Held up in court for a year, Maryland oil train reports outdated
By Curtis Tate, September 12, 2015
HIGHLIGHTS
• McClatchy received reports it asked for in 2014
• Documents contained data previously revealed
• Economics of crude by rail have shifted since
After more than a year, McClatchy finally got the oil train reports it had requested from Maryland.
And they were badly out of date.
Last year, McClatchy filed open-records requests in about 30 states for the documents, and was the first news organization to do so in Maryland, in June 2014.
Maryland was poised to release the records in July 2014, when two railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern, sued the state Department of the Environment to block the disclosure.
Finally last month, a state judge ruled in the favor of the release, marking the first time a court had affirmed what many other states had already done without getting sued.
The documents McClatchy and other news organizations ultimately received were dated June 2014, not long after the U.S. Department of Transportation began requiring the railroads to notify state officials of shipments of 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude oil.
After more than a year, however, the economics of shipping crude by rail had changed substantially.
Amid a slump in oil prices, refineries once receiving multiple trainloads of North American crude oil every day have switched, at least temporarily, to waterborne foreign imports.
The trend is reflected from the East Coast to the West Coast, where long strings of surplus tank cars have been parked on lightly used rail lines, generating rental income for small railroads but also the ire of nearby residents.
The documents released in Maryland show that in June 2014, Norfolk Southern was moving as many as 16 oil trains a week through Cecil County on its way to a refinery in Delaware.
But McClatchy has known that since August 2014, when it received a response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Amtrak.
The Delaware News Journal reported that the PBF Refinery in Delaware City, Del., now receives only about 40,000 barrels a day of crude by rail. That’s about 56 loaded tank cars, or half a unit train, nowhere close to the volume of mid-2014.
The June 2014 Maryland documents also show that CSX was moving as many as five oil trains a week on a route from western Maryland through downtown Baltimore toward refineries in Philadelphia.
But that had been clear since at least October 2014, when the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency released its oil train reports showing an identical number of CSX trains crossing from western Pennsylvania into Maryland, then back into southeast Pennsylvania.
CSX told the Baltimore Sun that it had not regularly moved a loaded oil train through Baltimore since the third quarter of 2014. The company had earlier told the newspaper that it moved empty oil trains through the city and state.
Federal regulators never required railroads to report empty oil train movements.
The vast majority of loaded CSX oil trains move to Philadelphia via Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, N.Y., and northern New Jersey, according to records from Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
Armed with proof of oil shipments, activists say they will press the issue
By Natalie Sherman, September 10, 2015
Signs indicate petroleum crude oil on train tank cars. While railroads have long carried hazardous materials through congested urban areas, cities are now scrambling to formulate emergency plans and to train firefighters amid the latest safety threat: a huge increase in crude shipments that critics say has put millions of people living or working near the tracks at heightened risk of derailment, fire and explosion. (Matt Rourke / Associated Press)
CSX Transportation said Thursday it still moves crude oil by train through Maryland via downtown Baltimore occasionally, but not as many as the five 1 million-gallon trains a week it estimated in documents released this week by the state.
Environmental groups and community activists said they hope the new disclosure about trains carrying the explosive crude though the city will spark public pressure and lead officials to act.
The state released documents on Wednesday in which CSX estimated it moves up to five trains a week, each carrying at least 1 million gallons of the volatile crude oil, through Baltimore City, as well as through eight Maryland counties.
The information, disclosed after CSX and Norfolk Southern lost a court battle to keep it private, is outdated, said Rob Doolittle, a spokesman for Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX. The railroad has not moved trains carrying 1 million gallons of so-called Bakken crude — the volume that triggers federal reporting and disclosure requirements — through the Howard Street Tunnel since the third quarter of 2014, he said.
Trains carrying less than 1 million gallons continue to travel that route “on occasion,” he confirmed. He declined to be more specific about the amounts or frequency. It takes roughly 35 tank cars to carry a million gallons of crude.
“We consider information about the shipment of hazardous material to be security sensitive,” he said, adding that the firm does disclose the information to first responders and emergency officials.
“Safety is CSX’s highest priority,” he said. “We’re sensitive to this. Zero accidents is our goal and we believe we’re acting appropriately.”
The amount of crude oil traveling around the country in rail tankers increased exponentially in recent years with a boom in domestic and Canadian production. While rail shipment is one of the safest modes of transportation, accidents involving the volatile crude oil can be explosive, which has stoked fears about the traffic. A fiery 2013 derailment in a small Quebec town killed 47 and forced 2,000 to evacuate.
“We’ve seen these trains explode and we know that they pose a serious threat to Baltimore residents and business and other people who are just trying to go about their life in Baltimore,” said Anne Havemann, general counsel with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Advocates have estimated that about 165,000 Baltimore residents live within a 1 mile radius of train routes, making them vulnerable to explosions caused in potential derailments.
