Tag Archives: Sacramento CA

Calculating percent of residents in danger zone for crude oil train derailment

Repost from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
[Editor: Someone with better statistician skills than me should verify this: take a look at NRDC’s Derailment Risk Zone Maps for California and do the math.  For instance, the population of Sacramento at risk according to NRDC, (using 2010 figures) is 256,299.  Divide that by the 2010 population of 466,488, and you find that 54.9% (!!) of Sacramento’s population is in the danger zone!  Could this be right?- RS]

PublicSource: 40 percent of Pittsburgh, PA residents in danger zone for crude oil train derailment

By Natasha Khan / PublicSource, August 17, 2014

More than 40 percent of Pittsburgh’s residents live in areas at risk if a train carrying crude oil through the city derails and catches fire, according to a PublicSource analysis.

That number does not include children at 72 K-12 schools inside those areas.

PublicSource created a map using a perimeter of a half-mile on each side of the rail lines known to carry crude oil in the city. A half-mile is the federal evacuation zone recommended for accidents involving crude oil trains.

Pittsburgh’s Office of Emergency Management Services and Homeland Security began doing a risk assessment of the trains after the federal government ordered railroads in May to turn over information about which rail lines carry a million gallons or more of crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale at a time.

“Nobody really knows that there is an explosive bomb driving through their neighborhood,” said Bill Bartlett of Action United, a Pittsburgh group that advocates on behalf of low- and moderate-income families.

Dubbed “virtual pipelines,” these trains can carry millions of gallons of crude oil in more than 100 tank cars and can be a mile long. Many of them are on their way to Philadelphia refineries carrying increasingly large shipments of Bakken crude from North Dakota.

It’s difficult to know exactly how many trains come through Pittsburgh carrying crude oil because the two major railroads, Norfolk Southern and CSX, don’t identify their routes to the public for security and business reasons.

Crude-by-rail traffic has increased by more than 4,000 percent over the past five years. There have been at least 12 significant derailments involving crude oil in North America since May 2013. Lawmakers and public safety groups are concerned that residents near railroad tracks are exposed to more danger. And officials have said safety regulations aren’t keeping up.

The July 2013 accident in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, was the most devastating in years. A train carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and destroying half the downtown.

And, since January, Pennsylvania has had three derailments involving crude. There were no injuries in any of the accidents.

While hazardous materials have traveled on railroads for years, trains have never carried this much crude oil, much of it Bakken crude, which is more flammable than other types of crude.

Emergency response in Pittsburgh

Raymond DeMichiei, deputy director of Pittsburgh’s office of emergency management and homeland security, said his office decided to do the emergency assessment after receiving information in June from the state that trains carrying more than a million gallons of crude were going through the city.

Mr. DeMichiei said his office didn’t have that information previously.

“We’ll determine if we have enough training, equipment,” Mr. DeMichiei said. “If we don’t have enough, we’ll get more.”

At least six states — Washington, North Dakota, California, Montana, Florida and Virginia — have made information publicly available about the amount of Bakken crude and the routes it is traveling.

Pennsylvania did not.

Mr. DeMichiei wouldn’t comment on how many crude trains come through the city daily, but said he generally sees a train along Route 28 on his way to work in the morning and then another one when he drives home.

“We are aware of the issues and we are working to make everyone as safe as possible,” he said.

Mr. DeMichiei said Pittsburgh doesn’t have a response plan specifically for Bakken crude and the railroads haven’t provided one. If an accident did occur, he said the city would base its response on U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines for accidents involving flammable liquids and establish a danger zone of a half-mile on either side of the track. That danger zone could expand depending on the scope of the accident, he said.

Emergency response officials in major cities and small towns have testified before Congress that responders wouldn’t be prepared to handle a large-scale crude oil disaster like the deadly one in Quebec.

Sixty-five percent of fire departments responsible for hazardous materials response haven’t trained all of their personnel for crude, a member of the International Association of Firefighters told Congress last month.

New York fire officials asked Congress to direct $100 million in emergency funds for a national training program for firefighters to address risks from these trains. The money would be used to train firefighters and to put in place stashes of firefighting foam and equipment, according to McClatchy Newspapers.

