Tag Archives: DOT-111

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Environmental Impacts, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Tar sands crude

Vermont: catastrophic risk to Lake Champlain

Repost from Lake Look, a publication of Lake Champlain Committee
[Editor: An excellent and thorough look at crude oil train derailment risks in and around Lake Champlain.  – RS]

Rail transport of oil poses risk to Lake Champlain

By Lake Champlain Committee Staff Scientist Mike Winslow   |  April, 2014
An oil train rolls south along the shores of Lake Champlain. Photo by Frank Jolin

The sound of trains clacking along the rails that abut Lake Champlain has become more common recently with the dramatic increase in freight traffic attributed to fossil fuel extraction. Each week approximately 60 million gallons of oil travel along the lake carried by 20 trains with up to 100 cars each. The U.S. now meets 66 percent of its crude oil demand from production in North America with tremendous growth in outputs from Canada and the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. In October 2013 U.S. crude oil production exceeded imports for the first time since February 1995.

Oil produced from the Bakken fields is very light. That means it flows easily, but it also means it is more volatile and flammable. As a result, the potential property damage and loss of life associated with rail accidents involving Bakken oil is higher than oil from other sources. In January of this year two federal agencies issued a safety alert warning of these risks.

The alert was triggered by a series of devastating accidents. The Federal Railroad Administration statistics suggest that on average at least one car slips off the tracks every day. There have been six major derailments between the beginning of 2013 and mid-January 2014. The most infamous occurred on July 5, 2013, in Lac Megantic, Quebec. An improperly secured train began rolling on its own, and 63 cars derailed near the center of town. Derailment led to multiple explosions and fires, evacuation of 2,000 people, and 47 fatalities. On Oct. 19, 2013, 13 tank cars derailed in Alberta leading to evacuation of 100 residents. Three cars carrying propane burned following an explosion. On Nov. 8, 2013, 30 cars derailed in a wetland near Aliceville, Ala., and about a dozen were decimated by fire. On Dec. 30, 2013, two trains, one carrying grain and one oil, collided in Casselton, N.D. Twenty of the oil train cars derailed and exploded leading to evacuation of 1,400 people. On Jan. 7, 2014, 17 cars derailed in New Brunswick and five exploded leading to evacuation of 45 people. On Jan. 20, 2014, seven cars derailed on a bridge over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, though no oil leaked. More recently, 15-17 cars derailed in Lynchburg, Va., on April 30. Three fell into the James River and one burst into flames. There were no injuries but 300-350 people had to be evacuated and oil leaked into the James River. The state estimated 20,000 to 25,000 gallons escaped during the wreck.

Our region is no stranger to train derailments. In 2007, a northbound Vermont Railways freight train derailed in Middlebury spilling gasoline into Otter Creek and leading to the evacuation of 30 streets in the vicinity. Trains have also derailed along the Lake Champlain route. In 2007, 12 cars derailed near Route 22 in Essex, N.Y., the same stretch of tracks now carrying volatile oil.

Concern over the state of North American freight rail safety predates the increase in oil shipments. In 2006 the Toronto Star ran a five-part series on rail safety. They noted “Canadian freight trains are running off the rails in near record numbers and spilling toxic fluids at an alarming rate, but only a tiny fraction of the accidents are ever investigated.”

In contrast to Bakken field oil, tar sands oil is very heavy. Cleanup of tar sands oil following accidents is extremely difficult. The oil sinks rather than floating, making containment very difficult.

The greatly increased traffic in oil has further strained railroad infrastructure. According to an article in Pacific Standard Magazine, 85 percent of the 92,000 tank cars that haul flammable liquids around the nation are standard issue DOT-111s. They have been referred to as “Pepsi cans on wheels.” These cars are built to carry liquids, but lack specialized safety features found in pressurized tanks used for hauling explosive liquids. The industry has agreed to include additional safety features in any new cars put on the tracks, but since rail cars have an economic life of 30 to 40 years, conversion to the newer cars has been slow.