“This one affects everybody,” said Amy Sens, 38, who lives in Morrell Park and is a pastor at Six:Eight, a church in Hampden. “My hope is that a lot of people will become aware of this and realize that they’re affected personally and takes steps to make this situation safer than it currently is.”
The CSX route through Maryland described in the 2014 documents enters the state from Pennsylvania in Allegany County and travels into Washington County, dipping into West Virginia, through Harpers Ferry and back into Maryland, crossing Frederick County. It catches parts of Carroll and Howard counties, passing through Ellicott City along the same line where a rail defect caused a coal train to derail in 2012, killing two young women trespassing on a rail trestle.
After crossing into Baltimore County in the Patapsco Valley State Park, the line enters Southwest Baltimore, traveling up into the heart of the city, passing two blocks from the Horseshoe Casino Baltimore and right by M&T Bank Stadium before entering the Howard Street Tunnel just south of Camden Yards.
The 120-year-old tunnel, which follows Howard Street under downtown, was the scene of a six-day chemical fire after a train derailment in 2001. The line emerges at Mount Royal Station, crosses over the Jones Falls and skirts Remington before turning east in a below-grade cut along 26th Street, where a retaining wall collapsed onto the tracks after heavy rains in 2014.
The line bends through East Baltimore, passing neighborhoods, schools, cemeteries and industrial zones before turning northeast back into Baltimore County and through Harford and Cecil counties roughly parallel to U.S. 40.
CSX stopped shipping through Baltimore because it found a more efficient route to deliver the oil to its client, Doolittle said.
A CSX website shows that its principal crude oil route serving refineries in Philadelphia and New Jersey passes through Ohio, a bit of northern Pennsylvania and mostly New York before turning south.
While the railroad only occasionally moves crude through Maryland now, Doolittle said a new plan submitted to the state estimates it moves between zero and five weekly million-gallon crude trains along the route so it can comply with its requirements as a common carrier.
The Chesapeake Climate Action Network and other groups said even smaller amounts are cause for concern.
They have been trying to build support for a city ordinance that would impose a temporary ban on expansion of crude oil terminals. The City Council hosted a hearing on the issue this summer.
Brent Bolin, Chesapeake regional director at Clean Water Action, said the newly released documents give new urgency to the issue.
“Now that this information is out, it’s time to go back to the Baltimore City Council and say, ‘OK, great hearing. What do you think about this information?’ That’s our immediate next step,” he said.
City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke said she supports the idea of a moratorium, but it’s not clear what the city can do because crude oil shipments cross state lines and are federally regulated.
“I definitely support a moratorium on the expansion of the facilities so that while we’re trying to cope with this problem, we’re not expanding the potential, but I have a lot to learn about this before I have any opinions about how to proceed except that it’s not a safe situation and we have to protect our citizens,” she said.
City Councilman Ed Reisinger, who hosted the hearing, said the city doesn’t want to impose rules against rail shipment that might lead to oil’s being sent through the city on trucks. He has asked CSX for more specific information, he said.
“If it’s one [rail] car I’m concerned, but … the reality is do we want to see one car on the tracks or do we want to see how many trucks driving through the city of Baltimore?” he said. “I just want some accurate information for what we’re really dealing with.”
Howard Libit, a spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, said it would be premature to take a position without a real ordinance on the table.
“Our understanding is that we’re very limited in what we can regulate,” he said. “What we can do is make sure our fire and emergency management folks work well with the railroads and are prepared for any contingency.”
Connor Scott, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Emergency Management, said the city has had a close relationship with CSX since the 2001 tunnel fire.
Staff at CSX have Fire Department radios, and the city, through state police, has access to a CSX system that shows the contents of rail shipments 24-7, he said.
The Fire Department and CSX have conducted training sessions on responding to a crude oil explosion.
As oil train burned, firefighters waited 2 hours for critical details
By Curtis Tate, August 21, 2015
HIGHLIGHTS
• Oil train burned for 2 hours before railroad official arrived
• Firefighters lacked key details about train and its cargo
• Incident led railroads to offer more information, training
Contract workers begin cleaning up the site of an oil train derailment in Lynchburg, Va., on May 1, 2014. Curtis Tate – McClatchy
Newly released documents show that firefighters responding to an oil train derailment and fire last year in Lynchburg, Va., waited more than two hours for critical details about the train and what was on it.
The Lynchburg Fire Department’s battalion chief, Robert Lipscomb, told investigators that it took multiple calls to get a representative from the correct railroad to come to the scene, according to an interview transcript published Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board. And by the time someone arrived, the massive fire had almost burned out.
The April 30, 2014, derailment of a CSX train released more than 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil into the James River and led to the evacuation of about 350 people. No one was injured.
Because of Lynchburg and other oil train derailments, railroads, including CSX, have improved their lines of communication with local emergency responders and offered them more training opportunities.
Rob Doolittle, a CSX spokesman, said Friday that safety was the company’s highest priority and that it “looks forward to reviewing the NTSB’s findings and recommendations when its investigation into this incident is complete.”
