Repost from The Sacramento Bee [Editor: The Bee presents a good summary of uprail critiques of Valero’s plan, quoting City staff, Valero and the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. Note that organized local opposition has also been strong and persistent. – RS]
Benicia plans more study of crude-oil train impacts
By Tony Bizjak, 02/03/2015
In this July 24, 2014 file photo, an investigator photographs the scene where a locomotive and cars carrying crude oil went off the track beneath the Magnolia Bridge in Seattle. Mike Siegel / AP Photo/The Seattle Times
A controversial proposal by the Valero Refining Company in Benicia to run two 50-car crude-oil trains a day through Sacramento and other Northern California cities to its bayside refinery has hit another slowdown.
Benicia officials on Tuesday said they have decided to redo some sections of an environmental impact analysis of the project. The city plans to release a rewritten report June 30 for public review and comment over the summer.
The city’s decision comes after numerous groups, including Sacramento leaders, state Attorney General Kamala Harris and state oil spill prevention officials, called Benicia’s review of the project inadequate.
Those critics said Benicia failed to analyze the potential impacts of an oil spill and fire in cities, waterways and rural areas along the rail line, and also did not analyze the project’s potential impacts east of Roseville in environmentally sensitive areas such as the Feather River Canyon. They also challenged Benicia’s assertion that an oil spill between Roseville and Benicia would be a once-in-a-111-year event.
Crude-oil rail shipments have come under national scrutiny in the last year. Several spectacular explosions of crude oil trains, including one that killed 47 in a Canadian town in 2013, have prompted a push by federal officials and cities for safety improvements.
Sacramento and Davis leaders have called on Benicia to require the Union Pacific Railroad to give advance notice to local emergency responders, and to prohibit the railroad company from parking or storing loaded oil tank trains in urban areas. Local officials want the railroad to use train cars with electronically controlled brakes and rollover protection. Sacramento also has asked Benicia to limit Valero to shipping oil that has been stripped of highly volatile elements, including natural gas liquid.
Valero officials had said they hoped to begin receiving crude oil by trains early this year. In an email to the Bee, Valero spokesman Chris Howe said, “The proposed steps (by Benicia) are part of the process which we expect will allow the city to grant us a use permit for the project.”
In a hearing Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., Jack Gerard, the president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, lamented that lengthy reviews were holding up the development of the country’s energy resources, including the Keystone XL pipeline, which has been under review by the State Department for seven years.
Gerard said some opponents were turning the process into a referendum on fossil fuels. “What we’re seeing across the country today is there’s a small group of individuals who are using permitting processes and infrastructure as surrogates to stop economic activity that they disagree with,” he told the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.
Repost from KTVU [Editor: first reports were of a propane leak. Later … “They ran a test and it came back to be lubricating oil which is not hazardous in this kind of quantity….” Apologies for the commercial ad in the video. – RS]
Leak from rail car prompts evacuation of Pittsburg homes
January 7, 2015
PITTSBURG, Calif. (KTVU) – A possible leak from a Union Pacific rail car led to the evacuation of six homes in Pittsburg Wednesday night.
The rail car in question is parked along Parkside Drive, not far from homes.
Union Pacific workers were doing a routine inspection when they noticed something was amiss on one car and thought there was a leak.
Since each tanker car carries about 30,000 gallons of highly flammable butane, the workers called Contra Costa County Fire Department for help.
“Absolutely it’s a scare. We want to make sure everybody was as safe as possible,” said Fire Marshall Robert Marshall.
Fire crews evacuated half a dozen nearby homes.
“I just heard the helicopters and stepped outside to see what was going on,” said Brian Gillespie, a neighbor. People in the area were alerted by the commotion of the fire crews and police descending on their neighborhood.
“My concern was just the safety of the people in the area,” said Gillespie.
Firefighters called in Contra Costa County’s Hazardous Materials team.
First, they took an air sample from 50 feet away. That test came back negative.
Later, a second team climbed onto the rail car and took a sample of an oily substance that is not usually found on these tankers.
“They ran a test and it came back to be lubricating oil which is not hazardous in this kind of quantity,” said Marshall.
Fire officials lifted the evacuation order at 8:10 p.m.
Repost from The Sacramento Bee [Editor: Significant quote: “…city officials said Union Pacific has been parking a dozen ethanol train cars at times on side tracks, some near the Ironworks Lofts housing area, where they wait until there is room to shuttle them onto the Buckeye property….City officials say UP frequently moves train cars back and forth across 15th Street at Jefferson Boulevard to make room in its yard.” Does this sound like something we can expect on nearby rails and street crossings outside of Valero if the City approves crude-by-rail? – RS]
West Sacramento says no to ethanol trains
By Tony Bizjak, 12/21/2014
A tanker truck is filled from railway cars containing crude oil on railroad tracks in McClellan Park in North Highlands on Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Several crude oil and ethanol trains have been involved in crashes and explosions nationally in recent years, prompting concerns in cities along rail lines. | Randall Benton
The city of West Sacramento and a Texas-based gasoline company are battling over whether it’s riskier to ship large amounts of ethanol through city streets on trains or on tanker trucks – a dispute that last week spilled into court.
