Tag Archives: DOT-111

Bakken Crude, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Lac-Mégantic, U.S. Department of Transportation

DOT strengthens rules on unattended freight trains

Repost from UPI Business News

Tighter rules for U.S. crude oil trains

Measure part of a series of steps in response to Lac-Megantic disaster.
By Daniel J. Graeber   |   Sept. 9, 2014
Department of Transportation proposes new measures to ensure safety of trains carrying hazardous materials like crude oil (Photo: Daniel J. Graeber)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Transportation said Tuesday it adopted new measures aimed at securing unattended freight trains in response to oil train accidents.

The Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration issued a new proposal aimed at strengthening rules on unattended freight trains. The rules are part of a series of federal procedures outlined in the wake of the deadly 2013 derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

“This rulemaking will solidify our existing securement regulations and provide additional safeguards against the rolling of unattended freight trains, especially those carrying hazardous materials,” Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo said in a statement.

At least 40 people were killed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in the derailment of a train carrying tankers of crude oil from North Dakota to Canadian refineries. Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway blamed the air brakes on the locomotive for the accident.

Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced new regulations in April aimed at increasing safety on the Canadian rail system. The measure from regulator Transport Canada started with an order to remove around 5,000 tanker cars designated DOT-111 from service almost immediately.

A 200-page proposal from the Department of Transportation calls for the elimination of older rail cars designated DOT 111 for shipment of flammable liquid, “including most Bakken crude oil.”

The new proposal would prevent trains carrying certain specified hazardous materials from being left unattended.

“Safety is our top priority,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. “Today’s action is only the latest in more than two dozen steps we have taken in the last year to further safeguard communities along train routes that carry crude oil and other flammable liquids.”

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Lake Champlain, Massive increase in crude-by-rail

Lake Champlain activists host oil train forum, feds in attendance

Repost from VTDigger.org

Oil train forum attendees want state, federal regulators to ban leaky tankers and assess new risks

News Release — Lake Champlain Committee, Sep. 2, 2014

 PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. – More than 120 concerned residents attended a public forum to discuss the risks of crude oil train traffic through the Adirondack Park and Champlain Valley here Thursday night, with many saying they would urge state officials to fully assess the risks to communities and the environment, and urge federal regulators to ban the older, leak-prone rail tanker cars involved in recent spills, fires and explosions.

Currently, more than three million gallons per day of Bakken crude oil is transported through the region on rail lines that had rarely carried crude oil or hazardous materials before.

“We were very pleased with the number of people who came out to discuss the risks of oil train traffic through the Adirondack Park and Champlain Valley,” said Diane Fish, Deputy Director of the Adirondack Council. “But even if you couldn’t attend, we urge anyone who is concerned about oil train traffic to contact state and federal officials and let them know. If you aren’t sure how to do that, contact one of the sponsor organizations and we will help you.”

The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) will be accepting comments through September 30 on its environmental assessment of the plan by Global Partners to expand its oil-transfer facilities at the Port of Albany. Federal officials are currently updating their risk assessments for the rail tanker car traffic.

“If the Global Partners’ expansion is approved, it could lead to a major increase in oil train traffic through the Champlain Valley,” said Lori Fisher, Executive Director of the Lake Champlain Committee. “The new traffic would be carrying tar sands oil from Canada, in addition to the Bakken crude oil already coming from North Dakota, and put our communities and waterways at even greater risk.”

“Tar sands oil is not as explosive as Bakken crude, but it is very heavy and sinks in water so it is very difficult to clean up once it is spilled,” said Adirondack Mountain Club Executive Director Neil Woodworth. “If it gets into Lake Champlain, it is likely we will never get it out again.”

“We know the Adirondack Park is home to some of New York’s rarest and most sensitive wildlife, fish and plant life; and, we know trains derail,” said Mollie Matteson, a biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Immediate action is needed to protect this fragile, irreplaceable environment.”

The organizations said NYS DEC should take into consideration potential for damage to Lake Champlain, the Adirondack Park, the communities through which the tracks pass and local farms when assessing the environmental risks of expanded oil traffic.

The groups also urged those who care about the Adirondack Park and Lake Champlain to tell their Congressional representatives to seek a ban on the model DOT-111 rail cars that have been blamed for most of the recent spills and fires.

The risks of Bakken crude oil rail shipments have been highlighted by a series of recent derailments in the U.S. and Canada resulting in water and soil contamination, deadly explosions and raging fires. A 2013 derailment involving nearly 80 tankers in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed 47 people and devastated the town. A derailment in May in Lynchburg, Va., set the James River on fire.

