Repost from CBS5 KPIX San Francisco
Opposition Grows Over Plan To Bring Crude Oil Into Bay Area By Rail
Expect more pushback this week against a plan to roll highly-flammable fracked oil by rail into the Bay Area. Anne Makovec reports
Tag Archives: explosion
Cleanup after North Dakota explosion: 10,000 tons to landfill, no cost estimate
Repost from The Republic, Columbus, Indiana
North Dakota health official: Cleanup at oil train derailment site ‘all but complete’
By JAMES MacPHERSON Associated Press
March 19, 2014 – 4:24 pm EDT
March 19, 2014 – 4:24 pm EDT
BISMARCK, North Dakota — Cleanup of an oil train derailment on the outskirts of a small southeastern North Dakota town “is all but complete,” a state health official said Wednesday.
“We’ve identified a couple of small spots that still smell of oil, but cleanup for the most part is done,” said Dave Glatt, chief of North Dakota Department of Health’s environmental health section.
The Dec. 30 collision occurred when a BNSF Railway train carrying soybeans derailed and caused another company train carrying crude oil to derail 1 mile west of Casselton. The wreck sparked massive explosions, towering fireballs and an ominous cloud that hung over the city of about 2,400 residents. No one was hurt, but about 1,400 people voluntarily evacuated.
The derailment highlighted worries about shipping crude by rail and led to a safety alert from the U.S. Department of Transportation warning about the potential high volatility of crude from the rich oil fields of western North Dakota and eastern Montana.
Federal investigators determined 400,000 gallons of oil was lost when the oil-carrying train derailed and caught fire.
Glatt, who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from the crash site Wednesday, said about 10,000 tons of oil-tainted dirt and other material has been removed by contractors working for the railroad. The company, based on the inspection Wednesday, has permission to begin backfilling the site with new soil, he said.
FILE – In this Dec. 30, 2013, file photo, a fireball goes up at the site of an oil train derailment in Casselton, N.D. State Environmental Health Chief Dave Glatt says cleanup after the BNSF train derailed and caught fire in the small southeastern North Dakota town “is all but complete.” Federal investigators determined that 400,000 gallons of oil was lost in the derailment. (AP Photo/Bruce Crummy, File)
“They are good to go,” said Glatt, adding that regulators had estimated the cleanup of the fouled soil would last at least through the first part of summer. “They wanted to backfill in with good soil before the spring rains come and turn the whole area into a quagmire.”
Glatt said the state requires the monitoring of water runoff from the site at least through spring. BNSF also will be required to monitor groundwater for at least two years, he said.
“We want to continue to monitor that site, as a precaution,” BNSF Railway spokeswoman Amy McBeth said. “We will continue to work with the state Department of Health, as we have from the beginning.”
Most of the fouled dirt was taken by truck to out-of-state landfills, McBeth said. The tangled and charred wreckage of 15 grain cars and 21 oil tank cars that had been strewn in the area also has been hauled away, she said.
McBeth said the railroad would not disclose the cost of the cleanup.
Casselton Mayor Ed McConnell said things were beginning to return to normal in the small town, about 30 miles west of Fargo.
“It’s better than it was,” he said of the wreck site. “But there still is a good healthy mistrust of that track.”
Catastrophic risks too great for insurance?
Repost from DeSmog blog
Tue, 2014-03-18 06:00Sharon Kelly Spurred by the shale drilling rush that has progressed at breakneck speed, the railroad industry has moved fast to help drillers transport petroleum and its byproducts to consumers. Last year, trains hauled over 400…
KPIX report – Marilaine Savard visits Bay Area
Repost from KPIX5/AP
Explosion Survivor Warns Of Fracked Oil Trains; Newer Safety Regulations Delayed
March 6, 2014 7:07 PM
Christin Ayers, reporter for KPIX 5 Eyewitness News
Christin Ayers, reporter for KPIX 5 Eyewitness News
Firefighters douse blazes after a freight train loaded with oil derailed in Lac-Megantic in Canada’s Quebec province on July 6, 2013, sparking explosions that engulfed about 30 buildings in fire. At least 80 people are missing after a driverless oil tanker train derailed and exploded in the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, destroying dozens of buildings, a firefighter back from the scene told AFP. Photo: François Laplante-Delagrave/AFP/Getty Images
(KPIX 5/AP) — A woman who lived through one of the deadliest train derailments ever hopes her experience serves as a wake-up call about allowing highly-volatile fracked crude oil to be transported by rail – as has been proposed in the Bay Area.
Thursday in Washington, a Senate transportation panel grilled federal railroad officials over delays in drafting new safety regulations in light of recent deadly oil and commuter train accidents.
Railroads are also taking too long to implement safety improvements Congress ordered under legislation passed seven years ago, lawmakers said at the hearing.
Meanwhile, a report released Thursday by Canadian regulators said the crude from the Bakken region of North Dakota is as volatile as gasoline. The derailment of a train carrying this oil last July in Lac-Megantic, Quebec created an inferno that destroyed much of the town center.
KPIX 5 spoke to a Marlaine Savard who was just a few miles away when the train carrying 30-thousand gallons of fracked crude derailed.
“We knew for sure that people were dying,” said Savard.
47 people were killed in the disaster. The toxic mess left behind will take years to clean up. “It’s like 50 football fields that are really highly contaminated,”she said.
Last week, federal regulators issued emergency regulations that require shippers to test crude coming from the Bakken region to make sure it’s properly classified while banning certain older-model tanker cars.
But they still haven’t issued any new rules for the much more common tank cars that exploded in Quebec.
Bay Area refineries are still receiving most of their crude by ship and pipeline, but experts warn that could soon change.
“This is the refining center of the western U.S.,” said Greg Karras with the advocacy group Communities for a Better Environment. “It’s a huge amount of crude that is being proposed to be delivered here by rail now.
Karras said it all comes down to profits. The tanker cars are mostly owned or leased by oil companies, that don’t want to pay. “There are alternatives, they can afford them.
Karras said fracked Bakken crude isn’t the only threat. He said trains are now hauling tar sands oil, the dirtiest kind of crude.
“It sinks to the bottom when it gets into the water body like the bay, and this has happened in other parts of the country,” he said.
Seven months after the Lac-Megantic disaster, trains have just started to roll through Marlaine Savard’s town again. “The first thing that they rebuilt was the railroad, ok!”
There are no tankers carrying crude yet, because she says this time her town won’t allow it. ”If everybody stands up, I am sure that this is the hope.”
WesPac Energy Group has plans to rebuild an old oil storage facility in downtown Pittsburg and bring in fracked crude oil by rail, ships and pipelines.
The Pittsburg city council is set to vote on the proposal’s environmental impact report in the coming months.