One relatively new risk is the predominance of “unit trains.” These are long series of cars all shipped from the same originating point to the same destination. Often the cars will all carry the same product. It used to be that oil cars were mixed in with other freight cars bound for different locations. Unit trains are a greater risk in part because safety standards are based on the carrying capacity of a single car and don’t account for the greater volumes that unit trains can transport. The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency charged with investigating accidents, has called on the Federal Railroad Administration to change this standard.

Recently, an oil company submitted plans to build an oil heating facility in Albany, N.Y. The facility would be used to heat oil shipped via rail. The oil would then be transferred to barges and floated to refineries. If permitted, a heating facility would draw increased transport of Canadian tar sands, which needs to be diluted or heated for loading or unloading, through the Lake Champlain region. In contrast to Bakken field oil, tar sands oil is very heavy. Cleanup of tar sands oil following accidents is extremely difficult. The oil sinks rather than floating, making containment very difficult. When a pipeline carrying tar sands oil broke near Kalamazoo, Mich., 850,000 gallons spilled. The resulting cleanup cost over $1 billion and costs were “substantially higher than the average cost of cleaning up a similar amount of conventional oil,” according to a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service.

In November of 2013, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) declared the proposed facility would have no significant environmental impacts. However, public outrage led them to reconsider that declaration, expand the public comment period, and seek additional information from the proponents. Still, the additional requested information only touches the tip of the facility’s impacts on the region. The facility should undergo a full environmental impact review that includes potential impacts on freight shipping throughout the region including along Lake Champlain.

The increased risk associated with more oil transport along Lake Champlain and in the region seemed to catch regulators by surprise, but they are reacting now. On Jan. 28, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order directing several state agencies to do a top-to-bottom review of safety procedures and emergency response preparedness related to rail shipments of oil. On Feb. 26, Sen. Schumer called for the phase-out of all DOT-111 rail cars and reduction in rail speed limits in heavily populated areas. On March 4, Cuomo sent a letter to the secretaries of the departments of Homeland Security and Transportation urging them to expedite and strengthen rail safety standards, require reporting by railroad companies of derailments, increase inspections and identify and track rail cars carrying crude oil. On April 10, the DEC issued a joint press release with EPA and the Coast Guard committing the agencies to enhance emergency preparedness and response capabilities for potential crude oil incidents. On April 30, Gov. Cuomo wrote a letter calling on President Barack Obama to prioritize federal actions to reduce risks of future train derailments.

Delays by the Federal Railroad Administration in updating standards to reflect the greatly increased traffic of potentially explosive Bakken crude oil all around the country puts people, communities, Lake Champlain and other waterways at risk. The administration needs to act before another disaster like what occurred in Lac Megantic occurs here or elsewhere. Train whistles echoing off the lake should elicit wistful thoughts of faraway places, not shudders of dread.

Lake Look is a monthly natural history column produced by the Lake Champlain Committee (LCC). Formed in 1963, LCC is the only bi-state organization solely dedicated to protecting Lake Champlain’s health and accessibility. LCC uses science-based advocacy, education, and collaborative action to protect and restore water quality, safeguard natural habitats, foster stewardship and ensure recreational access.

Bakken Crude, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Positive Train Control

Federal Regulators get failing grades on Tank Car Design and “Positive Train Control”

Repost from DESMOGBLOG.COM

How This U.S. Rail Safety Measure Has Been Delayed for 44 Years … And Counting

2014-04-30  |  Justin Mikulka

On August 20, 1969, two Penn Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Conn.  Four people were killed and 43 were injured. The crash led the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to recommend that railroads implement new safety technology called positive train control — a system for monitoring and controlling train movements to increase safety.

The NTSB first recommended positive train control in 1970. In 2008, after another fatal train collision that killed 25 people, Congress finally passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act, which mandated positive train control be implemented by the railroad industry by the end of 2015.

Fast-forward another six years to multiple congressional hearings in recent months, during which the railroads have informed Congress that positive train control simply won’t be implemented by the end of 2015. It’s been 44 years since the NTSB first recommended positive train control to improve rail safety in the U.S. and it is still not being used.

Looking at the way the positive train control scenario has played out for the past 44 years offers valuable lessons on how the U.S. is now dealing with safety regulations for shipping oil by rail.