Federal officials have said they would require the replacement of the leak-prone rail tanker cars (model DOT-111) involved in recent spills, fires and explosions. However, it will take years to carry out the current plan.

Appearing at the event were U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Emergency & Remedial Response division representatives Carl Pellegrino and Doug Kodama; Essex County Emergency Management Director Don Jaquish; Clinton County Emergency Management Director Eric Day; Claire Barnett of the Healthy Schools Network; and, Mark Malchoff of Lake Champlain Sea Grant.

The event was hosted by the Lake Champlain Committee, Adirondack Council, Adirondack Mountain Club, and the Center for Biological Diversity.

On average, 3.4 million gallons of explosive crude oil per day are shipped through the Champlain Valley on trains coming from the oil fields of North Dakota, through Canada, to Albany. Between five and nine trains per week use the Canadian Pacific Railroad line between Montreal and the Port of Albany on the Hudson River. Each train can haul up to 100 oil tankers. Each tank car carries about 34,000 gallons of oil.

Bakken crude is light and contains large amounts of volatile chemicals, making it highly flammable. Tar sands oil is less explosive, but much heavier. It sinks rather than floating on water, making it impossible to remove via conventional boom-and-suction methods.

Every crude oil spill causes lasting environmental damage, the organizations noted, pointing to continuing problems in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico from the Exxon Valdez and British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon disasters. Closer to home, attempts to clean up oil spills on the St. Lawrence River (1976) and at a long-closed steel mill in southern St. Lawrence County continue to cost taxpayers millions of dollars, decades after they occurred.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad tracks run alongside Lake Champlain for more than 130 miles, including 100 miles inside the Adirondack Park. The tracks also cross the Saranac, Ausable and Bouquet rivers. For many miles, the tracks are just a few feet from the water’s edge.

Lake Champlain is ecologically rich, the drinking water source for nearly 200,000 Champlain Valley residents, and a key driver for the regional economy. The tracks also run through the center of more than a dozen small communities and the City of Plattsburgh, within a short distance of schools, homes, businesses, farmlands, tourist accommodations, campgrounds, beaches and municipal offices.

For more information:
Lori Fisher, Lake Champlain Committee, 802-658-1421
John Sheehan, Adirondack Council, 518-441-1340
Bakken Crude, Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Tank car design

U.S. lags in dealing with danger of oil tank cars

Repost from CentralMaine.com

OUR OPINION: US lags in dealing with danger of oil tank cars

Federal foot-dragging could lead to a Lac-Megantic-type tragedy in this country.
August 20, 2014

A major milestone was reached this week in the follow-up to the oil train explosion that killed 47 people last summer in Lac-Megantic, Quebec: Canadian investigators released a final report blaming lax government oversight and poor rail company safety practices for the tragic accident.

But although the Canadian government obviously didn’t fulfill its regulatory responsibilities, Canada is still way ahead of the United States in taking steps to prevent another such tragedy. Canada has banned the most decrepit tank cars; Washington, meanwhile, is calling for a drawn-out retirement and retrofitting process that could keep some of the cars in service until at least 2017. This reluctance to take action is putting U.S. communities so far down the track in terms of improved public safety that they’re almost guaranteed to be left behind.

The train that crashed in Quebec in July 2013 was carrying nearly 2 million gallons of volatile North Dakota crude oil in DOT-111 tanker cars. When derailed, DOT-111 cars are easily punctured or ruptured, making them highly vulnerable to leaks and explosions. The cars’ flaws were first noted in a National Transportation Safety Board study more than 20 years ago. And in 2012, the NTSB concluded that the DOT-111s’ “inadequate design” contributed to the severity of a 2009 oil train derailment in Illinois that killed one person and injured several others. Because of a spike in U.S. crude oil production, moreover, the number of oil car accidents continues to climb: 116 in 2013, more than double the number of all episodes from 1990 to 2009.

Nonetheless, about 98,000 tank cars are in service — and most don’t have the latest safety features. All 72 cars in the Quebec runaway train, for example, were built to the older standard. So any of the major cities through which this train passed before reaching Lac-Megantic — including Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit — could have been the site of an equally devastating derailment, spill and explosion.

In April, Canada barred 5,000 of the most poorly made, puncture-prone DOT-111s from carrying crude oil and ethanol. But such cars will stay in service in the United States until at least 2017, under proposed regulations that call for a two-year phase-out of the cars, effective September 2015, unless they’re retrofitted to comply with new safety standards.