Every day, six train cars full of the fuel additive arrive at a mixing terminal on West Sacramento’s riverfront south of Highway 50.
Saying the city is uncomfortable with trains, some of which sit unattended with their volatile cargo outside the terminal for days, the West Sacramento City Council refused on Wednesday to renew the company’s rail transport permit. The company, Buckeye Terminals, mixes the ethanol with gasoline at its South River Road plant for sale at Northern California gas stations.
Councilman Bill Kristoff noted that the train cars often park in the city’s Bridge District near a residential area, and that city officials are not allowed to know exactly what the cars carry. “I don’t understand the rail business well enough to know why all of these cars have to stay in our community for as long as they stay, and at the same time we don’t get to know what’s in them,” he said. “That is sort of alarming to me.”
Several crude oil and ethanol trains have been involved in crashes and explosions nationally in recent years, prompting concerns in cities along rail lines.
Buckeye officials quickly fired back, suing the city and contending that the permit denial creates a greater risk to the public because it likely will force the company to quadruple the number of tanker truck deliveries it receives daily at the plant, as a replacement for the rail deliveries.
In the lawsuit, filed Friday in Yolo Superior Court, the company accuses the city of failing to conduct adequate traffic studies in the new development areas along South River Road. Those studies, if done, would show safety risks where ethanol trucks mix with traffic, said Braiden Chadwick, a Buckeye attorney.
“The last thing anyone wants to see is a car vs. tanker truck (crash); that is a bad combo,” Chadwick said. “It is just a recipe for disaster.”
City officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying they are reviewing it.
West Sacramento’s decision to stop the ethanol trains represents another step in a decades-long effort by city leaders to transition the old industrial waterfront south of the Raley Field ballpark into modern live-work neighborhoods with condominiums, row houses, offices, hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues. The city previously ushered industrial companies out of the Bridge District around Raley Field and shut down a rail line along the waterfront to clear the site for redevelopment.
The city has accelerated those efforts in the Pioneer Bluff area near the Buckeye facility in recent months. A row of unused cement company silos is being torn down on the riverfront. The city has shut its sewer treatment plant. It also is planning to close its corporation yard to open space for waterfront development. The city opened a new bridge this month to connect South River Road to the Southport area, bringing more vehicles past the Buckeye site.
Although the Buckeye facility does not fit West Sacramento’s plans for the area, the permit refusal “is absolutely not intended to try to drive Buckeye out of the district,” Mayor Christopher Cabaldon said. Buckeye is one of several fuel-related industries still operating in the area south of Highway 50.
“The existing Buckeye facility is absolutely welcome to remain and operate at its existing site to the extent that it is complying with the terms of its permits (and) that it is not invading the public right of way,” Cabaldon said.
Buckeye’s attorney disagreed, saying the city’s actions suggest it is trying to squeeze the company out. “The confluence of events lead us to that conclusion,” Chadwick said. “It looks like they are trying to make operations of the Buckeye facility more difficult.”
Buckeye’s rail shipment permit for ethanol expires at the end of this month. The company had sought a permit to continue train deliveries of six cars a day through 2019. The site has been an ethanol station since 2002, when the city agreed to the first of a series of limited permits to allow a previous terminal owner to receive rail shipments of the additive. Buckeye bought the facility a few years ago. The company mixes the ethanol with gasoline that is piped to West Sacramento from the Bay Area.
The dispute is part of a growing national debate over the safety of rail transport of flammable commodities. Federal transportation officials are contemplating additional safety regulations for train transports after several explosive crashes in recent years. The federal focus has been on crude oil shipments to refineries. But safety experts say ethanol trains also should be subject to more requirements, citing crashes that caused explosions and fires.
Testifying this week before the West Sacramento City Council, Fire Chief Rick Martinez expressed a preference for tanker truck ethanol shipments over rail shipments, acknowledging both have risks.
Martinez noted that the city has almost no legal control over rail operations, so it cannot prohibit trains with hazardous commodities from parking overnight next to residential areas. The federal government pre-empts city regulation of rail activities. But, Martinez said, the city can manage the risk of tanker truck shipments, controlling where the trucks drive, and at what speed, and can prohibit those trucks from sitting unattended overnight.