Last week, the NTSB held a two-day forum on rail safety regarding the transportation of crude oil and ethanol. One of the main topics was how to improve rail tank car safety and what to do with the DOT-111 tank cars currently being used to ship crude oil and ethanol.

Much like positive train control, the NTSB has been recommending for decades that the DOT-111 tank cars not be used for ethanol and crude oil transportation due to the high risks they pose in derailments.

So why hasn’t anything been done? Mostly because of opposition by oil and gas industry groups, such as the American Petroleum Institute (API). The API was a constant presence at last week’s rail safety forum, just as it has been at congressional hearings on rail safety this year. A recent Reuter’s article alluded to the problem:

“Industry sources say compromise has been difficult among stakeholders with different concerns such as costs and whether an overly bulky model might limit cargoes.”

Basically, API is opposed to making changes to the rail tank cars because safety cuts into profits. Even NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman pointed to the profit motive in an interview with NPR on April 25th. Hersman said, “Absolutely. Follow the money. It all comes back to the money.”

And the reality is that API’s members don’t have to worry about paying for accidents caused by using these unsafe DOT-111 cars. The current estimate for what it will cost to clean up and rebuild from the oil train accident in Lac-Megantic, Que., is $2.7 billion, which will be paid by Canadian taxpayers, not by oil or rail companies.

During the recent rail safety forum, the NTSB’s Hersman asked Lee Johnson of the American Petroleum Institute: “Given the rates that we heard earlier for production and the needs of your members how long do you think we are going to see DOT-111 tank cars to continue to exist in the fleet and at what rate percentage?”

 

 

As you can see in the video, it was an instructive exchange. Surely, the question of how much longer unsafe tank cars will be transporting explosive substances through U.S. communities should be directed to regulators, not oil companies?

After estimating the DOT-111s will be in use for at least another decade, Hersman states: “You’re not making me feel very optimistic, Mr. Johnson.”

It’s doubtful the American public feels very optimistic either when the person in charge of the board tasked with transportation safety is asking the American Petroleum Institute, tasked with representing the oil and gas industry, how much longer unsafe tank cars will be allowed on American railways.

Photo: Chairman Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board via Flickr

 

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Oil Industry, Rail industry

Chicago, nation’s busiest rail hub: firefighters unprepared, lacking foam and equipment

Repost from the Chicago Tribune

Area poorly prepared for crude-oil train fires

Stocks of firefighting foam few and far between

By Richard Wronski, Tribune reporter  |  May 25, 2014
Cherry Valley accidentIn 2009, a Canadian National freight train hauling 75 tank cars with ethanol derailed and erupted into a massive fireball in Cherry Valley, near Rockford. Although firefighters had about 400 gallons of foam on hand and more on the way, they concluded it wasn’t enough to put out the fire. (National Transportation Safety Board / June 19, 2009)

Few Chicago-area fire departments have enough firefighting foam and equipment to respond effectively to the roaring infernos seen near Rockford and elsewhere in recent years when multiple railroad tank cars carrying flammable liquids derail and explode, the Tribune has found.

So-called unit trains, rolling pipelines with more than a hundred tank cars hauling millions of gallons of crude oil, have become game changers for emergency responders, posing new threats and requiring updated safety strategies, experts say.

Such trains have become a common sight in the Chicago area, the nation’s busiest rail hub. Each day, one-fourth of U.S. freight traffic — nearly 500 freight trains and 37,500 rail cars — passes through the city and suburbs, experts say, although it’s unknown exactly how much of this traffic is crude oil.

Yet, the majority of communities lack the thousands of gallons of foam and equipment — like airport “crash trucks” — to respond immediately and effectively to smother flames fueled by one or more railroad tank cars, officials say.

Most fire departments stock only enough 5-gallon containers of foam to extinguish fires involving vehicles and tanker trucks. Larger incidents, involving train loads of flammable liquids, would overwhelm individual departments, officials say.

“We couldn’t carry enough 5-gallon drums and couldn’t switch them out fast enough to get that kind of foam on a tank car or any fire like that,” said Jim Arie, Barrington’s fire chief. “That requires very specialized equipment and personnel.

