Tag Archives: EarthJustice

Civil disobedience, Crude By Rail, Richmond CA, Take Action

Richmond, California: Activists form human barricade to protest crude-by-rail facility

Repost from San Francisco Bay Guardian
[Editor: See this story also on Popular Resistance, the Richmond Standard. and the Sacramento Bee.  – RS]

Activists form human barricade to protest crude-by-rail facility

09.04.14 | Rebecca Bowe
PHOTO BY MATTHEW GERRING

This morning [Thu/4], at 7am in Richmond, Calif., four environmental activists used U-locks to fasten themselves by the neck to the fence of an oil shipping facility operated by Kinder Morgan.

They were interlocked with another four activists, who had their arms secured with handmade lock-boxes. “I’m locked to a lock box connected to my partner, Ann, who is locked with a U-lock to the fence,” Andre Soto, of Richmond-based Communities for a Better Environment, explained by phone a little after 8am.

At that time, Soto said several Richmond police officers had been dispatched to the scene and were calmly surveying the human barricade. He wondered out loud if they would be arrested.

The environmentalists risked arrest to prevent trucks from leaving the Kinder Morgan facility for area refineries with offloaded oil shipped in by train.

Crude-by-rail transport at Kinder Morgan’s bulk rail terminal, located in the Burlington Northern / Santa Fe railyard in Richmond, is the subject of a lawsuit filed in March by Earthjustice on behalf of the Sierra Club, Communities for a Better Environment, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network.

The suit, targeting Kinder Morgan as well as the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), charges that Kinder Morgan was illegally awarded a permit for crude-by-rail operations without going through a formal environmental review process, which would have necessitated public hearings and community feedback. The case asks for operations to be halted while the project undergoes review under the California Environmental Quality Act. A hearing will be held in San Francisco Superior Court at 1:30pm tomorrow.

Ethan Buckner of Forest Ethics, who was also locked to the fence, said activists were especially concerned that the crude oil being shipped into Richmond, much of which originates in North Dakota, was volatile, presenting safety concerns.

“The oil trains are … very old tank cars that are subject to puncture, and have been known to fail over and over again while carrying oil,” Buckner said. Much of the oil shipped into the Richmond transfer point by rail originates from the Bakken shale region, which has been dramatically transformed by the controversial extraction method known as fracking.

“Nobody was notified that these oil trains were going to be rolling in,” Buckner said. That morning’s protest, he added, was meant to “send a clear message to Kinder Morgan and the Air District that if we can’t count on our public agencies to protect our communities, we’re going to do it ourselves.”

In the end, none of the activists were arrested. They voluntarily unlocked themselves from the fence and left the railyard around 10am. “After three hours we decided thsat we had made our point,” Eddie Scher of Forest Ethics said afterward, speaking by phone.

Along with a group of around ten others participating in the civil disobedience action, the activists who locked themselves to the fence were affiliated with Bay Area environmental organizations including 350 Bay Area, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Sunflower Alliance, the Martinez Environmental Group, and Crocket Rodeo United to Defend the Environment.

Reached by phone, Ralph Borrmann, a spokesperson for BAAQMD, said, “We have no comment on the current litigation, or any actions relating to it.” He added that more information would come out during the Sept. 5 hearing.

When the Bay Guardian asked Kinder Morgan for a comment on the matter, spokesperson Richard Wheatley responded, “You’re not going to get one. We’re not going to comment on it.” Asked for a comment on the lawsuit, Wheatley said, “We’re not going to comment ahead of that hearing. And we’re not going to comment on the protesters.”

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Crude By Rail, Federal Regulation (U.S.), State regulation

Examiner Op Ed: Our fight to stop the bomb trains traveling through our backyards

Repost from The San Francisco Examiner

Our fight to stop the bomb trains traveling through our backyards

By Suma Peesapati, August 28, 2014
Casselton, N.D.
Bruce Crummy/2013 AP file photo | An oil train derailed on Dec. 30 in Casselton, N.D. It was one of a handful of recent incidents of rail cars carrying crude oil exploding and going up in flames.

“This issue needs to be acted on very quickly. There is a very high risk here that hasn’t been addressed. We don’t need a higher body count before they move forward.”

It was a mark-my-words moment from National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman at her farewell appearance before stepping down from the position in April.

She was speaking about the explosive growth of the use of unsafe tanker cars to haul crude oil extracted from the Bakken reserve in North Dakota and Montana to refineries across our nation. When involved in derailments, many of these cars carrying the highly volatile fossil fuel are vulnerable to puncture and explosion upon impact. They were the cars that were involved in explosions in Aliceville, Alaska, in November, Casselton, N.D., a month later and, of course, last summer’s horrific reckoning in Lac Megantic, Quebec.

Not two weeks after Hersman made her remarks, a train carrying Bakken crude derailed in Lynchburg, Va., igniting a roaring blaze and prompting the evacuation of the entire downtown. The tankers involved, however, weren’t the cars that the former chairwoman was warning about. They were a tougher, supposedly safer car tank car that the rail and oil industry is slowly moving toward adopting. It begs the question, though, are these newer cars going to be safe enough?

This question recently hit home when a local news station exposed a clandestine crude by rail-loading operation in Richmond, here in the Bay Area, that had been flying under the radar for months. After making a backroom deal with the local air district, Kinder Morgan secured approval to introduce this highly explosive fracked crude through urban Bay Area neighborhoods without any public notice or environmental review.

