Tag Archives: explosion

Bakken Crude, Derailment, Explosion, Keystone XL, Rail accidents, Rail Safety, Rail vs. Pipeline, US Dept of Energy

Government numbers on crude-oil train safety don’t add up

Repost from The Sacramento Bee

Government numbers on crude-oil train safety don’t add up

By Curtis Tate McClatchy Newspapers  |  Monday, Jun. 16, 2014
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A train carrying tanker cars filled with crude oil passes through St. Paul, Minnesota, on February 27, 2013. The crude oil is loaded in at terminals in North Dakota and Canada and taken to refineries in the east. Jim Gehrz / Minneapolis Star Tribune/MCT

WASHINGTON — The State Department projects 28 more fatalities and 189 more injuries a year if crude oil moves by rail instead of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

Sounds bad, but is it true?

The railroad industry and its Washington regulators boast that more than 99.99 percent of hazardous materials rail shipments reach their destinations safely.

Sounds good, but is it good enough?

The debate over moving the nation’s surging oil production by rail has generated a heated debate, and some impressive-sounding numbers that both sides have used to bolster their cases.

On closer scrutiny, however, some of those numbers don’t add up.

Earlier this month, the State Department increased its earlier projections of injuries and fatalities if Keystone XL’s 830,000 barrels a day were to move by rail. Major media organizations and pipeline supporters framed the new numbers as a downside to not building the controversial project.

But the department’s detailed explanation for its revisions shows why the numbers don’t really reveal anything about the risks of transporting crude oil by rail.

In its January Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline, the department calculated the rail impacts of the no-build scenario based on a decade of Federal Railroad Administration accident statistics. The analysis used the annual rate of injuries and fatalities per million ton-miles, a common measure of rail traffic, from 2002 to 2012.

An error report published June 6 said the original analysis underreported the potential injuries and fatalities “due to an error in search parameters used.” However, the report’s authors concede that their calculations don’t actually measure the risk of shipping crude oil. Large volumes of crude oil weren’t shipped by rail until 2011.

The 10-year injury and fatality rates were instead derived from accidents that involved trains carrying every type of cargo that moves by rail, from coal and grain to french fries and auto parts.

“Because the dataset does not distinguish petroleum or crude oil rail transportation from that of other cargo,” the department wrote, “these incident rates are not directly correlated to the type of product/commodity being transported.”

The State Department’s analysis does measure potential injuries and fatalities if more trains are put on the tracks. But that isn’t terribly useful, either, because while crude oil shipments have surged, other commodities have declined.

Changes in the economy and environmental rules mean there are considerably fewer trains of coal, long the industry’s mainstay. According to the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s leading advocacy group, railroads moved 13,000 fewer trainloads of coal in 2012 than they did in 2008.

Moving oil by rail instead of Keystone XL would add about 4,380 trains a year, only a third of the lost coal traffic.

Fred W. Frailey, a journalist who’s covered railroads for decades and is widely regarded as the dean of writers on that subject, questioned the State Department’s analysis.

“It strikes me as totally meaningless,” he said. “It doesn’t speak at all to the danger of hauling oil.”

A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment about the report.

As several derailments involving crude oil trains made headlines in the past year, the industry has repeatedly defended its safety record. But what’s on the other side of that 99.99 percent?

According to industry figures, railroads moved 400,000 carloads of crude oil in 2013, up from fewer than 10,000 five years earlier. With each tank car carrying 30,000 gallons, that’s about 12 billion gallons last year.

A McClatchy analysis of oil spill data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in January showed that about 1.2 million gallons of crude oil spilled from trains in 2013 _ more than the previous 38 years combined.

If only 1.2 million of the 12 billion gallons spilled, that’s a safety record of 99.99 percent.

The country experienced two major crude-oil derailments last year. A derailment near Aliceville, Ala., in November released 748,000 gallons into a wetland. Another just after Christmas spilled 475,000 gallons near Casselton, N.D.

But the total excludes spills outside U.S. borders, even if the cargo originated domestically. More than 1.5 million gallons of North Dakota crude oil spilled in last July’s catastrophic and deadly derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The fiery accident killed 47 people and leveled much of the center of the lakeside resort town.

At the end of a two-day National Transportation Safety Board rail-safety forum in April, board member Robert Sumwalt, who spent 24 years in aviation, told the rail industry that its much-touted safety record was nothing to brag about.

“You’re in a business where that’s not good enough,” Sumwalt said.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/06/16/6487565/government-numbers-on-crude-oil.html#storylink

 

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232 standard, DEIR, DOT-111, Valero Crude By Rail

Benicia Herald – Significant impact to air quality from crude by rail

Repost from The Benicia Herald

‘Significant’ impact to air quality from crude by rail

Long-awaited environmental report addresses, dismisses some concerns over Valero proposal, but says effect on area air would be ‘unavoidable’
June 18, 2014 by Donna Beth Weilenman

After months of investigation and more than one delay, Benicia released the draft of an environmental report on the Valero Crude-by-Rail Project on Tuesday.

The city chose to have the report drafted to meet requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act after Valero Benicia Refinery sought a permit last year to add more Union Pacific Railroad track onto its property so it could bring in North American crude oil by rail car.

The report “discloses to the public and the city’s decision-makers the environmental consequences” of Valero’s proposed project, citing minimal impacts in several areas but “significant and unavoidable” impacts on air quality.

In addition to the project as proposed by Valero, the draft report (DEIR), written by San Francisco-based firm ESA, examined four alternatives, ranging from not doing the project at all to modified versions, including one that proposes cutting the rail delivery of crude oil to the refinery in half.

“The main issue to be resolved in the EIR is which among the alternatives would meet most of the basic project objectives with the least environmental impact,” the report said. “Balancing sometimes competing environmental values can be challenging because it rests on assumptions of relative value,” the report said, explaining that city officials who will be deciding whether to adopt the final environmental report and issue a use permit may have to balance the relative value of those environmental resources.

In doing so, they may resolve the issues that have been examined in the report and reach different conclusions than those reached by ESA.

The DEIR examined and assessed the direct, indirect and cumulative environmental impacts of the construction, operation and maintenance of the project. The analyses are based on information submitted by Valero in its application for the use permit; the consultants made no recommendation how the matter should be decided.

The report analyzed in detail the project’s impact on air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, energy conservation, geology and soils, greenhouse gas emissions, hazards and hazardous materials, hydrology and water quality, land use and planning, noise and transportation and traffic.

The consultants determined that in 10 of those 11 areas, the project could result in no or less-than-significant impacts. But the project would have “significant and unavoidable” impacts to air quality, particularly outside the Bay Area.