Alvin Henderson, chief of Allegheny County Emergency Services, said the rail industry has been very cooperative and first responders in the county are receiving training specific to crude oil.

Mr. Henderson said he’s not “losing any sleep” over crude oil moving through Pittsburgh.

A spokesman for Norfolk Southern said they’ll offer training in Pitcairn this month to first responders so they can get more hands-on experience with rail tank cars, equipment and information about crude oil shipments.

Under a recent voluntary agreement with the DOT, the rail industry committed $5 million for training first responders.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said that, in case of an accident, the city could call on the PA Region 13 Task Force. The task force is an initiative that allows counties to pull resources from the region in an emergency.

Trains rerouted in Missouri

Safety groups have urged railroads to reroute crude oil trains around populous areas.

In St. Louis, a city similar in population size to Pittsburgh, the fire chief and a group of residents said the Union Pacific Railroad has agreed to reroute crude oil trains around their neighborhood, and possibly the entire city.

“We stayed focused on the one issue: Get these trains away from people, get them away from the heart of the city,” said Tim Christian, a member of St. Louis for Safe Trains.

Residents of St. Louis’ Holly Hills neighborhood, where crude oil trains passed daily, held public meetings, lobbied experts and politicians and passed out pamphlets around St. Louis.

“We made just the right amount of noise through the right channels,” Mr. Christian said. “It was community in action and it worked well.”

St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said he has a “gentlemen’s agreement” with the main railroad operator to reroute the trains around Holly Hills. There is no formal agreement, he said.

“I think they rerouted because of a concerned [citizens] group,” Mr. Jenkerson said.

Mr. Christian said he’s received more than a dozen phone calls from people across the U.S. asking how they can organize to reroute crude trains.

Sacramento Area Council of Governments to comment on Valero Benicia DEIR

Thanks to an alert from Lynne Nitler of Davis for the following information.  – RS

Sacramento Area Council of Governments to meet, will consider draft letter critical of Valero Crude By Rail

We learned last week that the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) will meet on August 21 to consider a staff proposal that would level a stinging critique of the City of Benicia’s Draft EIR on Valero Crude By Rail.  Valero is proposing twice-daily rail shipments of 70,000 barrels of crude, and the DEIR claims that Valero’s 100 tank cars every day will pose no significant threat to Benicia and other cities along the rails, including Davis, Sacramento and Roseville.

SACOG is a planning agency for the region’s six counties and 22 cities.

A draft of the SACOG letter was made public on August 5.  It finds the Benicia report “fundamentally flawed” and calls for a revision and recirculation of the DEIR.

The 12-page letter is in draft form, and needs to be reviewed by the entire SACOG Board on August 21 before it will be finalized and sent to Benicia.

Because the letter is very strong in its position that the DEIR is inadequate in its present form, a number of Valero and Union Pacific representatives showed up at a SACOG committee meeting last week.  They tried to dissuade the committee from passing the letter and offered to talk out the problem areas so no letter would be necessary.  They were not successful in their attempts.

SACOG Board of Directors
August 21, 2014, 9:30 a.m.
1415 L St #300, Sacramento, CA
Agenda

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Lynne Nittler of Davis, CA: Take Action!

Repost from The Davis Enterprise

Exercise the power of public comment

by Lynne Nittler, August 10, 2014
oil train
Oil tanker cars travel by rail through Davis on a recent evening. Valero oil refinery in Benicia wants to expand its oil shipments to 100 tank cars per day. Jean Jackman/Courtesy photo

The story of crude-by-rail in California is not a done deal. As new developments unfold almost daily in this remarkable drama, it is clear that public input can make a significant impact.

For example, last January, fierce community opposition — plus a letter from state Attorney General Kamala Harris urging further scrutiny on air quality and the risk of accidental spills — led city leaders in Pittsburg to reopen the public comment period on its draft environmental documents.

The WesPac Petroleum project had called for an average of 242,000 barrels of crude — the equivalent of 3.5 trains per day — to be unloaded daily and stored in 16 tanks before being piped to the five Bay Area refineries. Now, it appears WesPac may never reapply. An alert public can bring about change.

