Tag Archives: ForestEthics

Bakken Crude, Blast zone, Derailment, Evacuation, Explosion, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Richmond CA

‘Bomb trains’: A crude awakening for Richmond, Calif.

Repost from Aljazeera America

‘Bomb trains’: A crude awakening for Richmond, Calif.

Local activists try to halt the shipment of explosive Bakken crude oil through their neighborhoods

October 24, 2014, by Audrea Lim @das_audster   

Bakken crude
Smoke rises from railway cars carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in 2013. Paul Chiasson / The Canadian Press / AP
 

RICHMOND, Calif. — The streets are quiet in Lipo Chanthanasak’s neighborhood on the outer edge of this city’s downtown core. Each of the small houses is painted a variation of beige and separated from the road by a neatly kept lawn, as if to highlight the scene’s utter normalcy. But half a mile west are the BNSF Railway tracks and the Kinder Morgan rail facility, which quietly began receiving trains of Bakken crude last year.

Chanthanasak, who moved to Richmond from Laos 24 years ago, lives within the potential blast zone should an oil train derail, according to an online map created by the environmental-advocacy group ForestEthics. The 70-year-old retiree says he only learned that crude was being transported through his community because of his involvement with the nonprofit Asian Pacific Environmental Network, or APEN. Many of his neighbors, he says, are unaware.

Since July 2013, when a train carrying Bakken crude from North Dakota derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing at least 42 people and flattening the town, major crude-by-rail accidents have occurred in Alabama, North Dakota, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado. ForestEthics says that 25 million Americans live within an oil-train-evacuation zone. An elementary school, a public-housing project and an affluent, elderly community fall within Richmond’s zone, according to the advocacy group.

train bombs Richmond California
Bakken crude has been arriving since last year at the Richmond, California, train depot, pictured here. Google

The transport of crude by rail is not a new phenomenon, but it has increased significantly over the past few years. In the first half of this year, 229,798 carloads of crude were transported by rail, up from 9,500 carloads in all of 2008. The increase is largely connected to the development of the Bakken shale, oil-rich rock formation that lies beneath parts of the northern United States and Canada.

Compared with traditional forms of crude oil, Bakken crude has been shown to be much more volatile and more likely to explode in the event of derailment. Hence the rail cars’ nickname among activists: “bomb trains.” But apart from a code on the side of the cars, nothing about their appearance indicates their origins. Smooth and cylindrical, the black cars would be adorable, if only their contents weren’t so dangerous. Richmond’s Kinder Morgan facility, a rail yard containing very little except several tracks, is just as unassuming. The trains (100 to 120 cars hitched together, all carrying the same product) arrive here, where they are lined up in several rows, each waiting for their content to be pumped into tanker trucks (three tankers are required to hold the contents of a single railcar). The tankers are then thought to travel another 25 miles northeast to a Tesoro Corporation refinery in Martinez.

Previously, the Kinder Morgan facility receiving ethanol by rail. But in September 2013, after securing the necessary air-quality permit granted by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (without the knowledge of its board), the facility quietly switched over to handling crude. By the time the community found out, in March 2014, through an investigative story by the local CBS station, KPIX, it was already too late. The lawsuit that the nonprofit group Earthjustice filed (on behalf of APEN and others) to halt operations at the terminal was dismissed by the Superior Court of San Francisco in September, because it had been filed after the 180-day deadline.

“It’s a catch-22,” says Andres Soto, an organizer for Communities for a Better Environment, one of the co-plaintiffs in the suit. “How can you even comment unless you knew that something had been done? We would’ve had to be going through public records on a regular basis to discover when they’re making these kinds of decisions.”

Richmond’s case is not unique: In June, a NuStar terminal in Vancouver, Washington, also received an air-quality permit to begin storing crude without public notification. Community resistance has, however, encouraged the Vancouver City Council to adopt an emergency six-month moratorium on new or expanded crude-by-rail facilities.

“It’s very rarely been the case that local representatives or city councils have questioned these things without being encouraged to by local citizens or by being forced to by local action groups,” said Lorne Stockman, research director at Oil Change International and author of two recent reports on the rise of crude-by-rail in North America. “The only way [the projects] have been challenged are because vigilant citizens have questioned them.”