The project

The Crude-by-Rail Project as proposed by Valero would provide an alternate means of delivering crude oil to the refinery. Up to 70,000 barrels of day of North American-sourced crude oil would arrive daily by rail, replacing marine vessel delivery of the same amount.

The report noted ways the project could be put in place while reducing its environmental impacts through mitigation methods. It said the project would not change existing refinery operations, and said the plant would continue to meet requirements of existing rules and regulations governing oil refining, including the state of California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

The project wouldn’t increase the amount of oil the refinery receives, nor allow the refinery to produce more than the limits it already has on its output, the report said. But it does change how the refinery would get its raw materials.

Assuming that the average ship holds 350,000 barrels, the project would displace as many as 73 ship deliveries a year, the report said. It could displace the total quantity of crude oil delivered by marine vessel to the refinery by as much as 25,550,000 barrels in a 365-day year.

Based on the deliveries from Dec. 10, 2009 to Dec. 9, 2012, annual marine vessel deliveries would be reduced by as much as 82 percent, the report said.

The refinery has a dock between the Benicia-Martinez Bridge and the Port of Benicia wharf. The refinery’s marine terminal currently receives and ships bulk cargo by marine vessel.

But it already has some existing Union Pacific Railroad rail tracks that provide access to the refinery and the Benicia Industrial Park. The refinery already uses tank cars to receive chemicals used in refining and to ship refined products out, the report said.

The project would install a new tank car unloading rack capable of unloading two parallel rows of tank cars, one on each side, and transferring that crude oil to the refinery.

This would be on the northeastern part of the main refinery property, between the eastern side of the lower tank farm and the fence adjacent to Sulphur Springs Creek.

The new tank car unloading facilities would include a liquid spill containment sump with the capacity to contain the contents of at least one tank car. In addition, the existing liquid spill containment for tanks abutting the tank car unloading facilities would be modified to allow installation of the unloading facilities.

Part of the existing containment berm for the tank field would be removed and a new concrete berm would be built about 12 feet west of the existing earthen berm, the report describes.

The project would install about 8,880 track feet of new track on refinery property — three new track turnouts and one crossover — and would realign about 3,560 track feet on refinery property. New rail spurs and parallel storage and a departure spur would be built between the east side of the lower tank farm and the west side of the fence along Sulphur Springs Creek.

Also part of the project are crude oil offloading pumps and pipeline, and associated infrastructure, spill containment structures, a firewater pipeline, groundwater wells and a service road. It also would include the construction of 4,000 feet of 16-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline.

Should the project be approved, construction is expected to take 25 weeks, involving about 121 construction employees working daily until the project is finished. Afterward, it would provide jobs for 20 more employees or contractors, the report said.

If built, the refinery would be able to accept up to 100 tank cars of crude oil a day in two 50-car trains entering refinery property on an existing rail spur that crosses Park Road. The crude would be pumped to existing oil storage tanks by a new offloading pipeline that would be connected to existing piping within the property.

“Valero would ask UPRR to schedule Valero’s trains so that none of them cross(es) Park Road during the commute hours of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.,” the report said.

Valero would operate the project components 24 hours a day, seven days a week and every day of the year.

The North America-sourced crude would arrive in Benicia through Roseville, where cars would be assembled into a train specifically for shipment to the refinery. Valero would own or lease the tank cars (a common practice), and Union Pacific would own the locomotives that pull the train.

Existing rules

Under regulations adopted by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), crude oil shipped by rail must be shipped in tank cars built to the DOT-111 specification.

But in 2011, the Association of American Railroads voluntarily imposed more stringent standards on the design of the DOT-111 tank cars, and the sturdier tank cars are numbered 1232.

DOT-111 cars ordered after Oct. 1, 2011 are supposed to meet the new standards; the older ones that aren’t as strong are called “legacy” DOT-111 tank cars.

“Valero has committed that, when the PHMSA regulations call for use of a DOT-111 car, Valero would use 1232 tank cars instead of one of the ‘legacy’ cars,” the report said.

Alternatives

The report looked at alternatives to the project as the refinery described what it wanted to do in its application. Those include a “no project alternative,” wich “would result in higher emissions of criteria pollutants and greenhouse gases within California.

“Global greenhouse gas emissions would be higher with the no project alternative,” the report said. “Valero would not be able to achieve most of its project objectives.”

The DEIR covered two other alternatives. One would limit cars to a single 50-car train delivery a day, and the other proposed two 50-car trains arriving at night.

While the first alternative would reduce the amount of emissions coming from trains, it also would mean that Valero would be unable to reduce as much emissions that come from tanker ships making deliveries.

However, it might reduce impacts to local traffic at Park Road during peak traffic times, the report said.

Union Pacific has taken the stand that limits on volume of product shipped or frequency, route or configuration of the shipments would be preempted under federal law. “Thus, Alternative 1 may be legally infeasible,” the report said.

A second “reduced project” alternative would require trains crossing Park Road to do so only between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The report found the noise generated at night would be “less than significant,” but noted that having all the trains arrive and depart at night might be noisier than the way the project originally is proposed.

Another alternative would have the receiving terminal accepting the train’s oil to be built offsite, and would involve a third party. The oil would be transferred either by tanker ship or a new pipeline. This would cause greater impacts than the original proposal, the report said.

The original project “is environmentally superior” to the alternative that would cut deliveries in half, a version that probably would be declared illegal anyway, the report said. In addition, that alternative “involves 50 percent more emissions of those same pollutants from marine vessels.”

The report looked at eight areas of concern noted during extensive public comment, particularly during the coping phase of the environmental report Aug. 9 to Sept. 13, 2013.

Those involved the properties and parameters of crude oil to be transported and refined; the relationship of the project to the Valero Improvement Project; effects of train operations on local and interstate traffic; effects of construction, operation and transportation on air quality; how the project would affect plant and animal ecology at Sulphur Sprints Creek and Suisun Marsh; what hazardous materials would be released during an accident, and how such accidents would be handled; and the range of potential effects from the time crude is extracted until it’s delivered in Benicia.

“Where significant impacts are identified, feasible mitigation measures are proposed that would reduce each of these potential impacts to a less-than-significant level,” the report said.

What isn’t included

Based on the results of the initial studies made before the city chose to have the EIR drafted, the report doesn’t examine the project’s relationship to agriculture, forests, minerals, aesthetics, population and housing, public services, recreation, utilities and service systems, which the project either wouldn’t affect or have less than significant impact.

The EIR also doesn’t include seven items Valero considers confidential business information.

Under CEQA, a lead agency — in this case, the city of Benicia — may require an applicant to submit data necessary to making a decision on the project, but if the information is considered “trade secrets” as defined by government code, the information isn’t included in an EIR.