NTSB investigators interviewed Lipscomb, who led the response to the derailment, the next day. He told them his department probably wouldn’t have changed how it handled the incident if they’d had more information from the start.
“We did it the way we did it because that’s what we were looking at,” he said.
However, he expressed frustration that it took railroad officials more than two hours to arrive.
We really wanted to know what was on that train. Robert Lipscomb, battalion chief, Lynchburg Fire Department
“We really wanted to know what was on that train,” Lipscomb told investigators.
The confusion even included not knowing what railroad to call. Norfolk Southern also operates trains through downtown Lynchburg parallel to the CSX tracks.
Lipscomb said both railroads were notified, and officials from Norfolk Southern arrived within 45 minutes of the derailment. However, they determined quickly that it was not one of the railroad’s trains.
“They did stay on scene to kind of, I guess, be of some assistance, but they weren’t able to help us at all really because it wasn’t their train,” Lipscomb said.
Other issues Lipscomb identified: The paperwork identifying the train’s cargo was in the locomotive, but firefighters didn’t know where to find it. They also couldn’t find the train crew.
Firefighters knew from the red hazardous materials placards on the tank cars that the train was carrying crude oil. But they didn’t know how much was on the train or what kind of oil it was.
Lipscomb said he kept looking at his watch and proposed “taking it to the next level” by calling the state’s deputy secretary of public safety if a CSX representative didn’t arrive by five minutes past 4 p.m., more than two hours since the derailment.
“I’m like, ‘I’ve got to know; we’ve got to have someone here,’” Lipscomb said, “and before my time ran out, he showed up.”
Maryland judge orders release of oil train reports
HIGHLIGHTS
• Case marks first time railroads have lost on the issue in court
• Judge not persuaded that release would harm security, business
• Companies that filed 2014 lawsuit have until Sept. 4 to appeal
By Curtis Tate, August 17, 2015
Tank cars loaded with crude oil head east at Hurricane, W. Va., in May 2014. A Maryland judge has ordered the release of oil train reports to McClatchy and other news organizations. West Virginia and a handful of other states agreed to keep the reports confidential. Curtis Tate – McClatchy
WASHINGTON – A Maryland judge rejected two rail carriers’ arguments that oil train reports should be withheld from the public, ordering them released to McClatchy and other news organizations that sought them.
The ruling isn’t the first time railroads have lost their bid to keep the oil train reports secret, but it is the first court decision recognizing the public’s right to see them.
The U.S. Department of Transportation began requiring in May 2014 that railroads inform states of large shipments of crude oil after a series of derailments with spills, fires, explosions and evacuations. Since February, six more major oil train derailments have occurred in North America.
Nonetheless, some railroads have continued to press their case that the reports should be exempt from disclosure under state open records laws. Most states shared the documents anyway, and Pennsylvania and Texas did so after McClatchy appealed. Maryland is the only state that was taken to court after it said it would release the reports.
Norfolk Southern and CSX sued the Maryland Department of the Environment in July 2014 to stop the state agency from releasing the records to McClatchy and the Associated Press. They have until Sept. 4 to appeal the decision, issued Friday by Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.
Both companies, which transport crude oil to East Coast refineries concentrated in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, said they would review the decision.
Dave Pidgeon, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern, said the company would “respond at the appropriate time and venue.”
Melanie Cost, a spokeswoman for CSX, said the railroad “remains committed to safely moving these and all other shipments on its network.”
The ruling isn’t the first time railroads have lost their bid to keep the oil train reports secret, but it is the first court decision recognizing the public’s right to access them.
In his 20-page opinion, Fletcher-Hill was not persuaded by arguments that releasing the oil train reports would harm the railroads’ security and business interests. He also dismissed the relevance of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s May final rule addressing the safety of oil trains. The companies had argued that the final rule supported their claims.
He also ordered the companies to pay any open court costs.
In a statement, Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles said the agency was pleased with the ruling and that it is “committed to transparency in government.”
Rail transportation of Bakken crude oil, produced through hydraulic fracturing of shale formations in North Dakota, has grown exponentially in the past five years. However, a series of fiery derailments, including one in Quebec in 2013 that killed 47 people, have raised numerous concerns about public safety, environmental protection and emergency planning and response.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx issued an emergency order on May 7, 2014, that required any railroad shipping 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude oil through a state to inform that state’s emergency response commission what routes the trains would take and which counties they would cross, as well as provide a reasonable estimate of how many trains to expect in a week.
Beginning in June 2014, McClatchy submitted open records requests in 30 states for the oil train reports, including Maryland.
McClatchy was able to glean some of the details in the Maryland report through a Freedom of Information Act request to Amtrak, which owns part of Norfolk Southern’s oil train route in the state. The subsequent release of oil train reports in Pennsylvania revealed more about such operations in Maryland.
On Monday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf released an 84-page assessment of oil train safety in the state, which examined derailment risk, tank car failures and regulatory oversight. Some Maryland lawmakers have called for the state to perform a similar assessment.