The secrecy that has characterized the projects has been aided by the fact that, in many cases, their introduction requires very little new construction — none at all in the case of Kinder Morgan. That makes the projects virtually invisible. This is also why crude by rail has been economically viable, despite being slightly more costly than transport via pipelines. In addition, pipeline projects normally require 20- to 30-year contracts to recoup their capital investments. Therefore, because the Bakken oil boom is not expected to last, constructing new pipelines to service it often doesn’t make economic sense. Meanwhile, the Bakken region is already connected to the West Coast by existing rail infrastructure. With crude prices higher in the West Coast than elsewhere in the country, and a growing Asian market for North American crude, the transportation of crude by rail to the West Coast is likely to increase unless community resistance proves successful.

BP Cherry Point, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Tank car design

ForestEthics: switch to newer rail cars for crude still not safe

Repost from ABC News
[Editor: Significant quote: “Matt Krogh, of the group ForestEthics, which has sued the U.S. Department of Transportation over the shipment of volatile crude oil in older railroad tank cars, told The Associated Press on Saturday that there’s little evidence the newer tank cars will truly prevent explosive spills. He argued that the newer cars are tested at slower speeds than the speed at which most derailments occur, and he noted that it was one of the CPC-1232s that exploded in a fireball during a derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia, in April Krogh called switching to the newer cars ‘a red herring.’   ¶  ‘It’s a marginal improvement, but it’s nowhere near safe,’ he said. ‘They’re essentially grasping at straws to convince people that they can do it safely. I don’t think you can safely and profitably run trains of crude.'”  – RS]

Refinery Switching to Newer Rail Cars for Crude

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Oct 11, 2014

A refinery in northwest Washington state says it will no longer accept any volatile North Dakota crude oil unless it arrives on newer-model tank cars.

By the first week of October, the BP Cherry Point facility had stopped using pre-2011 standard tank cars, known as DOT-111 cars, for the shipments, The Bellingham Herald reported ( http://is.gd/XmHxHN ).

The change comes amid public concern about the safety of shipping crude by train. Since 2008, derailments of oil trains in the U.S. and Canada have seen the older 70,000-gallon tank cars break open and ignite on multiple occasions, resulting in huge fireballs. A train carrying Bakken-formation crude from North Dakota in the older tanks crashed in a Quebec town last year, killing 47 people.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which recommended upgraded regulations for crude oil and ethanol cars in 2011, is working on updating rail safety standards and could require companies to phase out the DOT-111 cars for shipping crude oil during the next couple of years

Cherry Point was already using newer, safer tank cars to receive about 60 percent of its crude oil, but expedited the switch to the newer cars in response to community concerns, BP spokesman Bill Kidd said. The refinery now uses a fleet of about 700 newer cars, called CPC-1232s.

The newer cars have thicker shells, head shields on both ends and improved valve protection.

But Matt Krogh, of the group ForestEthics, which has sued the U.S. Department of Transportation over the shipment of volatile crude oil in older railroad tank cars, told The Associated Press on Saturday that there’s little evidence the newer tank cars will truly prevent explosive spills. He argued that the newer cars are tested at slower speeds than the speed at which most derailments occur, and he noted that it was one of the CPC-1232s that exploded in a fireball during a derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia, in April.

Krogh called switching to the newer cars “a red herring.”

“It’s a marginal improvement, but it’s nowhere near safe,” he said. “They’re essentially grasping at straws to convince people that they can do it safely. I don’t think you can safely and profitably run trains of crude.”

Trains carrying Bakken oil from North Dakota have been supplying Washington refineries at Tacoma, Anacortes and Cherry Point. Oil-train export terminals are proposed at Vancouver and Grays Harbor on the Washington coast.

About 70 percent of the crude-oil rail cars that BNSF Railway currently moves through Washington state are already the newer design, railway spokesman Gus Melonas said.

For two decades, the Cherry Point refinery received crude oil only by pipeline, Kidd said. It later added shipments by sea.

But Alaskan crude oil has turned into the last type the refinery is interested in because of the higher price. Crude oil from mid-continent shale formations has become a cheaper option for the refinery, Kidd said.

“It’s completely turned the industry on its head,” Kidd said. “Without access to crude by rail, this refinery cannot compete.”

Refinery Manager Bob Allendorfer said the facility is always going to be progressive when it comes to safety. “Safety is always first, and you have to get it right,” Allendorfer said.

Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, California Public Utilities Commission, Crude By Rail, Federal Regulation (U.S.)

Dangerous Oil-by-Rail Is Here, but Railroad Bridge Inspectors Are Not

Repost from ALLGOV.com

Dangerous Oil-by-Rail Is Here, but Railroad Bridge Inspectors Are Not

By Ken Broder, September 18, 2014

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) estimates there are about 5,000 railroad bridges in California, but doesn’t really know for sure. They are privately owned and inspected and were off the public radar until oil companies started shipping dangerous crude by rail to California refineries in increasingly large quantities.