“It’s truly the worst-case scenario for a fire department, and it’s not the kind of thing you can staff for or have enough equipment for.”

These days, tank-car trains run frequently through scores of suburbs on the tracks that Canadian National Railway Co. acquired in 2009 from the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway, Arie said.

“We may be two years, five years or 12 years before we have an incident. We can’t staff up for that every day, day in, day out, knowing that it may be way down the road before something happens,” Arie said.

In Aurora, which has nine fire engines and 195 firefighters, including a 27-member hazardous-materials team, a fiery derailment would result in a “major disaster,” said Chief John Lehman. Both the Canadian National and the BNSF Railway Co. run tank-car trains through Aurora.

“We could do all the training in the world and have all the equipment in the world, but if one of those (trains) comes off the rails and creates an issue in a very densely populated area, our exposure would be very significant,” Lehman said. “Our ability to deal with an incident of that magnitude would be very taxing.”

Nationwide, crude shipments have grown from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to more than 400,000 in 2013, according to the Association of American Railroads.

The industry stands by its performance, saying more than 99.9 percent of its shipments arrive safely, according to the railroad association.

To deal with any large-scale emergency, nearly all of the state’s 1,200 fire departments depend on each other for help as part of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, or MABAS. Besides responding to major events like fires and natural disasters, MABAS also has 42 specialized operations teams for hazardous materials.

MABAS mobilized crews and equipment from several departments June 19, 2009, when a Canadian National freight train hauling 75 tank cars with ethanol derailed and erupted into a massive fireball in Cherry Valley, near Rockford.

Although firefighters had about 400 gallons of foam on hand and more on the way, they concluded it wasn’t enough to put out the roaring fire, which eventually spread to 13 tank cars, said Steve Pearson, who was then chief of the North Park Fire Protection District in Machesney Park.

Unable to get close enough to attack the intense flames, which rose hundreds of feet high, firefighters could do little but let the blaze burn itself out and go into a “defensive position” a half-mile away, Pearson told the National Transportation Safety Board forum on railroad safety last month.

“Even if we had an endless amount of foam, it could not have been safely applied to this incident,” he said.

But firefighters stress the importance of responding to such incidents as swiftly as possible with ample foam before they get out of control.

Although some people were rescued, a 44-year-old woman in a car stopped at the train crossing was fatally burned and several others were injured. Her pregnant 19-year-old daughter lost her baby.

It wasn’t until 5 p.m. the next day, nearly nine hours after the derailment, that all fires were extinguished and residents could return to about 600 homes that were evacuated, Pearson said.

Increased risks

The roster of fiery derailments has steadily grown along with the flow of volatile crude oil from the booming Bakken fields of North Dakota, Montana and Canada.

Nine oil train derailments have occurred in the U.S. and Canada since March 2013, several resulting in intense fires and evacuations, according to the NTSB.

By far the worst occurred when a runaway oil train derailed and exploded July 3, 2013, in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Sixty-three tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed, officials said.

Earlier this month, Canadian officials charged the railroad — which was then owned by Rosemont-based Rail World Inc. — and three of its employees with criminal negligence in connection with the incident.

Reacting to the spate of incidents, the NTSB convened a two-day forum last month in Washington to address the safety of shipping crude oil and ethanol by rail. More than 20 fire officials, federal administrators, railroad and tank car industry representatives, and other experts testified.

One focus was the crash-worthiness of the tank cars. The NTSB has warned for decades that older-model cars like those involved in the Cherry Valley incident, known as DOT-111s, are prone to rupture in a derailment.

The Canadian government has ordered a phaseout of the DOT-111s over the next three years unless they’re retrofitted with better protection in case of derailment. So far, the U.S. Department of Transportation has only recommended that shippers avoid using the DOT-111s “to the extent possible.”

The U.S. is being “extremely lethargic and to some extent irresponsible” in not dealing with the DOT-111s, said Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner, who, with Barrington Village President Karen Darch, is co-chairman of a coalition of communities pushing for more tank-car safety measures.

“The bureaucracy of it all is literally costing people’s lives, and the potential catastrophe before us, unless something is done, is scary,” Weisner said.

