By Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press, March 17, 2015
A CN Rail train derailment near Gogama, Ont., is shown in a Sunday, March 8, 2015 handout photo. Canada’s transportation investigator says track infrastructure failures may have played a role in three recent derailments involving oil-laden trains in northern Ontario. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO – Glenn Thibeault
Canada’s transportation investigator says track infrastructure failures may have played a role in three recent derailments involving oil-laden trains in northern Ontario.
The Transportation Safety Board says it wants Transport Canada to review the risk assessments for a stretch of track known as the CN Ruel subdivision following the fiery derailments in Gogama and Minnipuka.
It says trains have already been ordered to travel slowly on the Class 4 welded rail track due to “various infrastructure and track maintenance issues,” but that heavily loaded tank cars often exert “higher than usual forces” on the track.
The board says that exposes weaknesses in the track and makes it more susceptible to failure.
The agency says its preliminary observations on the March 7 Gogama derailment also found the tank cars performed similarly to those involved in the deadly derailment in Lac-Megantic, Que., despite meeting upgraded safety standards for Class 111 tank cars.
Similar observations were made about a Feb. 14 derailment near the same community, which is about 80 kilometres south of Timmins.
The derailments have fuelled the debate over transporting oil by rail and prompted the transportation ministers of Ontario and Quebec to express concern to their federal counterpart.
Last week, Ottawa proposed tough new standards for rail tank cars used to transport crude oil that would phase out the much-criticized Class 111 tank cars by 2025.
The proposal would require the new tank cars to have outer “jackets,” a layer of thermal protection, and thicker steel walls.
The Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday the proposed standards “look promising,” but must be implemented more quickly than suggested “given initial observations of the performance” of the upgraded Class 111 in recent derailments.
“If older tank cars, including the (upgraded cars), are not phased out sooner, then the regulator and industry need to take more steps to reduce the risk of derailments or consequences following a derailment carrying flammable liquids,” it said.
Milton residents ‘will be lying down on the tracks’ to prevent surprise CN plan
By San Grewal, March 17, 2015
MILTON MAYOR Gordon Krantz says his town has been “blindsided” by a CN plan to have a facility between Britannia Rd. and Lower Base Line that would bring 1,500 trucks and four additional trains into Milton every day. Zoe McKnight,Torstar News Service
A “David and Goliath” battle is shaping up in Milton, where the Toronto Star has learned CN is about to announce plans for a 400-acre rail distribution centre that throws a wrench into the region’s carefully crafted growth management strategy.
Milton’s mayor and top bureaucrat are vowing the town will not go down without a fight.
“We have 50,000 residents, 20,000 houses planned for the area north of this (intermodal) facility. CN came in last week and pronounced that they are going forward — no formal application, no formal announcement,” said Milton’s chief administrative officer, William Mann.
“We know they are announcing it on Thursday. When Milton residents hear about this, they will be lying down on the tracks.”
Mann said the town, one of Canada’s fastest growing municipalities, has been told that CN, as a former Crown corporation, still has a certain power to circumvent municipal planning as governed by the province of Ontario.
Mann and Mayor Gord Krantz told the Star the town has been “blindsided” by the plan for a facility between Britannia Rd. and Lower Base Line that the town says would operate 24/7, transferring containers between trains and trucks. The town says it would bring 1,500 trucks and four additional trains into Milton every day, on CN-owned land that isn’t supposed to be used for such a facility according to Milton’s planning strategy.
Under Sustainable Halton, the region’s widely lauded plan for growth management, the land has been earmarked for strategic employment, with a mix of residential and commercial development surrounding it, as well as environmentally protected lands.
“It’s completely contrary to what we had planned,” Krantz said. “If I knew what was being proposed by CN I certainly wouldn’t be purchasing. Or if I already purchased one (of the newly built homes) and I wanted to get out from under it — I can imagine the possible legal battles.”
But Krantz is vowing to do everything the town can to fight CN, even if the rail giant has the federal government on its side, along with its powers to ignore local planning jurisdiction.
Referring to the tale of David and Goliath, Krantz said: “We all know how that story ended. I’ve got my one shot ready.”
He said Milton is already working with Halton Region and other partners on a legal strategy, but said he didn’t want to tip his hand.
