[Editor: I remember with horror the breaking news last July of the catastrophic derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic.  Here in Benicia, we were preparing for a public forum to help residents understand the environmental impacts associated with our Valero Refinery’s bid to begin shipping crude oil by rail.  Lac-Mégantic was a shock, and a wake-up call.  Ever since that day, our concerns have expanded – crude by rail brings environmental disaster, and piles on catastrophic risk for everyone along the rails from the Midwestern provinces and states to the refinery.  – RS]

First Responders Unprepared For Another Train Disaster

By David Schaper, July 6, 2014

One year after an oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, some firemen and first responders say they still don’t have the training or manpower to handle a similar disaster.

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Ever since that Canadian train derailment, first responders all across North America wonder, what if it happens here? And as NPR’s David Schaper reports from this side of the border, many say they don’t have the training, the equipment or the manpower necessary to respond to an oil train disaster in their cities and towns.

DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: The images of that fiery blast that incinerated much of Lac-Mégantic’s downtown last summer still haunt many first responders.

GREGG CLEVELAND: It’s one of those things that certainly keeps me up at night.

SCHAPER: La Crosse, Wisconsin, fire chief Gregg Cleveland is watching one of the dozens of freight trains that rumble through the heart of the city of about 52,000 people every day. Many of the trains are hauling crude oil, some stretching more than a mile long, tank car after tank car full of volatile Bakken crude.

CLEVELAND: I think anytime that you have the railroad with the amount of hazardous materials in Bakken crude oil, the question is not if, but when.

SCHAPER: La Crosse is a long and narrow city nestled between the Mississippi River to the west and towering sandstone bluffs to the east, which presents unique challenges. An oil train could derail in the river or in a large environmentally sensitive marshland or in bluff-side neighborhoods that would be cut off from the only escape route over the tracks. Gregg Cleveland says, his professional firefighting force has a hazmat response team, but…

CLEVELAND: We really need more people trained in response to railroad incidents. We have virtually no foam, and the equipment that we have cannot apply the large volumes of foam that we would need in a railroad emergency.

SCHAPER: Furthermore, La Crosse has the only hazmat response team in west central Wisconsin. So along hundreds of miles of railroad track, the fire chief says, it could be up to small-town volunteer departments to initially try to contain an oil train spill and fire.

CLEVELAND: They’re not going to have the resources to do that. I think that’s a pretty safe assumption.

SENATOR HEIDI HEITKAMP: If we are going to do this right, we need to have a nationwide evaluation of the readiness.

SCHAPER: That’s Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Her state is producing most of the oil that is shipped by rail, and the amount has increased more than 6,000 percent over the last five years. She’s sponsoring a bill that would identify best practices for first responder training and equipment.

HEITKAMP: And then we need to figure out how do we get the resources to the local firefighters, how we get the training to the local firefighters and how do we institutionalize this because crude oil is not going to go off the trains anytime in the future.

SCHAPER: Heitkamp is also pushing for extra funding for first responder training, which the railroad industry is also stepping up to provide.

HEITKAMP: And it’s our goal with the training that those first responders have as realistic an experience as possible.

SCHAPER: Lisa Stabler is president of the Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colorado, which is part of the American Association of Railroads. Under an agreement with the federal Department of Transportation, the center is providing enhanced crude by rail disaster training for firefighters from around the country, free of charge. Stabler says the program will include hands-on training with real derailed tank cars going up in flames.

LISA STABLER: And that allows them to learn and, if necessary, to make mistakes in a very safe environment so that they don’t mistake make mistakes when they’re out trying to take care of an incident with the public.

SCHAPER: Back in La Crosse, Wisconsin, fire chief Greg Cleveland applauds the increased training efforts. But he wonders why this didn’t happen sooner, given that dozens of trains carrying explosive crude already roll through his city every week.

CLEVELAND: Quite honestly, we’re playing catch up very quickly here.

SCHAPER: And Cleveland notes that costly training and equipment needs will be with his community, just like the oil trains, for quite some time to come.

David Schaper, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
Civil disobedience, Crude By Rail, Take Action

Civil disobedience train protest in Maine: “competing harms defense” fails in court ruling

Repost from The Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal, Lewiston, Maine

Judge denies competing harms defense to couple charged in Auburn train protest

Christopher Williams, Lewiston-Auburn |Saturday, June 28, 2014

AUBURN — Two protesters who said they sat on railroad tracks last year in an effort to stop an approaching train carrying dangerous crude oil won’t be allowed to argue at trial that their actions were justified because those actions would have prevented a more serious harm from occurring.