Officials at the NTSB forum called for greater community awareness, enhanced planning and preparedness, and improved training for emergency responders.

“While most fire-service personnel are generally familiar with flammable and combustible liquid emergencies, we know from recent catastrophic events that the amount of product being transported via unit trains exceeds our current response capabilities,” Richard Edinger, vice chairman of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, told the forum.

One strategy would be to establish stockpiles of foam at key locations along rail lines where crude oil and other hazardous materials are shipped. Currently, such supplies are few and far between and would probably arrive too late to quell an inferno, experts say.

Increasing supplies of foam would require fire departments, organizations like MABAS and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency to evaluate their current equipment supplies, officials say.

Although the state agency would coordinate the statewide response to a large-scale emergency, it maintains no inventory or list of foam stockpiles, a spokeswoman said.

The agency, however, is considering the possibility of contracting with foam manufacturers to provide the product on short notice, she said.

Combined with water, foam works by smothering combustible liquid fires, suppressing vapors and cooling the fuel and other surfaces. Applying water alone to a crude oil or ethanol fire will spread the flames.

Generally, only refineries, chemical plants and airports have extensive supplies of firefighting foam and special tanker trucks to spray it quickly, experts say.

The Chicago Fire Department has several crash trucks with foam on hand at O’Hare International and Midway airports. Whether the trucks have sufficient foam to respond to a fiery derailment and could be sent elsewhere in the city or suburbs is unclear.

Despite several requests from the Tribune, the city of Chicago and the Chicago Fire Department did not respond to questions about the city’s foam capability.

Canadian National doesn’t stock foam along its routes, but it is “aware of significant foam locations along (the) system which could be called upon during an incident,” a spokesman said.

As evidenced by Cherry Valley, however, it’s questionable whether those stocks could get to the scene of a crude oil disaster quickly enough.

‘Skin in the game’

One community with a significant store of foam is the village of Bedford Park. Close to Midway, the village is the site of several chemical plants, liquid bulk-storage terminals and a large railroad switching yard.

Chief Sean Maloy said his village is a MABAS division headquarters and is well-equipped and trained to deal with most hazmat situations. It has several hundred gallons of foam — much of it stored on a trailer — that could be offered to other communities in an emergency.

“We’ve got a lot of foam available to us. It’s a matter of getting it there quickly,” he said. “It comes down to how much foam you can bring at one time.”

Some experts and public officials have suggested that companies benefiting from the boom in crude oil such as oil producers, tank-car owners and railroads pay a per-gallon fee to help fund training and programs to prepare for emergencies.

Such a fee was proposed in January by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel before a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington.

On Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed a law to collect $2.5 million annually from railroad and oil pipeline companies to help first responders get ready for derailments and spills involving oil and other hazardous substances.

Jay Reardon, the head of Illinois’ MABAS, said that the risk posed by crude oil shipments should prompt local municipal officials to re-evaluate the ability of their fire departments to provide adequate mutual aid responses.

If Illinois were to set such a fee, Reardon said, the money could fund groups like MABAS to stockpile foam and provide additional hazmat training.

“If there are companies who are making money on this, then don’t they have skin in the game?” Reardon asked. “Shouldn’t they be charged a minute portion, and that money go into a pool to fund risk mitigation?”

Bakken Crude, California Regulation, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazardous cargo transparency, Tank car design, Train speed

Bakersfield High School worst-case derailment scenario

Repost from the Bakersfield Californian
[Editor: this is a MUST READ article, a comprehensive and graphic description of first-responder requirements and readiness.  Someone needs to interview first responders in each of our Bay Area refinery towns, ask every single question referenced in this article, and lay out similar scenarios for the all-too-imaginable catastrophes that threaten our communities.  – RS]

Increased oil train traffic raises potential for safety challenges

By John Cox, Californian staff writer  |  May 17, 2014
Bakersfield High School is seen in the background behind the rail cars that go through town as viewed from the overpass on Oak Street. By Casey Christie / The Californian
Bakersfield High School is seen in the background behind the rail cars that go through town as viewed from the overpass on Oak Street. By Casey Christie / The Californian

First responders think of the rail yard by Bakersfield High School when they envision the worst-case scenario in Kern County’s drive to become a major destination for Midwestern oil trains.  If a derailment there punctures and ignites a string of tank cars, the fireball’s heat will be felt a mile away and flames will be a hundred feet high. Thick acrid black smoke will cover an area from downtown to Valley Plaza mall. Burning oil will flow through storm drains and sewers, possibly shooting flames up through manholes.