Governments are not ready to have volatile loads of cargo rolling through sensitive habitats across the state, much less through heavily-populated metropolitan areas. But help is on the way. In March, the CPUC requested funding (pdf) for seven inspectors to specifically handle oil-by-rail, and two of them would focus on bridges.

The Contra Costa Times reported last week that the two inspectors have not yet been hired, but when they are, they will be the only two inspectors checking out the bridges. They will be assisted in their task by the sole federal inspector assigned to the area―an area that includes 11 states.

One of their first jobs will be to find the bridges. There is no comprehensive list. Judging by some industry comments, there may be some reluctance on the part of rail owners to provide all the information the government might ask. Bridge consultant and former American Society of Civil Engineers President Andy Hermann told the Times that the companies kept bridge data secret for competitive reasons.

But not to worry. The owners already do a good job of maintaining the bridges because, in Hermann’s words, “There’s a very strong profit motive to keep the bridges open. Detours will cost them a fortune.” In other words, this would be a situation where a company does not make a risky decision based on short-term, bottom-line considerations that could adversely affect the well-being of people and the environment.

In a report (pdf) to lawmakers on rail safety last December, the CPUC called California’s rail bridges “a potential significant safety risk.” It said most of them “are old steel and timber structures, some over a hundred years old.” Big rail companies tout their safety programs but the report points out often these bridges are owned by small short line railroads “that may not be willing or able to acquire the amount of capital needed to repair or replace degrading bridges.”

That’s bad, but not AS bad when the rail shipments aren’t volatile oil fracked from North Dakota’s Bakken formation, loaded on old rail cars ill-equipped to handle their modern cargo. Federal regulations to upgrade the unsafe cars will probably take at least a few years to complete.

When safety advocates talk about the dangers of crude-by-rail, they invariably cite the derailment last July in Quebec that killed 47 people, burned down 50 buildings and unleashed a “river of burning oil” through sewers and basements. But the Times reached back to 1991 for arguably California’s worst train derailment, albeit sans crude oil.

A train in Dunsmuir, Siskiyou County, fell off a bridge and dumped 19,000 gallons of a concentrated herbicide into the Sacramento River. Fish and vegetation died 45 miles away. Some invertebrate species went extinct. Hundreds of people required medical treatment from exposure to the contamination.

Railroads are carrying 25 times more crude oil nationally than they were five years ago. Most oil in California is moved via pipeline or ship. In 2012, only 0.2% of the 598 million barrels of oil arrived by rail in California. But the California Energy Commission (CEC) has said it expects rail to account for a quarter of imports by 2016.

Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group, does not want safety measures to amble down the track years after the crude roars through. Its lawyers joined with the Sierra Club and ForestEthics to file a lawsuit in federal court last week to force a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) response to a July legal petition seeking a ban on the type of rail cars that derailed and exploded in Quebec.

A week ago, a San Francisco County Superior Court judge told Earthjustice and other environmental groups they couldn’t sue to halt deliveries of crude oil to a rail terminal in Richmond because the deliveries had been legally permitted by the state―without public notification―and the 180-day deadline to appeal had quietly passed.

California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Cool Davis, Draft EIR, Valero Crude By Rail

Cool Davis: a final landslide of important letters on Valero DEIR

Repost from Cool Davis

Valero DEIR Comments are Successful

By Lynne Nittler

Lynne Nittler led the Davis effort to send comment letters on the Valero DEIR.
Lynne Nittler led the Davis effort to send comment letters on the Valero DEIR.

The DEIR comments for the Valero Crude-by-Rail Project in Benicia closed on September 15, with a final landslide of important letters critical of the project arriving on the last day. Attorneys and others who have looked at the quality and quantity of the comments submitted believe at the very least the DEIR will have to be significantly revised to address the many serious issues raised, and then recirculated. They expect the analysis to take many months.

This is an example of an entire region coming together to respond to a serious threat to our safety and taking advantage of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process to voice our many concerns before the project proceeds. The process is respectful and orderly, and allows governmental agencies, environmental organizations, and individuals all to respond. The responses range from detailed technical analysis of many pages according to the expertise of the agency, often relying on expert scientists and sometimes policy, to more personal or general concerns from the public at large. In addition, public testimony was taken at three lengthy Planning Commission meetings in July, August, and September, all of which can be accessed at the city site below. Finally, the Benicia Planning Commissioners themselves submitted written comments.