Justice Joyce Wheeler wrote in a nine-page decision this week that Jessie Dowling of Unity and Douglas Bowen Jr. of Porter are barred from using a so-called “competing harms” defense.

The two had argued at a May hearing in Androscoggin County Superior Court that they considered the act of criminal trespass to be of lesser harm than allowing a train hauling explosive cargo to pass through an urban area.

County prosecutors had filed a motion aimed at blocking that defense tactic.

Wheeler wrote that the defendants failed to show the four elements needed to successfully argue that defense at trial.

The defendants had testified that they feared another explosion in Auburn similar to that which occurred at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July 2013. They said they didn’t have time to pursue legal avenues to stop the train from passing through Auburn.

Although they believed that would create a risk of harm to people there, the two defendants were required to show “as fact that such physical harm is imminently threatened,” Wheeler wrote in her court order.

They were unable to show that because “their action was weeks in planning and they had no idea whether the train was even in Maine at the time of their action,” Wheeler wrote.

Bowen had testified that had he “actually believed there was an imminent threat, he would have gone to police and rescue, which he did not do, thereby undermining his claim of an imminent threat,” Wheeler wrote.

Dowling had said in court that she believed there was a high probability that the train would explode that day, but she didn’t call police or rescue, “undermining her concern of catastrophic danger,” Wheeler wrote.

The two defendants “failed to demonstrate that there were no other alternatives” to sitting on the railroad tracks, Wheeler wrote.

The case is expected to be put on the next trial list.

Roughly 70 protesters demonstrated outside the Androscoggin County Courthouse last month before and during the hearing.

Dowling and Bowen were arrested Aug. 28, 2013, by local police when they refused to leave the railroad tracks on which they sat.

With the competing harms defense no longer an option, prosecutors will be tasked at trial with proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants trespassed criminally.

Bowen had testified that he had been told the train was traveling through Auburn on its way to Canada from the Midwest and his group had exhausted all legal means to stop it.

California Regulation, Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail accidents, Valero Benicia Refinery

Sacramento Bee editorial: First steps on oil train safety, but more to do

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: The Bee’s editorial board hit the nail on the head, but not hard enough.  Which is to say, the editors have joined with the chorus of legislators who want a good patch job for train wrecks that they presume are unstoppable.  Oil train safety would be best guaranteed by pressing the federal government to ban oil trains.  Allowing these “bomb trains” to rumble through our communities approaches criminal recklessness, and should be stopped.  Big business does not – or at least should not – dictate the direction we take as a nation.  – RS]

Editorial: First steps on oil train safety, but more to do

By the Editorial Board   |  Jun. 19, 2014
G092G6L04.3Staff Photographer
Assemblyman Roger Dickinson of Sacramento announced legislation in April to require more disclosure to emergency officials of oil shipments by rail. Randall Benton

These are not all the steps that are needed, but it’s good to see the Legislature trying to get ahead of a potential (oil) train wreck.  As part of the budget they approved Sunday, legislators added seven rail safety inspectors. They also included a 6.5-cent fee proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown on each barrel of crude oil that comes to California by rail. The $11 million or so raised annually will be used to prevent and clean up oil spills, especially in inland waterways.

On Monday, the state Senate passed a resolution urging the federal government to pass laws and rules to protect communities from oil train accidents, including tougher standards on tank cars, and to put “safety over cost effectiveness.” That sends an important message because so far, federal officials have not required enough of railroads and oil companies – either in safety measures or public disclosure – to keep pace with a rapid increase in rail shipments of oil extracted through hydraulic fracturing, especially in Canada and North Dakota.

But there’s more that California officials can do.

Sens. Jerry Hill of San Mateo and Lois Wolk of Davis have a bill for a second as-yet unspecified shipping fee on oil companies to fund training and equipment for firefighters and other first responders. A recent state report found that 40 percent of local firefighters are volunteers who generally don’t have the resources to handle major hazardous material spills.

First responders often don’t have all the information they need, either, as reporting by The Sacramento Bee has made clear. Assemblyman Roger Dickinson of Sacramento is pushing a bill to require companies to tell emergency officials about crude oil shipments. The latest version does away with an exemption from the state public records law; instead it says reports would be deemed “proprietary information” that could only be shared with “government personnel with emergency response, planning or security-related responsibilities on a need-to-know basis.”