Those topics are the specific North American crudes Valero plans to buy, publicly defined as “light, sweet” crude; the weight, sulfur content, vapor pressure and acidity of specific crude blends processed at the refinery; data bought by Valero that shows those properties of various crudes; detailed information about the crude blends suitable for the Benicia refinery based on its unique configuration; and detailed daily measurements of weight and sulfur content of crude blends processed at the local refinery in the past.

The city agreed to keep that information confidential because of its “competitive value,” or because disclosure could allow other refiners to claim violation of antitrust laws.

However, the document noted that based on the refinery’s operation, the optimum range of weight and sulfur for crude blends is narrow, between 24 and 29 degrees American Petroleum Institute gravity, with a sulfur content ranging from .08 percent to 1.6 percent.

The report noted that light, sweet crude is available from Canada, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, Utah and New Mexico. Light, medium and heavy sour crude comes from Canada.

Valero today

Valero Benicia Refinery produces 10 percent of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) gasoline used in California, and 25 percent of the CARB gasoline used in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it also produces jet fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, heating oil, fuel oil, asphalt, petroleum coke and sulfur.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District permits Valero to process up to 180,000 barrels of crude oil a day, though it averages 165,000 barrels daily.

It exports petroleum coke and liquid petroleum gas, and already uses rail cars to move products off refinery property to the AMPORTS Benicia Terminal.

Materials then are stored in silos until they’re loaded onto marine vessels.

Refinery emissions

The report said substituting rail cars for maritime crude delivery of the crude would eliminate 11,707 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from ships every three years.

The 6,726 metric tons of carbon dioxide released in a year in association with the project is below the annual “conservative significance threshold” of 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide, it said.

The report said that delivery of crude oil by large line haul tank cars would reduce overall emissions outside California when compared to delivery of crude oil by ships.

According to the report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and a variety of other pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and acid rain, as “criteria pollutants” because standards have been established to meet public health and welfare criteria.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), which has a monitoring station on Tuolumne Street in Vallejo, records those pollutants and notes the meteorological conditions that can affect air quality.

The report said that station is close enough to Benicia to have similar background pollutant concentrations, an assumption confirmed by an air monitoring study conducted 2007-08 just west of the refinery.

The report looked past the Bay Area district to a lesser degree to the Sacramento Basin, Yolo-Solano, Sacramento Metropolitan and Placer County air management or pollution control districts to determine the long-term operational impact of the project. However, those impacts “are indirect and difficult to predict, given the speculative nature of the exact rail routes that would be used.”

However, the report said the project wouldn’t conflict with or obstruct implementation of any applicable air quality plan.

The report noted that the refinery is in an industrial district and owns 470 acres of mostly undeveloped property that buffers two sides of the refinery campus. It has general industrial use neighbors on its other two sides.

Past Valero’s buffers are residential neighborhoods, and the closest homes to the project would be in neighborhoods no closer than 2,100 feet northwest of the northernmost part of the new unloading racks.

The report, which used three-year averages from December 2009 to November 2012 for its calculations, said emissions from the refinery wouldn’t increase as a result of the project.

During public review, the report said, “some commenters opined that the project would result in emissions increases from existing, permitted refinery equipment. This is not the case.”

In fact, the report said, “Taking into account the increase in locomotive emissions and the reduction in maritime emissions, the net effect of the project would be to reduce air emissions within the Bay Area Basin.”

The report found the project complies with the BAAQMD Bay Area 2010 Clean Air Plan (2010 CAP).

While the new unloading rack and piping could generate 1.88 tons annually in fugitive reactive organic gas (ROG) emissions, the project’s only direct operational air quality emissions, it said that would be more than offset by reduction in maritime ROG emissions once the project becomes operational.

“The project would not have any other direct operational impacts on air quality,” the report said. There would be no changes in the refinery’s operations, nor increased emissions from processing because of the refinery’s narrow range of weight and sulfur content of the crude it processes, it said. Nor would storage tanks contribute to any emissions.

Even the construction segment, which had potential to interfere somewhat with Bay Area air quality, could be mitigated with the air district’s basic control measures, the report said.

Locomotive emissions

However, long-term emissions from locomotives could contribute to air quality violations in the Sacramento Basin, because reduction of maritime emissions wouldn’t be available to provide compensation, the report said.

Again, since locomotive emissions are regulated at the federal level, Benicia can’t impose any emission controls on tanker car locomotives. “The impact would be significant and unavoidable,” the report said, with no available mitigation.

The report noted that even if railroad-caused emissions increase in North America as crude travels to Benicia, maritime emissions from ships traveling from Alaska, South America, the Middle East and other parts of the world would decrease. However, “These emissions can be described only in general terms because it is impossible to identify and quantify emissions across the vast range of possible routes,” the report said.

Protecting the area

Any impacts on the surrounding environmentally sensitive areas and such inhabitants as nesting birds and threatened or endangered species could be prevented through mitigation measures such as buffers, storm water pollution prevention, care about light placement and other measures, the report noted.

Inhabitants of the federally protected Suisun Marsh already are acclimated to the sounds of rail traffic, it said, and while additional rail traffic may briefly disturb them they also would become used to the sounds.

If any of the 730 trains traveling through the marsh annually caused an oil spill in the vulnerable marsh, the report said that could be “a significant impact,” especially on special-status species.
However, the report said, the risk of releasing greater than 100 gallons along the route “is very low … an estimated frequency of once per 262 years.”

The Federal Railroad Administration requires railroads to meet or exceed national safety standards, including those dealing with earthquakes, and the California Building Code also would come into play, the report said.

The report didn’t examine hazards associated with transporting flammable liquids beyond Roseville, because it called those impacts “speculative.”

Instead, it focused on homes and businesses near the refinery’s rail unloading area, those along the transportation route and around the environmentally sensitive Suisun Marsh from Roseville to Benicia.

Federal and state regulations require annual reports of hazardous chemical inventories, and Solano County companies such as the refinery must comply with local and county regulations as well, the report noted.

Recent accidents, and planned responses

In response to several rail accidents involving crude oil and ethanol, federal regulatory agencies and the Association of Railroads (AAR), an industry trade group, have collaborated to reduce risks.
It took the NTSB until 2012 to note that the DOT-111 tank cars were inadequate, and the board’s report said the track structure was washed out by a flash flood. The board began urging PHMSA to adopt stricter specifications for tank cars that carry ethanol or crude oil.

Instead of waiting for PHMSA to act, the DEIR said, AAR voluntarily imposed more stringent standards for the tank cars, requiring thicker tank shells and heads; higher tensile strength; normalized steel to reduce damage to cars during an accident; protective steel head shields at both ends of the cars; consolidated top fittings beneath a “robust” steel protective housing; and a re-closing pressure relief device to reduce the likelihood of over-pressure if the car is involved in an accident or pool fire.