Some 3,000 BHS students and staff would have to be evacuated immediately. Depending on how many tank cars ignite, whole neighborhoods may have to be cleared, including patients and employees at 194-bed Mercy Hospital.  State and county fire officials say local 911 call centers will be inundated, and overtaxed city and county firefighters, police and emergency medical services will have to call for help from neighboring counties and state agencies.

While the potential for such an accident has sparked urgency around the state and the country, it has attracted little notice locally — despite two ongoing oil car offloading projects that would push Kern from its current average of receiving a single mile-long oil train delivery about once a month, to one every six hours.

One project is Dallas-based Alon USA Energy Inc.’s proposed oil car offloading facility at the company’s Rosedale Highway refinery. The other is being developed near Taft by Plains All American Pipeline LP, based in Houston.

Kern’s two projects, and three others proposed around the state, would greatly reduce California’s thirst for foreign crude. State energy officials say the five projects should increase the amount of crude California gets by rail from less than 1 percent of the state’s supply last year to nearly a quarter by 2016.

But officials who have studied the BHS derailment scenario say more time and money should be invested in coordinated drills and additional equipment to prepare for what could be a uniquely difficult and potentially disastrous oil accident.

Bakersfield High Principal David Reese met late last year with representatives of Alon, which hopes to start bringing mile-long “unit trains” — two per day — through the rail yard near campus.

He said Alon’s people told him about plans for double-lined tank cars and other safety measures “to make me feel better” about the project. But he still worries.

“I told them, ‘You may assure me but I continue to be concerned about the safety of my students and staff with any new (rail) project that comes within the vicinity of the school,'” he said.

Alon declined to comment for this story.

Both projects aim to capitalize on the current price difference between light crude on the global market and Bakken Shale oil found in and around North Dakota. Thanks to the nation’s shale boom, the Midwest’s ability to produce oil has outpaced its capacity to transport it cheaper and more safely by pipeline. The resulting overabundance has depressed prices and prompted more train shipments.

There are no oil pipelines over the Rockies; rail is the next best mode of shipping oil to the West Coast. Kern County is viewed as an ideal place for offloading crude because of its oil infrastructure and experience with energy projects. Two facilities are proposed in Northern California, in Benicia and Pittsburg; [emphasis added] the other would be to the south, in Wilmington.

A local refinery, Kern Oil & Refining Co., has accepted Bakken oil at its East Panama Lane plant since at least 2012. The California Energy Commission says Kern Oil receives one unit train every four to six weeks.

NATIONAL CHANGES

Shipments of Bakken present special safety concerns. The oil has been found to be highly volatile, and the common mode of transporting it — in quick-loading trains of 100 or more cars carrying more than 3 million gallons per shipment — rules out the traditional safety practice of placing an inert car as a buffer between two containing dangerous materials.

The dangers of shipping Bakken crude by unit train have been evident in several fiery derailments over the past year. One in July in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada, killed 47 people and destroyed 30 buildings when a 74-car runaway train jumped the tracks at 63 mph.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said 99.9 percent of U.S. oil rail cars reached their destination without incident last year. Two of its divisions, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, have issued emergency orders, safety advisories and special inspections relating to oil car shipments. New rules on tank car standards and operational controls for “high-hazard flammable trains” are in the federal pipeline.

Locally operating companies Union Pacific Railroad Co. and BNSF Railway Co. signed an agreement with the DOT to voluntarily lower train speeds, have more frequent inspections, make new investments in brake technology and conduct additional first-responder training.

Until new federal rules take effect next year, railroads can only urge their customers to use tank cars meeting the higher standards.

“UP does not choose the tank car,” Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt wrote in an email. “We encourage our shippers to retrofit or phase out older cars.”

