Tag Archives: Lynchburg VA

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Ethanol, Explosion, Fire, Lynchburg VA, Rail Safety

Lynchburg VA Task Force issues 32 draft recommendations on railroad safety

Repost from WSLS 10, Roanoke VA

McAuliffe’s Railroad & Security Task Force presents draft of rail safety proposal

By Margaret Grigsby, Apr 09, 2015 5:18 PM
Flames and black smoke were seen at a train derailment in downtown Lynchburg in 2014.
Flames and black smoke were seen at a train derailment in downtown Lynchburg in 2014.

RICHMOND (WSLS 10) – Governor Terry McAuliffe’s Railroad Safety and Security Task Force presented its recommendations on railroad safety and how to protect lives, property and the environment at a meeting in Richmond Thursday. The task force was created after the Lynchburg train derailment in 2014. Its report is a result of eight months of research and input multiple sources.

In a draft of the group’s report are key findings of its investigation into the current state of rail safety in Virginia as well as recommendations on how to make the tracks safer for people and the environment. The report says Virginia railroads are generally safe, efficient and reliable, however recent derailments involving Bakken crude oil and other flammable liquids is cause for concern.

Included in the recommendations section of the draft were 32 items in the areas of planning, organization, training, information sharing, response, funding and regulatory/legislative. The recommendations covered everything from prioritization of areas where a derailment would have high impact to the purchase and implementation of training equipment and procedures.

Read the full report draft here.

In a statement released by the James River Association on the task force’s report draft, Policy Specialist for the JRA Adrienne Kotula said the recommendations were a “key step forward in addressing the risks posed by transporting crude oil by rail through Virginia.”

Kotula noted what the report lacks is focus on recommendations to prevent accidents through inspections of railways.

The report noted federal studies by the U.S. Department of Transportation conclude rail transport of crude oil and ethanol could result major financial and environmental damages. The report quotes the USDOT’s 2014 research, saying:

The analysis shows that expected damages based on the historical safety record could be $4.5 billion and damages from higher-consequence events could reach $14 billion over a 20-year period in the absence of the rule.

The final recommendations from the task force are set to be issued on April 30, the anniversary of the Lynchburg Bakken crude oil train derailment. The draft is available for public comment through April 19.

Bakken Crude, Cleanup funding, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Oil spill

Lessons from Lynchburg – Get ready for the next one!

Repost from The Daily Press, Newport News VA
[Editor:  This article turns into a promo for CSX with too-easy suggestions of safer times ahead, but it details a good overview of events immediately following a major derailment with explosion and fire.  See “Responders had to…” highlighted below.   – RS]

Virginia, CSX offer advice for crude-by-rail accidents

Symposium session addresses preventing, responding to train derailments

By Tamara Dietrich, March 21, 2015

A big lesson from the crude oil train that derailed in Lynchburg last April, sparked a raging fire and spilled fuel into the James River is this: Get ready for the next one.

Not that emergency response experts are predicting another derailment in Virginia, but since up to five CSX trains each week carry Bakken crude across the width of the state to a fuel terminal in Yorktown, the possibility exists.

And residents should understand the risks, how to mitigate them and how to respond.

“I would think they would engage with their emergency manager for that region and say, ‘Hey, what do we need to know?’ ” said Wade Collins, hazardous materials supervisor with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM). ” ‘What do we need to do? How are we prepared for that?’ ”

Collins regaled first-responders from around the area with a blow-by-blow of the combined emergency response to the Lynchburg derailment, part of a presentation Friday morning at the 2015 Virginia Emergency Management Symposium in Hampton. The symposium ran from Wednesday through Friday.

Appearing with him was Bryan Rhode, vice president for state government affairs for the Mid-Atlantic region for CSX Transportation. Rhode spoke on measures that CSX and the industry are taking to prevent derailments, the safety training they offer and the ways they assist in the response when an accident occurs.

Those measures include reducing maximum train speeds, enhancing braking systems, conducting more track inspections, offering training for first-responders around the country, pressing for improved tank car regulations and better testing and classification for Bakken crude oil, which is more volatile than typical crude.

“Safety is our absolutely No. 1 priority,” said Rhode, a former Virginia secretary for public safety. “Nothing takes a back seat to safety.

Lynchburg was lucky

The Lynchburg derailment made national headlines when 17 cars out of a 105-car tanker train carrying about 3 million gallons of crude suddenly jumped the tracks in the downtown area.

Three tankers careened down the banks of the James River and into the water. One tanker burst open, spilling its fuel.