The report also addressed the fatal derailment near Quebec, Canada that occurred last year.

A train carrying Bakken field crude oil that derailed in Lac-Megantic, Canada, July 6, 2013 was using 72 of the DOT-111 “legacy” cars. In addition, the engineer and crew left the lead locomotive engine idling while the train was unattended.

Someone reported a fire on the locomotive, which was tended by emergency responders.

Left unattended again, the train began to move, gather speed and traveled 7.4 miles out of control down a grade until it derailed at 60 to 70 mph, spilling 1.5 million gallons of crude oil, which ignited and killed 47 people, destroyed 30 buildings and forced 2,000 people to evacuate.

Legacy tank cars filled with sweet Bakken crude were part of a Nov. 8, 2013, derailment in Aliceville, Ala.; in the April 30, 2014 derailment in Lynchburg, Va., the DEIR noted that some of the cars were legacy DOT-111s, and the others were 1232 tank cars.

The accidents “raise the concern that a release of Bakken crude is more likely to result in a fire or explosion because of its low flash point,” the report said. The Bakken oil field is one available source of North American crude Valero may purchase, and “it is important to consider these incidents,” the report said.

The report said the FRA has responded to these accidents by issuing an order Aug. 2, 2013, to increase requirements before trains are left unattended. With PHMSA, FRA issued an advisory that same day about increased safety procedures. Since then, those DOT departments have issued additional safety requirements, some at the prompting or cooperation with AAR.

The report also described regulations governing accidental release prevention, storage of flammable liquid and compressed gas, worker safety and emergency response.

In Solano County, it noted, the emergency safety plan is administered by the California Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates the response of multiple agencies. In addition, Union Pacific has its own hazardous materials (Hazmat) response team in addition to a mandated emergency response plan.

If a train were to derail between Roseville and Benicia, consequences could be minor in the case of a small spill, to “significant” if the spill were great or ignited, particularly in a residential or commercial area, the report said.

Benicia hired Dr. Christopher Barkan to conduct a quantitative assessment about the probability of accidental release of crude oil from a Valero-bound train. The professor and executive director of the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provided an appendix to the report that noted the expected occurrence of a crude oil train release incident exceeding 100 gallons is about .009 a year, or once in 111 years.

The DEIR called Barkan’s figures conservative, saying “they probably overstate the actual risk,” and said a motor vehicle accident between the two cities was 22 times higher than the risk of a Valero train oil release.

Valero’s own emergency response procedures already are on file in its emergency procedures manual, which has been included in the report. The refinery has its own fire department, and has agreements with Benicia and its fire department, the report noted.

In case of an accidental spill or release of oil outside the refinery, its incident command system would be activated, in cooperation with such other agencies as the U.S. Coast Guard, California Office of Spill Prevention and Response, U.S. EPA, Solano County Department of Environmental Management and other emergency responders.

Because of this, the report said, no other mitigation is needed.

Comments and concerns

The Planning Commission accepted additional public comment July 11. Based on those comments, the city sent notice Aug. 9, 2013, that it would seek an EIR instead, and accepted public comments for 30 days about the scope of the report.

The Planning Commission met Sept. 12, 2013 to hear public comment on the EIR scope to assure that areas that concern residents would be covered. Written comments were accepted through Sept. 13, 2013. During that time 18 people submitted written documents and eight oral comments were received, the report said. More comments were submitted after the deadline.

The bulk of those comments aired concerns about the geographic area and potential indirect impacts of the project; the source of the crude feedstock; potential changes in the quality of that feedstock and how that would affect refinery operations and emissions; the relationship between this project and the Valero Improvement Project; the operational safety of railroads and trains hauling hazardous materials, including tank car specifications; and the cumulative effects of this project and similar ones planned elsewhere in California.

The Valero Improvement Project (VIP), the bulk of which was finished in 2011, allows the refinery to process heavier, sourer crude — up to 60 percent, compared to the 30 percent maximum before the VIP project was undertaken. The project also let the refinery reduce the use of gas oil as feedstock and increase maximum crude oil throughout, the DEIR said.

The refinery has permits through December to build a hydrogen plant associated with the VIP plans, but company officials told the DEIR consultants that the plant has enough hydrogen to meet the refinery’s needs.

Next steps

The Valero Benicia Crude By Rail Project Draft Environmental Impact Report is available to the public on the city’s website by clicking here.

The public currently has 45 days to review and comment on the project, though the Planning Commission may decide to extend that period, since the group Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, organized to block the project, has asked for a 90-day review period.

Comments also may be made before the Planning Commission July 12 in a hearing at which no vote is scheduled to be taken.

After comments are received, the draft will be modified to address those concerns, and will be sent to the city as a final document to be circulated. If the final EIR is approved, Valero will receive its city permit to proceed, though the refinery must obtain permits from other agencies before construction would begin.

The project requires an approved Authority to Construct from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, but doesn’t affect the refinery’s operating permit or its emissions limit.

Those interested may request a copy on CD by calling the Community Development Department, 707-746-4280. Print copies are available at the department at City Hall, 250 East L St., and the Benicia Public Library, 250 East L St.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DEIR, Fire, Hazmat notification, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil spill, Rail routing, Train speed, Valero Benicia Refinery

Sacramento Bee – Report minimizes risk from oil trains through Roseville, Sacramento

Repost from The Sacramento Bee

Report minimizes risk from oil trains through Roseville, Sacramento

By Tony Bizjak and Curtis Tate The Sacramento Bee   |  Jun. 17, 2014
A crude oil train operated by BNSF travels just outside the Feather River Canyon in the foothills into the Sacramento Valley. Jake Miille / Special to The Bee

A much-anticipated report released Tuesday offered new details and some controversial safety conclusions about a Bay Area oil company’s plan to run crude-oil trains daily through Roseville and Sacramento to Benicia.

Valero Refining Co., which operates a sweeping plant on a hillside overlooking Suisun Bay, plans to transport crude oil from undisclosed North American oil fields on two 50-car trains every 24 hours through the Sacramento region to the Benicia site. One would run at night and the other in the middle of the day to minimize conflicts with Capitol Corridor passenger trains, which share the same line.

If the project is approved, Valero would begin shipments later this year or early next year. The trains would cut through downtown Roseville, Sacramento and Davis, and pass within a quarter-mile of 27 schools, 11 of them in Sacramento, according to the draft environmental impact report, which was commissioned by the city of Benicia, lead agency on the project.

In findings that already are provoking debate, authors of the draft report concluded that the shipments would not constitute a significant safety risk for communities along the rail route because those trains are very unlikely to crash or spill their oil.