Announced last month by the federal Department of Transportation, the rules would apply only to “high-hazard flammable trains” that carry at least 20 cars of volatile liquids. DOT-111s that haven’t been retrofitted still could be used beyond 2015 on trains with 19 or fewer tank cars — a massive loophole.

The U.S. DOT realizes it’s dangerous to keep shipping volatile crude in substandard rail cars. The agency even said as much in the news release announcing the proposal: “The safety risk presented by transporting Bakken (North Dakota) crude oil by rail is magnified both by an increasing volume of Bakken being shipped … throughout the U.S. and the large distances over which the product is shipped.”

To have this knowledge and still fail to act on it is to take a cynical view of the well-being of the people whom the agency is supposed to be protecting — and it gives public service a bad name.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Take Action

Bainbridge Island Review Guest Opinion: Why I blockaded an oil train

Repost from the Bainbridge Island Review

GUEST OPINION: Why I blockaded an oil train

BY ANNETTE KLAPSTEIN, August 16, 2014

On Monday, July 28, I joined Jan Woodruff of Anacortes and Adam Gaya of Seattle in locking ourselves to barrels full of concrete on the rail spur into the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes in order to keep an oil train from leaving the refinery.

Why would a 62-year-old retired lawyer and long-time resident of Bainbridge Island take such a drastic action?

The short answer is: I could not do otherwise.

This kind of resistance may seem extreme, but these are extreme times — these oil trains present an imminent threat to the lives and safety of tens of thousands of our friends and neighbors, and our politicians have done a woefully inadequate job of addressing this.

The puncture-prone DOT-111 tanker cars were deemed “inadequate” by federal authorities more than 20 years ago. Yet every week, more than a dozen of these trains travel through downtown Seattle to refineries including Tesoro.

These trains are carrying Bakken shale crude, which the DOT has warned is unusually volatile and can catch fire at temperatures as low as 75 degrees F!

There have been very frequent derailments, including one in Seattle last week (headed for the Tesoro refinery), which occurred despite a train speed of only 5 miles per hour. Had it been going much faster, the results would likely have been catastrophic.

There have been five explosions and massive fires associated with derailments within the past year, the worst being at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, where a derailment caused a massive explosion, leveling several city blocks and vaporizing 47 people. If this happens in Seattle near the sports stadiums during a Seahawks or Mariners game, tens of thousands of people will die a horrific death.

Tesoro had a terrible safety record even before the huge increase in oil-by-rail.

After its tragic 2010 fire, which killed seven workers, it was found to have committed 39 “willful” and five “serious” violations of safety regulations.

Tesoro is planning to build the massive Tesoro Savage Vancouver Oil Terminal, a project so fraught with potential problems that the Vancouver City Council has asked Governor Inslee to reject it.

The United States Supreme Court, in its questionable wisdom, has declared corporations to be “persons” with human rights. If Tesoro and the other oil companies trying to turn our beautiful state of Washington into the Bakken shale oil dealer to the world are “persons” it is terribly clear to me what sort of “persons” they are: psychopaths — lacking all conscience or empathy. If any other group of people exposed us to such risks, they’d be locked up as the criminals they are. Instead, we get cheap bromides about “safe fracking,” while wells across the country are poisoned and billions of gallons of water in drought-stricken California are ruined: all for cheap dirty energy, in an era when the ravages of climate change are becoming increasingly visible.

The fires in Washington last week were one small sample of ominous things to come. In under a week of the official fire season, more area was burned than in any full year of the past decade. If we do not take drastic measures to address climate change immediately, our children and grandchildren will have to live through the collapse of our civilization within decades. I cannot live with that on my conscience.

And what has our political leadership offered to address these issues? Feeble and half-hearted actions such as the federal plan to “phase out” the most unsafe oil-by-rail cars over the next four years.

In four years we are certain to have more disasters and more deaths — such a plan is criminally negligent and absolutely unacceptable.

We need a total ban on all shipment of Bakken crude by rail NOW, and a complete halt to the development of any new oil terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The oil companies have no sense of responsibility to anything but their bottom lines. Companies that make decisions like this have no place doing business on our increasingly fragile planet, and we the people of the state of Washington have to draw the line.

Annette Klapstein is a Bainbridge Island resident and a retired attorney who worked for the Puyallup Indian Tribe for 21 years, primarily on fisheries issues.