CEQA is a stunning example of democracy in action, and in the case of the Valero Crude-by-Rail Project, all concerned parties utilized the channel available to them to look closely at the short and long-term impacts of Bakken Crude and tar sands bitumen entering the state of California via rail.

All comments are added to the public legal record and incorporated as part of the review of the DEIR, and thus all concerns must be addressed in the final EIR. Furthermore, any item entered in the record can be used in future litigation.

The comments can all be read by order of the dates they were submitted at here   In each batch posted, the organizations are listed first, followed by letters from individuals. Be patient, as the large files are slow to open.  An easier, faster site to view the submissions can be found here

A few highlights of the hundreds of pages of commentary follow.

Governmental Agencies:
In the Sacramento region, our governmental agencies stepped forward on our behalf. Yolo County addressed the concern of the magnitude of an accident should one occur, among a range of other considerations about transport over the causeway. Read them here.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) on behalf of 22 cities and 6 counties raised a series of concerns including advance notification to emergency operations offices of crude oil shipments, limitations on storage of crude oil tank cars in urbanized areas, funding for training and outfitting emergency response crews, installing the best brakes to minimize risks, funding for rail safety projects, installing Positive Tran Controls to prevent accidents, and prohibiting shipments of unstabilized crude oil that has not been stripped of the most volatile elements (including flammable natural gas liquids). Read the full letter here.

The City of Davis concurred with the SACOG and County of Yolo letter concerns and added some specific considerations for trains passing through Davis. In particular, the letter states that the DEIR’s Project description is incomplete and misleading as written, given information about the use of 1232 tank cars and assumptions about “just-in-time” supply chain and the significant sidings that could be used for storage.

The letter also states that the DEIR inadequately describes the project setting as it gives no details about all the uprail cities the trains must pass through with their crude oil loads. Next, the DEIR improperly truncates its description of the project setting by ending the description at Roseville, when at the least the route should be studied to the California borders or better yet to the source of extraction. Clearly the source of the crude does pose a significant hazard to uprail communities that must be addressed in the DEIR.

The Project’s Significant Hazard Risk Requires Feasible Mitigation Measures which are not explored in the present version, and the Davis letter presents a list of possible mitigations. Finally, the City insists that the DEIR fails to analyze the cumulative impacts of the Project given the imminent plans for more daily crude oil trains. Read the full letter here.

The California Public Utilities Commission in conjunction with the Office of Spill Prevention and Response also commented at some length on the DEIR, submitting their letter on Governor Brown’s letterhead. Read the full letter here. The letter addresses issues about the length of track analyzed, the derailment and accident calculations, the legal enforceability of the Valero commitment to use CPC- 1232 tank cars, the total derailments attributable to the project, insufficient attention paid to potential consequences, assumption regarding the number of cars expected to derail and other areas.

Many other governmental agencies including several Air Quality Management Districts wrote letters examining aspects of the DEIR. Just browse the commentary postings.

Environmental Groups
The Natural Resources Defense Council Document is a must read for the environmental group letters submitted! It clearly lays out so many of the flaws with the DEIR! Rather than a summary, go right to the document here!

For a technical review, check in to Communities for a Better Environment or read the San Francisco Baykeeper’s review, or technical reviews by other experts here.

Last but not least, read the letters from Cool Davis on Greenhouse Gas emissions and from 350 Sacramento at the link above.

Individual comments
Finally, many dozens of residents did their best to add their voices commenting on their personal concerns, whether or not they attended the five workshops offered. Some wrote of living close to the railroad tracks and their worries of a derailment and explosion. Others pointed out the noise and vibrations of the daily mile-long trains of heavy tank cars. Others wrote about the potential danger of crude oil trains on tracks that run through areas with earthquake fault lines, and many asked probing questions about the liability and who would cover the costs of accidents and spills. Many were concerned about our water supply as trains cross the mountains and our major rivers. A few raised questions about the cumulative impact of the Valero daily trains in the context of the proposed daily train to Phillips 66 Santa Maria refinery in San Luis Obispo County whose DEIR is to be released this month.

Next Steps
The review period for the federal Department of Transportation proposed safety rules remains open to public comment through September 30. A petition from ForestEthics is available for signatures through September 21.

The DEIR for the proposed recirculated DEIR for the Phillips 66 Rail Spur Project for the Santa Maria refinery in San Luis Obispo that will bring 80 tank cars of crude oil through Davis each day will be released mid-September for a 60-day review period. Watch Cooldavis.org and Yolanoclimateaction.org for ways to respond during the comment period.