“Although the consequences of a release are potentially severe, the likelihood of such a release is very low,” wrote the report’s author, Environmental Science Associates of San Francisco. The report notes that safety steps by federal officials and railroad associations, such as slower train speeds through some urban areas and more track inspections, already are reducing the chance of crashes.

A spill risk assessment included in the report calculates the probability of a spill of 100 gallons or more in the 69 miles between Roseville and Benicia as occurring only once every 111 years. The key report section regarding impact on up-rail cities, including Sacramento, Davis, West Sacramento and Roseville, concludes: “Mitigation: None required.”

Several local Sacramento leaders on Tuesday said they had not yet read the Benicia report, which runs hundreds of pages, but that they weren’t soothed by a declaration that oil spills are unlikely.

Mike Webb, director of community development and sustainability in Davis, said the assessment misses a frightening reality for people living along the rail line: “It only needs to happen once to be a real problem.”

Across North America, six major crude-oil train crashes in the last year resulted in 2.8 million gallons of oil spilled, some of it causing explosions and forcing evacuations. The worst of those occurred last July in Lac-Megantic, Canada, where a runaway Bakken train crashed, spilling 1.6 million gallons of crude and fueling an explosion that killed 47 people and leveled part of that city’s downtown.

State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, introduced a bill last week to charge the oil industry a rail-related fee to pay for safety measures. In an interview earlier this week, he said he believes “it is not a matter of will (a spill) happen, it’s when. We have to be prepared.”

The debate over the Valero project is part of a growing discussion nationally about crude oil safety, prompted by increased pumping in recent years of less-expensive crude oil from Canada and the Bakken fields of North Dakota.

The surge in extracting North American oil is enabling some companies, such as Valero, to reduce reliance on overseas shipments of foreign oil. At the same time, it has caused a dramatic increase in the number of trains crisscrossing the country, pulling 100 cars or more of flammable crude through downtowns, with almost no notice to the public and minimal warning to local fire departments.

The debate was heightened by a federal warning earlier this year that Bakken crude may be more volatile than other crudes, and by federal concerns that the fleet of train tanker cars in use nationally is inadequate to safely transport crude oils. Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration issued a report saying California is behind in taking steps to protect cities and habitat from potential oil spills given the increase in crude oil shipments.

The draft environmental impact report released Tuesday does not state whether Valero will be transporting Bakken crude to Benicia. Valero has declined to disclose publicly exactly which crude oils it will ship. But the report lists Bakken as one of the lighter crudes Valero could ship.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering amending tank car design standards in light of concerns raised by recent fiery spills. Valero officials say they already have purchased some tank cars that have more safety features than most rail cars in use nationally. Valero spokesman Chris Howe said his company would expect to phase in retrofits of those cars, depending on what the federal government ultimately requires.

In California, the Valero crude-by-rail project is one of a handful planned by refineries. Another by Phillips 66 in Santa Maria likely will involve crude oil shipments through Sacramento. Several Kern County refineries also are adjusting or planning to retrofit their sites to receive crude shipments by rail. Trains last year began delivering crude oil to a transfer station at McClellan Park in Sacramento.

Rail companies are insisting that details of those shipments not be disclosed to the public, saying they are worried about security issues and don’t want to divulge “trade secrets” to competitors.

Local officials, including fire chiefs, recently have said they want to know more about the Valero project in particular. The Davis City Council has passed a resolution saying it does not want the shipments to come through the existing UP line in downtown.

Sacramento Rep. Doris Matsui, responding to questions by email Tuesday, expressed concern as well. “As the number of cars coming through Sacramento increases, it is clear that our risk also increases,” she wrote.

Webb, the Davis community development director, said representatives from Sacramento area cities will meet in two weeks to discuss the Benicia environmental report. Several local officials have said they would like Valero and UP to work with them on safety measures, including more communication about train movements and hazardous materials training.

The Benicia report declines to specify the routes trains may take to get from oil fields to Roseville, saying that any potential routes beyond Roseville are speculative. The most likely routes, according to people knowledgeable about rail movements, are through the Sacramento Valley via Dunsmuir and Redding, as well as over Donner Summit or through the Feather River Canyon.

The conclusion that an oil spill between Roseville and Benicia is a once-in-111-years event was made by Christopher Barkan, an expert on hazardous rail transport at the University of Illinois who did a risk assessment attached to the draft environmental impact report. Barkan previously worked for the American Association of Railroads, the industry’s leading advocacy group in Washington, and does research supported by the railroad association, according to his institute’s website.

Barkan, in an email, said his work for Benicia was not influenced by his relationships with the railroad association.

“The AAR had nothing to do with this project,” he wrote. “Whenever I am approached about conducting projects such as this, I discuss any potential conflicts of interest with other sponsors, as I did in this case, and it was mutually agreed that there was none … My role is to apply the best data and analytical methods possible to assess risk, irrespective of the sponsor.”

Benicia city officials did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The draft EIR will be circulated for public comment this summer. Those comments will be incorporated into a final environmental document, to be voted on by the Benicia City Council. The council has the authority to approve changes at Valero’s plant to allow the oil company to begin rail shipments.

Howe, the Valero spokesman, complimented the city of Benicia on “the thoroughness and detail” of the report.

“We are reviewing the material published today and will be developing comments as part of the process. We look forward to working with the community and the city of Benicia toward completion of this important project.”

Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Environmental Impacts, Explosion, Lac-Mégantic, Light sweet crude, Oil spill

Lac-Mégantic: How to get rid of a town’s oil stain

Repost from The Toronto Star
[Editor: Firefighters and emergency first responders should all read this, a detailed recounting of efforts to contain the oil and clean the land following the disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.  First published in December, 2013, this is still an important read for all who would understand the decisions made and lessons learned by first responders following a massive clean-up effort.  – RS]

Lac-Mégantic: How to get rid of a town’s oil stain

Six million litres of light crude spilled over, under and through Lac-Mégantic. Quick thinking and heroic efforts by a team of environmental experts and others kept things from getting a whole lot worse. Now they’re trying to make downtown habitable again.
By: Wendy Gillis News reporter, Published on Sat Dec 14 2013
Note: This story has been nominated for a National Newspaper Award .

LAC-MÉGANTIC, QUE.—Sherbrooke fire chief Gaétan Drouin stood on the bridge spanning the Chaudière River, the winding tributary that divides Lac-Mégantic . The town burned violently before him. Noxious smoke, thick and pungent, filled the air. Even stronger was the faintly sweet smell of light crude.

His flashlight beam cut through the darkness, down to the water cascading from the town’s namesake lake into the river it feeds.

Green-yellow oil, slick and bright, had overtaken the river, and was gushing downstream.