Within two weeks after the story broke, Earthjustice sued the air district and Kinder Morgan, demanding a full public airing of the project’s risks to public health and safety. A hearing on the merits of this case is scheduled for Sept. 5 in San Francisco Superior Court. While we await our day in court, Kinder Morgan is unloading its crude just a half-mile from Washington Elementary School, in a low-income community of color that the air district recognizes as already overburdened by the very same carcinogenic toxic air contaminants released by handling Bakken crude.

Piling on to this environmental injustice, this crude is being loaded onto tanker trucks that are not certified by California. Those trucks then travel on Bay Area roadways until this dangerous commodity reaches its ultimate destination — the Tesoro refinery in Martinez.

Tesoro Martinez is also accepting Bakken crude from similar rail-to-truck crude transfer operations in Sacramento, thereby compounding the risk of accident. With some of the most treacherous mountain passes in the country, and a dilapidated railway system that was never designed or upgraded to transport such dangerous cargo, these trains are ticking time bombs.

The anemic response from state and federal regulators has been disappointing. Fortunately, our state and federal environmental laws gives private citizens a voice demand more than “business as usual.”

Suma Peesapati is an attorney for San Francisco-based Earthjustice.
Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Explosion, Fire

Environmental groups to DOT: Ban Older Railcars for Bakken Oil

Repost from EarthJustice.org

Community Leaders, Advocates Call on Secretary of Transportation To Ban Use of Hazardous Rail Cars

Seek emergency order banning the use of hazardous rail cars to ship explosive crude oil

July 15, 2014
Crude-by-rail explosion
The fireball that followed the derailment and explosion of two trains, one carrying Bakken crude oil, on December 30, 2013, outside Casselton, N.D. — U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

Washington, D.C. — Today, two national environmental organizations filed a formal legal petition to compel the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation to issue an emergency order prohibiting the use of hazardous rail cars—known as DOT-111s—for shipping flammable Bakken crude oil (See FAQ sheet for more info on petition). The National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly found that the DOT-111 tank cars are prone to puncture on impact, spilling oil and often triggering destructive fires and explosions. The Safety Board has made official recommendations to stop shipping crude oil in these hazardous tank cars, but the federal regulators have not heeded these pleas (See quote sheet of on-record statements by public officials for more info).

“These oil tankers have been called the Ford Pinto of the rails,” said Ben Stuckart, City Council president in Spokane, Washington. “National Transportation Board members, U.S. Senators, and local officials are all on record on the danger of these antiquated, unsafe rail cars. It’s long past time for the government to take action to protect communities like mine.” Officials estimate between 13 and 16 oil trains a week come through Spokane, a major hub for rail traffic, although those numbers would skyrocket if planned oil terminals on the West Coast are built. Spokane is one of many towns across the country that has seen an organized and strong community opposition to these trains.

In September 2013, in the wake of the deadly Lac-Mégantic and other rail disasters, the federal government began a rulemaking process to set new safety standards for crude oil rail cars. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has stated publicly that the DOT-111s will likely have to be phased out, and even questioned whether the industry’s replacement design is safe enough for U.S. communities. The draft rule is currently under review at the White House. But the groups believe that the process is moving too slowly and likely to drag on a year or more before a final rule is in place. While he has issued emergency orders addressing other urgent safety issues, all the Department has done to date is urge shippers to use the safest tank cars in their fleets. Immediately banning the use of DOT-111 tank cars to ship Bakken crude would reduce the risk of punctures and oil spills by over 75 percent, according to rail industry estimates.

“The continued use of potentially unsafe DOT-111 train cars is a disaster waiting to happen. The people of Albany County are standing up today to ask the federal government take swift action to improve rail safety,” said Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy. “In light of recent incidents in North America, a strong response from the federal government is needed to protect the public.” Trains carrying Bakken crude oil arrive daily into the Port of Albany, like many other towns across the country. Firefighters and first responders have hurried to train for impending disasters and increased risk.

“These exploding oil trains are in our backyards, where our kids play,” said Charlene Benton, president of the Ezra Prentice Homes Tenants Association in Albany, NY. “We’re putting our children’s and our neighbors’ lives in jeopardy here. Over the last three years, we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of these dangerous oil trains coming through our community. Our community has organized against these oil trains because we don’t want to be the site of another catastrophic disaster. We need a national emergency ban of these oil rail cars.”

The recent surge in U.S. oil production, much of it from Bakken shale, has led to a more than 4,000 percent increase in crude oil shipped by rail since 2005, mostly in long oil trains with as many as 120 cars and over 1.5 miles long. The Bakken crude has proven to be more explosive than shippers represented. And the Bakken crude has been shipped in the most dangerous tank cars on the market – the DOT-111s. The result has been oil spills, destructive fires, and explosions when oil trains have derailed. More oil spilled in train accidents in 2013 than the total in 1975-2012 combined. Canada has taken steps to ban many DOT-111s immediately and is phasing them out of hazardous transport altogether, which will shift even more of these tank cars to the U.S.

The petition follows closely on the announcement that the oil and rail industries have reached their own compromise proposal on rail safety, one that would only seek to slowly phase out dangerous DOT-111s over three years, and that would propose a weaker standard for new rail cars than the industry had previously proposed.

Meanwhile, it is estimated that 25 million Americans live in the dangerous blast zone along the nation’s rail lines. View this MAP of the nation’s rail lines and local actions against oil-by-rail or this MAP that shows your proximity to an oil rail line.

The petitioners are Sierra Club and ForestEthics, represented by Earthjustice.