Something sparked, setting off a fireball so intense it burned itself out after 49 minutes, Collins said.

But Lynchburg was lucky.

“If we had to have a crude oil derailment in Virginia, everything was in our favor that day, actually,” Collins said.

Two days of rain had put the James at flood stage, which helped douse the flames and cool the tankers.

The weather was bad, so residents weren’t milling at the riverside park. No anglers were hanging out at popular fishing holes.

And the tankers ran into the river rather than crash into the commercial area.

Of the 30,000 gallons of fuel contained in the broken tanker, Collins said 29,245 gallons were consumed by the fire. Another 390 gallons were released to the river, and less than 200 gallons into the soil. What little remained was recovered.

And no one was hurt.

Emergency responders at the scene ranged from the local fire department to state hazardous materials teams, the National Guard to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. CSX immediately deployed its own group of hazardous materials professionals and special agents to set up an outreach center for local residents and business owners impacted by the accident.

“We bring an enormous amount of resources to the table,” Rhode said. “If we have an incident, we’re going to be there from that point until it is effectively resolved. And we’re going to get the job done.”

Responders had to evacuate the area, notify local municipalities, identify water intakes downstream and access points on the river for vehicles and boats. Booms were spread across the river to stop the flow of residual oil.

The toppled tanker cars still on the tracks were up-righted, put on flatbed cars and shipped off. The ones in the water were drained of fuel, then hauled from the river.

Contractors hired by state and federal authorities as well as CSX began testing the water and soil. Collins said monthly tests are still conducted.

“They monitored it very closely,” Collins said. “They looked for fish kill or damage or injury, and we found nothing.”

The initial response took nine days and has cost about $4 million, he said. The investigation into the cause of the derailment is still ongoing.

Be prepared

Among the lessons learned, Collins said, is the value of relationships, partnerships and training. And keeping up on current issues.

“Know what’s coming through your community,” he said.

And know if you have the resources to respond to a rail emergency.

“As we look along that crude oil route, many of those jurisdictions are rural,” Collins said. “They have volunteer emergency services. They may or may not have the capability to do an effective response. If you know you don’t have that capability, then be planning — where can I get that?”

CSX offers hazardous materials safety training at the local level, and hosts a trainer training facility in Pueblo, Colo., that handles 4,000 first-responders a year, said Rhode. Tuition and travel costs are covered.

The company hosted a three-day safety training event in Richmond last year and will try to conduct another in Virginia next year. It also offers online training opportunities on its website.

On Thursday, Rhode said, CSX presented a $25,000 donation to the Virginia Hazardous Materials Training Facility in York County.

The rail company also offers a system “unique” in the industry, that provides emergency response officials near real-time information on what’s on a particular train, he said. The company is also piloting a mobile app for first-responders to get that information “when you need it.”

Letting the public know what’s being carried on a train, however, is more problematic.

“Railroads are not allowed to disseminate customer information, but are able to do it in terms of our emergency response,” Rhode said. “It’s a security matter. You don’t want real-time information about very hazardous materials necessarily out there in the wrong hands.”

CSX operates in 23 states and two provinces of Canada. It runs 13,000 trains a day, two of which carry crude oil.

In Virginia, it operates 2,000 miles of track and four major rail yards, including one in Newport News. The company employs 1,200 people in the state. About 40 percent of the cargo unloaded at the Port of Virginia is transported on CSX trains, Rhode said.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire, Massive increase in crude-by-rail

String of ‘Bomb Train’ Explosions in the US and Canada Casts Doubt On Proposed Safety Upgrades

Repost from VICE News

String of ‘Bomb Train’ Explosions in the US and Canada Casts Doubt On Proposed Safety Upgrades

By Peter Rugh, March 11, 2015 | 11:55 am

explosionOver the last half-decade, North American oil by rail transports have exploded. Literally.

Driven by oil booms in Alberta, Canada’s boreal forest and in the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota, the amount of oil hauled over the nation’s rail system has surged to more than a million barrels a day.

But the number of fiery derailments has also spiked. There were 38 derailments involving fires and ruptures on the rails in 2014, up from 20 in 2009, even as the total number of accidents declined by 21 percent over the same period.

US regulators are drawing up new rules governing crude by rail shipments that will likely be released this spring. But a fresh series of explosions on the tracks might prove their approach too limited.