When a 72-car train of explosive crude barrelled into the town early on Saturday, July 6, it killed 47 people, levelled buildings, ripped away livelihoods, and annihilated the heart of the downtown.

It also unleashed nearly six million litres of oil.

The deluge glugged out of punctured tanker cars and ran down city streets ablaze, a river of burning oil. It seeped into the ground, gushed down manholes into the sewers and stormwater pipes, causing powerful explosions underground. It spilled into crystal waters of the lake, clung to boats in the marina, and rushed down the winding Chaudière, a 185-kilometre river that empties into the St. Lawrence.

As firefighters battled the blaze, a growing army of environmental emergency experts descended on the town to stop the spread of the volatile Bakken crude, a substance slightly thicker than vegetable oil. With every minute, it extended its reach deeper, further, threatening to sicken communities, poison the air, and ruin ecosystems.

They have been on the ground ever since, fighting a toxic villain that, even now, is on the move.

The spill in an urban setting has destroyed buildings untouched by flame, prompted a mass exodus of contaminated soil, and forced crews to rebuild even as they decontaminate, with the aim of jumpstarting the faltering economy.

Those leading the clean-up sum it up simply: There has never been anything like it.

Click here for an interactive graphic

Stop the bleeding

By the time Jean Campagna arrived in Lac-Mégantic from his home outside Sherbrooke, the fire had been raging for eight hours. Like so many others, he had been summoned by a dead-of-night call. The day before, he had clocked out at 4:30 p.m., ready for his vacation.

The technician with the Quebec environment ministry’s emergency team approached the blaze at the mouth of the river, near the bridge, when he arrived at 9:45 a.m. His eyes were drawn to a torrent of crude gushing into the river from a two-foot storm pipe.

“The first thing we had to do was absolutely stop that as quickly as possible,” he said. “I knew that there were drinking water intakes downstream, and I knew that it was running strong through the pipe. It was practically pure oil.”

Scanning the scene, he saw allies in municipal workers and environmental emergency employees, and began co-ordinating — a role he has played ever since, as a clean-up project technician. He held a five-minute meeting near the bridge, planning a joint assault.

Everywhere, there was work to do.

When oil escaped from the tankers beginning at 1:14 a.m., some of it immediately burned. The rest travelled in two main directions: on the surface of the ground, towards the lake; and underground, infiltrating soil and pipe networks.

On the surface, burning oil moved downhill from the derailment, shooting with flames as it flowed towards the lake. Streetlamps melted and shoreline rocks fractured as the fiery crude entered the water. The oil was still burning as a strong wind sent it back to land, where it hit the rocky shore of downtown’s Parc des Vétérans.

Oil seeping into the ground gravitated towards the highly permeable material known as backfill, usually a mixture of sand and gravel. Backfill blankets parts of the town and lines the underground infrastructure, including pipes. In some areas, it travelled three metres deep, until it hit a thick, mostly impenetrable layer of natural clay. Like water on a table, it spread out horizontally.

Hot crude infiltrated Lac-Mégantic’s sewer pipes by seeping into the foundations of the destroyed buildings that led to the basement floor drains, which are connected to the sewage network. It found entry through connecting joints, or simply melted the pipes, on some streets made of plastic known as PVC. From there, it travelled to the water treatment plant, inundating it with oil.

Finally, hundreds of thousands of litres ran down the streets into storm drains, where fumes caused explosions. On the residential street Rue des Vétérans, the underground blasts sent manholes flying up to 10 metres high. At a storm pipe that empties into the river more than a kilometre away from the impact zone, burning oil went shooting out, like a rocket blasting off.

Emergency actions by quick-thinking first responders stopped the contamination from becoming much worse.

Firefighters, municipal workers and police watching the oil flowing down manholes and storm drains desperately shovelled soil into its path. Firefighters heaped gravel into the gap underneath the marina quay, trapping the oil before it could run to the mouth of the river. Others frantically shovelled earth down a manhole, trying to stop the oil from travelling to the sewage treatment plant.

In one important move, a crew of volunteer firefighters, workers from the nearby factory, and Tom Harding, the train’s engineer, removed nine tanker cars that remained on the tracks, on the north end of the blaze, close to the town’s church and blocks of residential streets. So close to the fire, the cars were ticking time bombs.

Sylvain Grégoire, an employee from the nearby particleboard plant, rushed to the factory at 3:25 a.m. to get the company’s rail car mover, called a Trackmobile. At the factory, it moves small rail cars filled with wood. He hoped it would pull tankers far larger and heavier. An hour later, he was steering down the sloping track, towards the blaze.

“I thought of my kids,” he said. “I wondered, what if it explodes?”

At 8 a.m., all nine cars, together containing 961,000 litres of crude, had been moved to safety, several hundred metres away from the blaze.

By the time Campagna and his ministry colleagues arrived, Eastern Canada Response Corporation (ECRC), a company specializing in marine oil-spill response, was setting up booms — long, thin and buoyant tools that catch oil on the surface of the river and lake.

The strong current meant crews could not simply string booms across the river, because the oil would just flow underneath. They configured some in alternating rungs, deflecting the oil from one to the next until it reached a collection point. From there, the oily water was vacuumed up with surface skimmers, and collected in tanker trucks.

Back at the bridge, Campagna and others tried to stop the flow of oil gushing from the storm pipe into the river.

They decided to place an inflatable plug directly into the pipe, trapping the oil and stopping the hemorrhage. But the oil was gushing so strongly it was difficult to put in place.

A vacuum truck was sent to a manhole further up the pipe, closer to the impact zone, where it began pumping to intercept the oil flowing downpipe. The level of oil significantly lowered, a worker descended into a manhole to place the plug. Because of the toxic vapours inside the sewers, he was strapped into a harness, so the crew could pull him up quickly if he was hurt.

Another truck was brought in to suck up the oil collecting at the plug. There would be a constant procession of 15 tanker trucks — filling up, leaving, coming back — for the next three days.

Campagna and dozens of others worked into the night, plugging other pipes, sucking up thousands of litres of oily water from the lake and river, and setting up what would ultimately total more than three kilometres of boom.

Overnight Saturday, fire crews considered simply letting the inferno burn out on its own, a tactic sometimes used to reduce air contamination. The higher the temperature of the fire, the less smoke it produces, meaning that when you blast a fire with water and foam to cool it off, air pollution is increased.

But the amount of oil they knew was left in the tankers could mean the fire would burn 10 more days. All the while, oil would continue to gush into the ground.

“The faster we were able to put out the fire, the faster we would be able to work on the migration of the oil in the soil,” said Drouin, the Sherbrooke fire chief.

Fire crews chose to attack the blaze, trucking in specialized foam. Just before noon on Sunday, 36 hours after the derailment, the blaze was extinguished. Firefighters were still cooling the charred, steaming ground well past sundown.