The San Joaquin Valley Railroad Co., owned by Connecticut-based Genesee & Wyoming Inc., is a short line that carries Kern Oil’s oil shipments and would serve the Plains project but not Alon’s. A spokesman said SJVR is working with the larger railroads to upgrade its line, and the company inspects tracks ahead of every unit train arrival, among other measures designed just for oil shipments.

STATE LEVEL PROPOSALS

Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a big change in the way California protects against and responds to oil spills.

His 2014-15 budget calls for $6.7 million in new spending on the state’s Oil Spill Prevention and Administration Fund to add 38 inland positions, a 15 percent staffing increase. Currently the agency focuses on ocean shipments, which have been the norm for out-of-state oil deliveries in California.

To help pay for the expansion, Brown wants to expand a 6.5 cent-per-barrel fee to not only marine terminals but all oil headed for California refineries.

“We’ll have a more robust response capability,” said Thomas Cullen, an administrator at the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, which is within the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A representative of the oil trade group Western States Petroleum Association criticized the proposal March 19 at a legislative joint hearing in Sacramento. Lobbyist Ed Manning said OSPR lacks inland reach, and that giving such responsibilities to an agency with primarily marine experience “doesn’t really respond to the problem.”

WSPA President Catherine Reheis-Boyd has emphasized the group has not taken a position on Brown’s OSPR proposal.

Also at the state capitol, Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, has forwarded legislation requiring railroads to give first responders more information about incoming oil shipments and publicly share spill contingency plans. The bill, AB 380, would also direct state grants toward local contingency planning and training. It is pending before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee.

LOCAL PREPARATIONS

In recent years Kern County has conducted large-scale, multi-agency emergency drills to prepare for an earthquake, disease outbreak and Isabella Dam break. There has not been a single oil spill drill.

Emergency service officials say that’s not as bad as it sounds because disasters share common actions — notification, evacuation, decontamination.

Nevertheless, State Fire and Rescue Chief Kim Zagaris, County Fire Chief Brian Marshall and Kern Emergency Services Manager Georgianna Armstrong support the idea of local oil spill drills involving public safety agencies, hospitals and others.

Kern County is well-versed at handling hazardous materials. Some local officials say an oil accident may actually be less dangerous than the release of toxic chemicals, which also travel through the county on a regular basis.

There have been recent accidents, but all were relatively minor.

Federal records list 18 oil or other hazardous material spills on Kern County railroads in the last 10 years. No one was injured; together the accidents caused $752,000 in property damage.

Most involved chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. Only two resulted in crude oil spills, both in 2013 in the 93305 ZIP code in the city of Bakersfield. Together they spilled a little more than a gallon of oil.

But the risk of spills rises significantly as the volume of oil passing through the county grows.

“The volume is a big deal,” Bakersfield Fire Chief Douglas R. Greener said. “Potentially, if you have a train derail, you could see numerous cars of the same type of material leaking all at once.”

Kern County firefighters are better prepared for an oil spill than many other first responders around the state. They train on an actual oil tanker and have special tools to mend rail car punctures and gashes. The county fire department has several trucks carrying spray foam that suffocates industrial fires.

But Chief Marshall acknowledged a bad rail accident could strain the department’s resources.

He has been speaking with Alon about securing additional firefighting equipment and foam to ensure an appropriate response to any oil train derailment related to the company’s proposed offloading facility.

What comes of those talks is expected to be included in an upcoming environmental review of the project.

“We recognize the need to increase our industrial firefighting program,” Marshall said.

Chief Zagaris said Kern’s proximity to on-call emergency agencies in Tulare, Kings and Los Angeles counties may come in handy under the Bakersfield High spill scenario, which is based on fire officials’ assessments and reports from several similar incidents over the past year.

He and Marshall would not estimate how many people would require evacuation in the event of a disaster near the school, or what specific levels of emergency response might become necessary.

But Zagaris said local public safety officials would almost certainly require outside help to assess injuries, transfer people in need of medical care, secure the city and contain the spill itself.

“I look at it as, you know, depending what it is and where it happens will dictate how quickly” outside resources would have to be pulled in, he said.