Time is of the essence since oil trains could be running through the Sacramento region later this year. Valero Refining Co. is seeking approval to route two 50-car oil trains a day through Roseville, Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis to its refinery in Benicia.

An environmental impact report released Tuesday offers some reassurances but no guarantees. The draft report concludes that while a crash or spill could be catastrophic, the likelihood of an incident is “very low.” The probability of a spill of 100 gallons or more along the 69 miles between Roseville and Benicia is calculated at once every 111 years.

Yet, it has happened elsewhere – six major oil train crashes in North America just in the last year, including the horrific fireball in Quebec that killed 47 residents.

More than 135,000 people in Sacramento and 25,000 in Davis live within a half-mile of rail tracks, the Natural Resources Defense Council reported Wednesday. They’re counting on legislators to do all they can to make sure oil trains pass safely through our cities.

Federal Rail Administration, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazardous cargo transparency, Hazmat notification, Rail routing, State regulation

Feds: Oil train details not security sensitive

Repost from Associated Press

Feds: Oil train details not security sensitive

By Matthew Brown  |  Jun. 18, 2014

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. transportation officials said Wednesday that details about volatile oil train shipments are not sensitive security information, after railroads sought to keep the material from the public following a string of fiery accidents.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has ordered railroads to give state officials specifics on oil-train routes and volumes so emergency responders can better prepare for accidents.

Railroads have convinced some states to sign agreements restricting the information’s release for business and security reasons.

But the Federal Railroad Administration determined the information is not sensitive information that must be withheld from the public to protect security, said Kevin Thompson, the agency’s associate administrator.

Thompson added that railroads could have appropriate claims that the information should be kept confidential for business reasons, but said states and railroads would have to work that out.

Montana officials said they intend to publicly release the oil-train information next week.

The move is mandated under the state’s open records law and will help protect public safety by raising community awareness, said Andrew Huff, chief legal counsel for Gov. Steve Bullock.

“Part of the whole reason the federal government ordered that this information be given to states is to protect the communities through which these trains roll,” Huff told The Associated Press. “If there’s not some federal pre-emption or specific regulation or statute that prevents release of this information, then under our records laws we have to release it.”

Washington state officials also have said the oil-train details should be made public under state law. Last week, they gave railroads 10 days to seek a court injunction challenging the release of the information.

An oil-train derailment and explosion in Quebec last July killed 47 people. Subsequent derailments and fires in Alabama, North Dakota, Virginia and New Brunswick have drawn criticism from lawmakers in Congress that transportation officials have not done enough to safeguard against further explosions.

In response to the accidents, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in last month’s order that railroads must provide the details on routing and oil-train volumes to states. The order covered trains hauling a million gallons of oil or more from the Bakken region of North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada.

The Bakken’s light, sweet crude is more volatile than many other types of oil. It’s been involved in most of the major accidents as the crude-by-rail industry rapidly expanded during the past several years.

Some states have agreed to requests from BNSF Railway, CSX and Union Pacific to keep the information confidential after the railroads cited security concerns. Those include California, New Jersey, Virginia, Minnesota and Colorado.

Officials in New York, North Dakota and Wisconsin said they still were weighing whether restrictions on the information would violate state open-records laws.

State officials who questioned the confidentiality agreements sought by the railroads have said the notifications about oil trains were not specific enough to pose a security risk.

BNSF — the main carrier of crude oil in many western states — was notified late Tuesday of Montana’s intentions. A representative of the Texas-based company had said in a June 13 letter that BNSF would consider legal action if Montana moved to release the details on oil shipments.

“We must be cognizant that there is a real potential for the criminal misuse of this data in a way that could cause harm to your community or other communities along the rail route,” wrote Patrick Brady, BNSF’s director of hazardous materials, in a letter to a senior official at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

Company spokesman Matt Jones said Wednesday that at this time BNSF has no plans to ask a court to intervene.

While it’s important for emergency planners to have the information, Jones added, BNSF will “continue to urge discretion in the wider distribution of specific details.”

A second railroad, Montana Rail Link, submitted notifications earlier this month revealing that its tracks were carrying three oil trains a week along a route from Huntley, Montana, to Sandpoint, Idaho. The railroad said the trains pass through as many as 12 counties across southern and western Montana and through Bonner County in Idaho, according to copies of the documents obtained by the AP.

U.S. crude oil shipments by rail topped a record 110,000 carloads in the first quarter of 2014. That was the highest volume ever moved by rail, spurred by the booming production of shale oil from the Northern Plains and other parts of the country, according to the Association of American Railroads.