Rehabbing the river

The helicopter rotors thudded as the survey team flew along the winding Chaudière River on July 7, the day after the derailment. A blue metallic sheen, spanning the width of the river for 80 kilometres downstream of Lac-Mégantic, confirmed serious contamination.

In total, 100,000 litres of oil spilled into the Chaudière.

For the first few days after the derailment, Sonia Laforest, a shoreline restoration scientist with Environment Canada, documented the oil’s travel from the helicopter window, part of a team brought in to evaluate the contamination of the lake and river, and provide scientific and technical advice to ECRC, the marine oil spill company, and other first responders.

The fly-overs determined the contamination had been mostly confined to 120 kilometres of shoreline. But crews would have to walk the riverbanks to understand what areas were hardest hit.

The crude that spilled in Lac-Mégantic had more light fractions than heavy, which from a clean-up perspective has significant advantages. While heavier crude may have sunk slightly in the water, this crude has floated on the surface, making it easier to trap with booms. It also meant there would be no black, tarry residue on wildlife and plants because it is not sticky enough to form large clumps — think molasses versus vegetable oil.

The danger is that lighter oil is more prone to penetrating sediment, which can set off a chain reaction, contaminating vegetation and wildlife.

A week after the disaster, the parties tasked with cleaning the river launched a clean-up process called SCAT, Shoreline Clean-up Assessment Technique. The exercise is simple but tedious: workers travel on foot, methodically documenting signs of oil on the shoreline’s banks, beaches and vegetation. The process is like environmental triage.

Four teams were formed, made up of officials from Environment Canada, Quebec’s environment ministry, clean-up company ECRC and the municipal government. They began at the mouth of the river, near the town, looking for oily sheen on the water, green residue on banks, slimy vegetation — anything indicating contamination.

Days usually began at 5 a.m. Even then, the July sun quickly made sweat run down their necks. They wore rubber gloves, boots, pants, life jackets, hats, and lugged backpacks filled with a day’s worth of water, lunch and bug repellant. Some days, temperatures reached the mid-30s. Others, intense rain beat down.

Laforest, who has spent her career trudging along contaminated shorelines, including in South Korea after a devastating spill, found the heat, rain and the problems accessing the shoreline overwhelming at times.

“It was the most difficult I’ve ever walked.”

The SCAT evaluation continued through August and September, crews walking a total of 275 kilometres. The results showed that approximately 40 kilometres of both rocky and sandy banks needed immediate cleaning.

Armed with these results, Quebec’s environment ministry sent out a crew of 200 workers in September and October. On rocky shores, they used rakes or low-pressure hoses to roust oil residue from the shoreline. It then floated on the surface of the water, downstream to absorbent booms.

On sandy embankments, there was a risk of erosion, which can be traumatic to the shoreline ecosystem. Rather than the harsh rakes or low-pressure hose treatment, crews ran water down the bank using a perforated pipe, simulating rainfall, which then sent oil in the sediment back into the river, again to be caught by booms.

More shoreline clean-up may continue in the spring. Experts await test results of water organisms to reveal if contaminants have infiltrated the food chain.

Intakes for the three towns that source drinking water from the Chaudière were reopened in September after being closed since July 7.

In August, clean-up crews also had to tackle the marina, where oil had clung to 101 boats. One by one, the boats and the marina’s quays were removed to be pressure-washed inside a massive basin built nearby, which collected the contaminated run-off so it could be treated. Rocks that line the marina bank were washed the same way, booms catching oil re-entering the lake.

Attacking the air

In the initial days, the focus was on investigation and victim recovery. Access to the “red zone,” the impact area, was mostly restricted to Transportation Safety Board officials, police, firefighters and forensic experts searching for human remains.

For them, the danger had shifted from fire to the toxins in the air.

From the early hours of the disaster, a team of air contamination experts had arrived from Quebec’s environment ministry, driving a Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer. The blue bus the size of a motorhome is a lab on wheels, called upon in environmental emergencies. Air intakes placed outside the bus allow technicians to detect toxic components of ambient air.

The Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, an American firm, was also on hand, one toxicologist flying in from Little Rock, Ark.

Among the major dangers that experts watched for was carbon monoxide, which can be produced when organic materials burn. They also looked for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) — chemicals that get into the air when they evaporate from the oil. Common VOCs produced by petroleum products are benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene. All are damaging, and benzene is carcinogenic.

Those investigating or searching in the area wore masks that filter out dangerous chemicals, while air contamination experts ensured toxins did not surpass a level the respirators could purify.

Air experts were also monitoring vapours that could explode, a risk that was highest when workers began removing oil left over in the derailed tankers beginning July 14. Crews knew dangerous, potentially explosive vapours could be built up inside, and conducted a series of tests before tanks were opened.

Once in the clear, the carcasses were cut with a water drill, to avoid dangerous hot spots. A temporary road was built through the impact zone to allow machinery to come and go. After the tankers were emptied and clean, Transportation Safety Board officials removed sections of the tankers they needed for analysis in the board’s Ottawa lab.

Throughout the process, firefighters were on hand to keep the tankers and the oil cool with Class B foam, used on flammable liquids to smother vapours that could ignite.

By the end of July, 740,000 litres of oil was collected from the tankers.

Trench warfare

By August, the “red zone” more closely resembled a construction site than a disaster area.

All the tank cars had been destroyed, the carcasses cut down and recycled. Gone, too, was debris that had littered the impact zone — railroad ties, warped tracks, concrete foundations of ruined buildings. All had been removed by heavy machinery, then recycled or burned.

Now dotting the landscape were dozens of oil recuperation trenches, dug by excavators carving deep troughs into the soil. The trenches collected the oil already in the soil, and stopped its possible spread to other areas; they were placed strategically to divert the crude from entering sewer or storm pipes.

Tanker trucks were in constant motion, sucking up the oily water the trenches spat up, then bringing it to a mobile water filtration facility set up near the sewage treatment plant.

Throughout the summer, crews had also been concerned about rainwater passing through the contaminated pipes, sending oil through once more. They installed plugs throughout the network beneath the disaster zone, then stationed tanker trucks at manholes to vacuum up water collected inside.

They had to keep an eye on the weather. If rain was forecast, they had to make sure extra vacuums and tanker trucks were at the ready to suck up the water gathering inside the pipes.

“We were afraid of storms, because we weren’t sure we would be in control,” said Campagna. “The water goes in, it has to be able to go somewhere.”

To prepare for the rain and snow beginning to fall through winter into spring, crews created a collection system that directs water flowing through the downtown soil into one of five wells situated around the site. Water gathered inside is then pumped into a massive recuperation basin, located in the heart of the impact zone, capable of holding as much as four Olympic swimming pools’ worth of liquid.