CN responded to the Star’s questions about the project with a brief statement: “CN owns approximately 1,000 acres of land in the Milton, Ont., area. As part of its ongoing business operations, CN continually reviews its facilities and real estate holdings to ensure they are adequate to accommodate growth in its various businesses. Such is the case with CN’s Milton property. CN has no further comment at this time.”
One of the world’s largest rail companies, CN has a market capitalization of almost $71 billion.
CN had proposed a similar project in 2001 — preceding the province’s strategy to manage growth — that was withdrawn after the town and region identified major issues with it, according to a news release from the Town of Milton.
Multiple sources told the Star the CN plan is to be unveiled Thursday at a breakfast event hosted by the local chamber of commerce. As the MP for Halton riding, Federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt represents Milton. A statement from the ministry to the Star said only that Raitt would attend the Chamber event Thursday “and looks forward to the presentation.”
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing was asked whether the province would guarantee a public consultation and that provincial environmental and safety rules as well as municipal planning processes would be complied with. A spokesperson said the ministry, and the Ministry of Transportation, “have been advised by CN that they are revisiting the need for an intermodal yard in the Town of Milton … CN has not provided the province with specific details of their proposal.”
With concern mounting over rail safety in the wake of the Lac-Mégantic disaster and more recent fiery derailments of trains carrying crude oil, Krantz and Mann said they have been disheartened by the province’s unwillingness to address the CN plan.
When asked if he has an idea of what would be passing through the area, Krantz said: “That’s a good question. We don’t know what’s going to be transported.”
Beyond the negative impact on surrounding property values, and environmental and safety concerns, the development industry is going to be extremely upset with CN’s decision, he said.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait until the developers, especially in the residential sector, hear. I suspect their reaction will be something like mine.”
Mann said Milton has behaved like the model municipality for Ontario’s Places to Grow Act, which established managed population growth targets throughout the GTA. The town has grown from about 7,000 residents in 1971 to 84,362, according to the 2011 census.
“We could go to over 400,000 under Places to Grow. Places to Grow is all about taking your fair share. Now, upward of 500 acres of employment land and all the residential around it, could be taken out of the picture. That means the rest of the GTA will have to pick up that population.
“This plan has nothing but negative consequences for Milton, from a community perspective.”
Speed Limits May Not Stop Fiery Oil Spills, U.S. Rail Chief Says
By Jim Snyder, March 13, 2015 1:15 PM PDT
(Bloomberg) — Lower speed limits for railroads may be ineffective at keeping oil trains on the tracks and preventing massive fireballs, such as those triggered in a series of recent derailments, the chief U.S. railroad regulator said.
“If you’re going to slow trains down, you’re going to have to slow them down to 12 miles an hour,” Sarah Feinberg, acting chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, told reporters in Washington Friday.
“And then you would just have other dangers. People queuing up at grade crossings while train car after train car of volatile product goes by,” she said. “That’s not good either.”
A surge in U.S. oil production has increased the amount of crude moved by rail 5,000 percent since 2009, much of it from North Dakota’s booming Bakken field. A corresponding jump in accidents, including a 2013 oil-train derailment and explosion that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, have led U.S. and Canadian regulators to propose tougher standards for trains.
Speeds higher than 25 mph were “irresponsible” given the known weakness of the tank cars carrying the crude, Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in written comments to the Transportation Department.
Hall was responding to a proposed department rule that would require the current fleet of tank cars to be replaced. A draft is being reviewed at the White House Office of Management and Budget and is expected to be final in May.
Sloshing Effect
The Federal Railroad Administration also is studying whether slower speeds can cause a sloshing effect in tank cars, making it harder to prevent the rolling stock from wobbling off the tracks, Feinberg said.
Railroads have lobbied against new limits, saying they would result in costly delays for many of the goods hauled by rail.
Two oil-trains that derailed in the past four weeks, in West Virginia and Illinois, and created massive fireballs were traveling well below federal speed limits, Feinberg said.
Railroads last year agreed to slow trains to 40 mph from 50 mph when carrying crude through High Urban Threat Areas, a designation that covers more than three dozen U.S. communities.
“We are running out of things that I think we can ask for the railroads to do, and there have to be other industries that have skin in the game,” Feinberg said. “There also has to be attention placed on the product actually going into the railcar.”
In April, a regulation in North Dakota that requires oil to be kept at a vapor pressure below 13.7 pounds per square inch goes into effect. Feinberg said a process known as conditioning, which companies can use to meet that standard, is the “bare minimum” step to lower volatility.