“We keep seeing exploding bomb trains on different rail carriers, going different speeds, with different rail cars, with different kinds of oil,” said Eric De Place with the Sightline Institute, a non-profit environmental watchdog group. “The fundamentals here are that the whole enterprise is unsafe. I don’t know how much more clearly the universe could underscore that point.”

Last Saturday, first responders in Galena, Illinois battled flames from a five-car explosion near the Wisconsin border. Eight hundred miles away, in Gogama, Ontario, seven tanker cars caught fire — the second crude train to explode in the Canadian province since February 14th. On February 17th, in West Virginia, a 19-car crude explosion blackened the sky above the town of Mount Carbon. Each of these derailments — and others in Casselton, North Dakota and Lynchburg, Virginia — has left widespread destruction and environmental damage in their wake. In Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in 2013 an oil train went off the rails, exploded, and killed 47 people.

‘The proposed rules are almost laughably inadequate.’

Last July, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) announced it was preparing new rules governing crude shipments in order to address growing concern about the safety and environmental impact of the boom in oil by rail shipments. Publically at least, the announcement was met with applause by both the oil industry and railroads.

“Our safety goal is zero incidents,” Brian Straessle, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a former aide to Congressman Tom Price, a Republican representing Georgia, told VICE News. “Reaching that goal will require meaningful improvements to safety that are guided by science and data as part of a comprehensive approach to better prevent, mitigate, and respond to accidents.”

“API supports upgrades to the tank car fleet beyond current designs,” Straessle added.

But the draft DOT regulations would only impact a specific type of oil, crude from the Bakken shale region of North Dakota. And they focus on retrofitting or phasing out older model DOT-111 cars from Bakken crude transports.

But, unlike previous derailments, which sparked DOTs drive for safety improvements, the trains that burst into flames in Ontario recently were carrying heavy tar sands bitumen, less flammable than Bakken crude — but flammable nonetheless. In its draft rules, the DOT estimates “about 23,000 cars will be transferred to Alberta tar sands service” as a result of the new regulations and it “expects no cars will be retired.” The Canadian government is also implementing crude by rail reforms that are expected to harmonize with those of the US.
In all four derailments since February 14th, as well as the wreck in Lynchburg, newer or retrofitted cars, touted by the industry as safer were involved. These cars, known as Casualty Prevention Circular-1232s (CPC-1232s) already meet one of the possible design specifications the DOT is considering mandating for Bakken transports.

In other words: the type of cars diminish the risk of explosion and rupture have proven to be inadequate.

The railroad industry previously began standardizing the CPC-1232 design, which can apply to a range of car models, voluntarily in 2011. The CPC-1232 standard allows for exposed valves on the bottom of the tankers that often get severed during derailments, spilling fuel, as has often been the case with legacy DOT-111s.

Additionally, the shell casing on older DOT-111s, a key factor in whether the cars will explode, is 7/16 of an inch thick; on CPC-1232s it is a sixteenth of an inch thicker. The DOT is considering another option: mandating 9/16-inch shells. The thicker the shell, however, the less oil fits in each tanker, cutting profits for shippers who have challenged this aspect of the rules proposal.

Still, the American Association of Railroads (AAR), which introduced the CPC-1232 standard, claims, like the API, it is open to reform.

“The freight rail industry has been calling for tougher tank car standards for years and wants all tank cars carrying crude oil, including the CPC-1232, to be upgraded by retrofitting or taken out of service,” AAR spokesman, Ed Greenberg, told VICE News. “AAR believes every tank car carrying crude oil today needs to be upgraded and made safer, and we support an aggressive retrofit or replacement program.”

Related: Video footage shows massive explosion after West Virginia ‘bomb train’ derailment

But De Place doesn’t think any of the DOT’s proposed regulations will do much good.

“The proposed rules are almost laughably inadequate,” he said. “If American lives weren’t at stake, I would take it as comic relief. What they are proposing are very modest tweaks to the existing system and a long phase-out period that will allow the industry to run even the most dangerous cars for years to come.”

Under the DOT’s current proposal, older DOT-111s carrying Bakken crude won’t be ordered off the rails until October 2017.

De Place insists there’s a simpler, safer solution. “The government should issue an emergency order suspending the transport of crude oil immediately,” he said. “Anything short of that is playing Russian Roulette.”

The DOT did not respond to a request for comment from VICE News.