Martinez and other city officials said Union Pacific has been parking a dozen ethanol train cars at times on side tracks, some near the Ironworks Lofts housing area, where they wait until there is room to shuttle them onto the Buckeye property. The parking area runs from Raley Field under the Pioneer Bridge to 15th Street. City officials say UP frequently moves train cars back and forth across 15th Street at Jefferson Boulevard to make room in its yard.
Martinez said his department also has noted ethanol train cars parked along Jefferson Boulevard.
“This practice puts the adjacent residential neighborhood at increased risk from a hazardous materials incident,” Martinez said in a recent memo. “By removing the ethanol rail cars from their current location, the risk potential is significantly reduced.”
Buckeye attorney Chadwick contends that increasing the number of tanker trucks making daily ethanol deliveries is a risky move. He said the trucks would have to make left turns on South River Road to get to the plant, and would have to deal with more traffic as the city turns the Pioneer Bluff area and the Bridge District into populated communities.
Buckeye officials say they currently receive ethanol on two to three tanker trucks a day, in addition to the six rail cars. A city staff report suggests as many as four trucks may arrive on weekdays. The city analysis says Buckeye could bring in nine additional tanker trucks daily to its plant after rail shipments are halted this month.
Chadwick said that number is low, and that his company estimates 15 or more additional tanker trucks would be needed daily. He said he did not know what route the trucks would use to get to West Sacramento, but said they likely would arrive via area freeways.
The lawsuit, he said, maintains the city failed to adequately study how much extra traffic would use South River Road, and how that traffic would mix with daily ethanol trucks trying to make left turns.
“Buckeye views that lives might be at risk here,” Chadwick said. “Help us keep the facility safe, because we are not going anywhere.”
U.S. Crackdown on Oil Trains—Less Than Meets the Eye
Federal regulators don’t stop oil trains from being left unattended, engines running.
By Marcus Stern and Sebastian Jones, Dec 8, 2014
The aftermath of the Lac-Megantic crude rail explosion in 2013 in Canada. Credit: Axel Drainvile, flickr
The first public action U.S. rail regulators took after a fiery oil train explosion killed 47 people in Canada in July 2013 seemed clear, impactful and firm: Trains carrying hazardous materials could no longer be left unattended with their engines running unless the railroad first got approval from the Federal Railroad Administration.
Leaving a freight train unattended overnight with the engines running had been a major factor in the Lac-Megantic, Canada, disaster, and the August 2, 2013 news release announcing the U.S. action had a no-more-business-as-usual tone. The emergency order was “a mandatory directive to the railroad industry, and failure to comply will result in enforcement actions,” the press release said, adding no train shall be left unattended on the tracks with its engines running “unless specifically authorized.”
But it turns out that the emergency order had a loophole big enough to drive a locomotive through.
Early on the morning of May 6, less than a year after the order was announced, James Racich, a trustee of the town of Plainfield, Ill., noticed a train parked near a crossing in the middle of town with its engines running early. Racich didn’t know about the emergency order, and he was accustomed to seeing trains left unattended on that stretch of track, enough so that it was a sore point with him. When he returned six hours later and saw the train still there—its engines still running with nobody aboard—he contacted the police. They confirmed that the train’s engines were unattended and contacted the railroad, Canadian National.
“They basically told us the train was secure, was locked up, things like that,” Plainfield Police Chief John Konopek said in an interview, adding “We have our hands tied. Because of federal regulation they can do that.”
The half-mile long train parked in Plainfield was a mix of hazmat tankers and non-hazmat box cars, Konopek said. Its crew members had left it unattended because they had reached their maximum allowable number of hours of continuous work. By the time the replacement crew arrived, the train had been parked in downtown Plainfield, unattended with its engines running, for more than seven hours, according to Racich.
Patrick Waldron, Canadian National’s director of state government relations, said in an interview that stopping the train on that section of track was part of the company’s “normal operating practices and is in full compliance of the laws and regulations, including that order.”
When pressed about the emergency order, he said, “I know the emergency order, but I’ve answered your question.”
It turns out that Waldron was right, because the emergency order is far weaker than advertised.
A tough-sounding FRA news release announcing the order had said that railroads could no longer leave idling trains unattended without approval from the FRA. Five days later, however, the FRA published the actual order in the Federal Register with less fanfare and tough talk. It contained fine print masking a huge loophole: The order would be satisfied when the “the railroad develops, adopts, complies with and makes available to the FRA upon request, a plan” for such stoppages. The “FRA does not intend to grant approval to any plan,” the order continued. So railroads could continue leaving trains unattended without FRA approval.
According to FRA spokesman Kevin Thompson, regulators aren’t required to review the plan. The railroad simply has to keep the plan in its files.
Canadian National reported it had a plan, Thompson explained, so the company had complied with the emergency order and can continue leaving trains unattended on the tracks with their engines running.
This article is part of a project supported by the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the George Polk Award program at Long Island University, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Fund for Environmental Journalism. It was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