Feinberg said the administration is considering further steps to reduce oil’s explosiveness before its loaded into tank cars, though the draft rule under review is silent on the issue.
This past Saturday, it happened again. A train carrying highly volatile crude oil, in this case tar sands crude from Alberta, derailed in Ontario and caught fire, damaging a bridge in the blaze. This is the fourth time in as many weeks an oil train has derailed and caught fire or exploded.
That’s right, there have been FOUR oil train derailments in North America over the past month. Here’s what that looks like:
There’s clear outrage at the local level, but, so far, political action in Washington has been nearly nonexistent. Worse, some recent reports suggest the Obama administration ‘balked’ at dealing with the problem when considering it last year.
Government Inaction
The White House is the responsible party here and it’s time this issue be given the level of attention it deserves by President Obama. It has been 20 months since the tragedy in Lac-Mégantic, but the President seems content pushing paper around while meeting with industry representatives.
As recently as last week dozens of industry representatives met with White House officials downplaying the need for strict safety regulations while an oil train in Illinois was still burning.
As it stands, draft safety standards put forth by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a part of the Department of Transportation, are awaiting final approval by the Obama Administration.
These new rules are a potentially important step, but the recent accidents make it clear even upgraded safety won’t be enough. All four accidents happened with “safer” oil tank cars, not the DOT-111 tankers widely known to be dangerous — and there are no reports any of the trains were going above the speed limit.
President Obama should adopt the strictest possible safety standards, but, at the end of the day, the only safe place for this oil is in the ground — we simply can’t afford to burn it for climate reasons and there’s no good way to transport it.
These Were No Minor Accidents
Let’s take a look at the recent derailments and why this past month demands more of a public response from Washington than it has received thus far:
The train was hauling newer model tank cars (CPC-1232s)
The train was carrying tar sands crude
Canadian National Railway Co. is building a new 1,500ft track of railroad around the burning train wreckage. Seriously.
It is clear from this most recent spate of accidents that neither “safer” tank cars or the current speed limits are limiting the threat crude-by-rail poses to our communities. But that wasn’t the only lesson to be taken from these derailments. The other, just as significant, is that transporting tar sands isn’t necessarily safer than transporting Bakken crude — which we explain in detail in our recent blog post.
Up until now it had been widely believed that tar sands crude wasn’t as explosive or combustible as the oil coming from the Bakken region in North Dakota. The recent accidents have blown this assumption to pieces.
The New Normal?
If the oil industry gets its way, accidents like these will become the new normal. The Department of Transportation itself has found that crude oil trains are likely to derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades — and that’s a conservative estimate made with old data. This would cause more than $4 billion in damage and possibly kill HUNDREDS.
This is a government agency saying hundreds of people might die in fiery explosions because of the greed of a few private corporations, yet there has been little action taken to slow or stop the oil industry’s efforts.
Communities Take A Stand
While exploding oil trains are a frightening proposition, none of this should suggest pipelines are any better. Choosing between one or the other, as many oil insiders have suggested is necessary, is like choosing to get hit by a bus or a truck.
What’s needed is an urgent and rapid transition to renewable energy that doesn’t devastate the landscape, trample on indigenous and community rights, or cook the planet. Put simply: we need to keep the oil in the ground.
That’s the message President Obama needs to hear. While he considers the best course of action on the proposed PHMSA rules, it’s important for him to know that communities all over the country are rising up and taking a stand.
In some places they’re already winning, blocking oil terminals and getting in the way of proposed expansions.
Near Seattle, local organizers won a victory over Shell, which wants to build an oil train terminal to supply its Anacortes refinery. Shell’s plans now require a full-blown environmental review. And in California, communities are standing in the way of terminal expansions across the state. (See here, here and here.)
Our message is simple. If transporting oil can’t be done safely, don’t do it. Keep it in the ground. It’s time for President Obama to take this issue seriously and put in place a moratorium on all crude-by-rail shipments until community and climate safety can be guaranteed.
Derailments like the four over the past month are what an “All of the Above” energy strategy looks like and we’re not going to take it.
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Update: While writing this article, another oil train derailed in Manitoba. Information is still coming out about this latest accident, though it appears to be smaller in scale. Still, that makes FIVE derailments involving trains carrying crude oil or refined oil products in under a month.
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