Bakken Crude, Benicia City Council, Benicia Planning Commission, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Oil stabilization, Positive Train Control, Tank car design, Train braking systems, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail, Valero Energy Corporation

BENICIA HERALD LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Dr. James Egan: Deny Valero’s application

From The Benicia Herald (Benicia Herald letters appear only in the print edition)
[Editor:  Dr. Egan’s letter is a welcome contribution, expressing the growing conviction of many throughout North America, that crude-by-rail is simply unsafe under current conditions, and should be not be permitted at this time.  See also Dr. Egan’s 9/14/14 comments addressing the Valero Crude By Rail Draft EIR.  – RS]

Timely decision on crude by rail warranted: Deny Valero’s application

By James Egan, M.D., Benicia, March 10, 2015

The headline in the Feb. 5, 2015 edition of The Herald, “Another delay as crude-by-rail project debate enters 3rd year,” signals sympathy toward the Valero Benicia Refinery as regards its Crude by Rail (CBR) Use Permit Application, currently before the Planning Commission.  While it is difficult working up crocodile tears for a multi-billion-dollar international oil corporation, the energy and expense invested in forwarding this project bear acknowledgement, and a timely decision on the application should be made out of fairness to the applicant.  To that end, I would like to suggest that the Planning Commission and the City Council have enough information available to take action at any time.  The application should be denied on the basis of rail safety.

On Feb. 17 of this year a crude oil train derailed and exploded in Mount Carbon, W.Va.  Three million gallons of Bakken crude spilled from 26 ruptured tank cars, forcing the evacuation of two nearby towns.  Two days prior, another oil train derailed and caught fire in Ontario, Canada.  Last Thursday, March 5, 21 cars carrying Bakken crude derailed, split and exploded near Galena, Ill.  Another of the dozens of oil- or ethanol-train accidents involving a fire, derailment or significant fuel spill reported in the U.S. or Canada since 2006 was the Lynchburg, Va. derailment and fire in April 2014.

The significance of this particular series of railway disasters to the citizens of Benicia is that they all involved CPC-1232 tank cars, the same cars that Valero would use for the transportation of crude to its facility in Benicia, according to the Draft Environmental Impact Report.

In a Feb. 23 editorial titled, “Get rid of exploding tank cars,” the San Francisco Chronicle states that “Valero Energy Co. has agreed to haul Bakken crude to its Benicia bayside refinery in the newer CPC-1232 cars as part of its city permit application to revamp its facilities to receive crude by rail rather than by oceangoing tanker.  But that promise now appears inadequate to protect the safety of those in Benicia as well as in other communities – Roseville, Sacramento, Davis – along the line.”

The same edition of the Chronicle details a report from the Department of Transportation predicting that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail 15 times in 2015 and average 10 times yearly over the next two decades, causing $4.5 billion in damage with potential fatalities of more than 200 people in a given accident.  This may actually be an underestimate based on recent major derailment rates.

Friends and foes of CBR alike agree that the transportation of crude oil by rail involves inherent risk.  Can’t we also agree that the risk should be reduced to the greatest extent possible before inviting these potentially explosive trains to Benicia?  Lowering the risk of tank car derailment, rupture and explosion now should translate into saved human lives and prevention of environmental disasters in the future.

The danger can, in fact, be mitigated.  The crude can be stabilized prior to its transportation by extraction of its most volatile components.  North Dakota has implemented standards making this mandatory for Bakken crude, but many feel that their new guidelines are overly lax.  New federal regulations due to be released in May could further address this, as would rail safety measures such as Positive Train Control and electronically controlled pneumatic brakes.  New, safer tank cars designed specifically to carry this type of crude have been designed and are in production.

Unfortunately, the new federal guidelines will likely require years for full enforcement, and complete phaseout of the existing, unreliable tank car fleet by newer, stronger cars, such as the Greenbrier HM-251, will also require years of effort.

Accordingly, if we agree that the risks of transportation of crude by rail should be absolutely minimized prior to approving the CRB project, we have to acknowledge that this is currently beyond Valero’s reach and the Use Permit Application should be denied.

Those who would roll the dice and approve the current application should consider how comfortable they will feel with that decision once they find themselves in a front row seat at the Park/Bayshore railroad crossing watching fifty tank cars containing 1,470,000 gallons of potentially explosive crude rumble by on the same spur line that has seen derailment of five train cars since Nov. 4, 2013 (in addition to the two locomotives that derailed on Sept. 7, 2014 near the port).

Kudos to Planning Commission members for the time and energy spent on fairly evaluating this project.  It would seem that as time has passed the correct path forward has become much clearer.  At this point, the ongoing health and well-being of all Benicians should hold foremost importance in the decision-making process.  Their protection is the least we can expect from our city government.

James Egan, M.D.