From there, the water is drawn into a small white portable that contains a filtration system. The treated water is tested daily, then released into the river.

Throughout the five months since the disaster, environmental consultants have been extracting samples all over the downtown. Their results give analysts two vital pieces of information: where the oil had spread, and the level of contamination.

In Quebec, soil contamination by oil is categorized by potential use. Mildly contaminated soil can still be used for residences and recreational facilities, while moderately contaminated soil can be used for commercial and industrial use.

Much of the 69,000 cubic metres of soil contaminated in the impact zone alone, however, is beyond use in its current state. Preliminary tests revealed higher than accepted levels of benzene, as well as metals including copper, arsenic and lead.

Two other low-lying downtown areas were also deeply contaminated. Oil had seeped into the soil underneath a restaurant near the marina, and an ice cream store close to the river. Both buildings had to be demolished.

As testing went on, oil-rich earth was heaped in piles that just kept growing.

Building a toxic mountain

As a harsh November wind whipped gusts of snow back and forth, Campagna stood next to vast mountain of Lac-Mégantic’s sickest earth. The compact pile stood two storeys tall, spanned a platform larger than a football field, and held 25,000 cubic metres of toxic soil.

It is the first of three mounds that will soon form a contaminated mountain range on the outskirts of town.

The decision to store dirty soil off site was clinched after government leaders decided the town’s economic heart needed to be jolted, as soon as possible.

That meant two things: rebuilding the railroad track, and constructing four commercial condo buildings that would host some of the destroyed impact zone businesses , allowing them to reopen as early as February. Both sites now lie in or around the impact zone.

Their construction prompted a “big, big adaptation” of oil clean-up procedure, said Paul Benoit, a deputy director with Quebec’s environment ministry. He arrived to manage the clean-up shortly after the Quebec government appointed Pomerleau, a construction firm, to take over responsibility for cleanup from the insolvent rail company Montreal, Maine & Atlantic.

“Usually, what we do is we decontaminate, we treat the soil, and then reconstruct,” he said. “That’s the logical sequence.”

To ensure the track and the future commercial buildings were not built on polluted land, crews had to thoroughly test the ground underneath.

Beginning in August, the tests revealed the presence of more oil than anticipated. As it turned out, Lac-Mégantic had a series of abandoned underground pipes, long since forgotten by the city. Oil had congregated inside.

It was only the first surprise. Later in the month, crews found an intact car underground that they believe had been there for at least 25 years.

Not long after, the town’s old railway roundhouse, which is a service building for locomotives, was found two metres underground. Decades ago, Benoit said, it was thought to be easier to simply bury unwanted structures than to dismantle or dispose of them.

Crews decided construction in the disaster zone would be easier if the vast amounts of soil were kept on containment pads. They were equally concerned about contamination spreading if the oil-soaked earth stayed put.

At the end of August, they began building three containment platforms on a vast swath of unused land next to Tafisa, Lac-Mégantic’s particleboard factory two kilometres from downtown.

The forested ground was razed, then made into a layer cake of protective measures: an impermeable membrane, underneath an impenetrable cloth reinforcement, underneath an asphalt platform.

Soon, a cavalcade of dump trucks was ferrying soil from the downtown to the platforms, beeping as they unloaded before going back for more.

For now, the platforms are simply for storage. But the soil may also be treated here, depending on the decontamination method chosen. Among the options to remove the oil is injecting bacteria or chemicals into the piles, promoting oxidization that cleanses soil. This could be done on site.

This week, the Quebec government closed its call for tenders for the decontamination of 558,000 cubic metres of soil, which includes the contents of the pads as well as soil that has not yet been removed.

Whatever treatment is chosen for the piles, the aim is to have the cleaned soil return to fill the downtown’s holes by next winter.

The Star’s Wendy Gillis reports on the monumental cleanup and decontanimation following the disastrous MMA train derailment.

Those working to restore the core hope that timeline sticks. Throughout the clean-up, they have been under intense public scrutiny.

Each day since the disaster, locals and visitors have observed their actions closely, eager for signs of progress. Criticism lately is that crews are just moving around piles of soil.

“They watch us work, they ask questions. And us, on the other side of the fence, we would look at them,” Campagna said. “For some of us, it’s encouraging. For others, it’s irritating.”

He looked downhill, towards the downtown, then reached gloved fingers into the base of the contaminated mound, raised a fistful of the soil to his nose and nodded. He could still smell the oil.

Into the unknown

At night, lampposts light the surviving stretch of quaint storefronts on Rue Frontenac, inside the disaster zone. The buildings appear unscathed, frozen in time at the moment before the disaster destroyed some 40 buildings steps away.

A children’s store advertises new and used clothing. A sign on a green, three-storey apartment building announces furnished rooms for rent. On Rue des Vétérans, a residential waterfront street two blocks south, pretty bungalows bear no obvious signs that a river of burning oil had run down one street over. Inside one home, a dining room lamp shines bright, suggesting someone’s inside.

No one is, of course. When work here ends for the day, it becomes a ghost town. The contamination and ongoing construction has blocked public access until at least June 2014. A security firm guards the tall fence that surrounds the restricted area.

The damage to some buildings here goes unseen, but could prove just as devastating as explosions and flames. If enough oil seeps into the foundation of a building, it becomes too dangerous to inhabit. Over time, it will release toxic vapours, such as benzene, or methane, an explosive gas.

The province and city are still deciding what to do with these buildings. Playing a role will be whether insurance companies will pay to decontaminate the foundations of buildings — something that can be done with major renovation or prolonged cleaning . Some buildings, however, may be beyond repair.

Denis Bolduc, the owner of a shoe and clothing store on Frontenac, isn’t sure he wants to move back into his three-storey building. If it can be saved, it could be three years before he re-enters. By then, he will be well established in his new location in the commercial condos, which opens in February.

He is concerned, too, about an unease that lingers above the once-beloved downtown. He feels that some people want a fresh start — they don’t even want him bringing stock from the Frontenac store to the new location.

“There is a psychological problem in the region,” he said.

In late November, as the final sections of railway were put into place in the distance, residents peered through the fence.

Soon, they will see the train re-enter town, travel down the same stretch, pass through the area its predecessor destroyed. It will be hard to watch. It will also be the first sign this sick land will heal.

Clean-up, by the numbers

5.9  Millions of litres of oil spilled

$200M   Estimated cost to clean river and downtown

558,000  Cubic metres of soil the Quebec government determined needs decontamination

3,369  Metres of boom set up on the river, lake and marina at height of clean-up

275  Kilometres walked conducting the Shoreline Clean-up Assessment Technique process

500  Number of workers on site at height of clean-up