Valero in Benicia is a long way from giving up on the rail terminal that will allow it to import 100 tank cars of crude by rail daily, most likely from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, and the Bakken Crude shale of North Dakota. These two extreme forms of crude — Bakken crude is highly volatile and proven explosive and tar sands bitumen is toxic and impossible to clean up in a spill (Kalamazoo spill, July 2010) — are already being processed in some Bay Area refineries.

The California Energy Commission predicts within two years that California will receive 25 percent of its crude by rail, mostly from these two extreme crudes that emergency workers currently are not prepared to deal with in the event of a spill or accident. For the Sacramento region, that will mean five to six trains of 100 cars per day by the end of 2016!

Your input now may make a significant difference. The draft environmental impact report for the Valero proposal is open for public review until Sept. 15. A printed copy is at the Stephens Branch Library, 315 E. 14th St. in Davis, and is available online at www.benindy.wpengine.com. Every letter submitted becomes part of the public record and must be addressed in the final EIR.

Frankly, the draft EIR focuses on impacts to Benicia, and just glances at uprail communities like Davis. But two 50-car trains coming across the Yolo Causeway and the protected Yolo Basin Wildlife Area; passing high-tech businesses along Second Street; rolling into town through residential neighborhoods, where the vibrations will be felt from each heavy car; following the unusual and therefore dangerous 10 mph crossover just before the train station; passing through the train station, putting the entire downtown within the blast zone; and skirting the edge of UC Davis, including the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts; puts many people at serious risk.

If you have concerns such as whether the tank cars are safe enough, whether the volatility of the Bakken crude should be reduced before it is loaded into tank cars, who is liable in the event of an accident, whether the trains will be equipped with positive train control to improve braking, how Valero plans to mitigate the increased air and noise pollution, how Valero can claim that accidents happen only once in 111 years, etc., then you can help.

While our city of Davis, Yolo County, Sacramento, Roseville, Fairfield, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and the Sierra Club Yolano Group are writing their own responses to the Valero draft EIR, letters from private citizens are equally powerful.

Public workshops are planned in August and September to help residents craft their letters. They workshops will provide background on the oil train situation, discuss the California Environmental Quality Act and EIR process and offer helpful resource materials. Participants will find topics, gather evidence, write their letters and then share drafts for feedback.

Workshops are planned from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Aug. 9; 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 21; and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7. All will take place in the Blanchard Room at the Stephens Branch Library, 315 E. 14th St. in Davis. The room is accessible to people with disabilities.

The draft EIR and mailing directions are posted at www.benindy.wpengine.com. For more information, contact me at lnittler@sbcgloball.net or 530-756-8110.

Bring a friend! Every letter adds to the impact!

— Lynne Nittler is a Davis resident.

Sacramento oil train fire risks mounting, first responder scenarios, “Did Benicia downplay risks?”

Repost from The Modesto Bee
[Editor: Significant quote: “Valero Refining Co. is pushing to run other daily crude oil trains starting next year on another rail line in Sacramento, next to the passenger platforms at the downtown Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis Amtrak stations….Unlike a flood or wildland fire, there would be no early warning for evacuations.  ‘The first thing you will hear are crunches,’ said state Fire and Rescue Chief Kim Zagaris. ‘Then explosions. The 911 lines will light up like no one’s businesses.’”  – RS]

Chances of a crude oil train fire are low but mounting in Sacramento

By Tony Bizjak, August 9, 2014

In the middle of the night a year ago, a runaway train laden with crude oil derailed in a Canadian town, igniting a firestorm that killed 47 people, some of them asleep in bed, vaporized buildings for blocks, and awakened rail cities like Sacramento across the continent to a new fear: Could that happen here?

Although trains have long ferried hazardous materials, including crude oil and other potentially lethal products such as chlorine and ammonia, the amount of flammable crude oil now shipped by rail is unprecedented, and growing fast.

A string of recent derailments and explosions, some requiring evacuations, have prompted federal transportation officials to call for new safety measures, including stronger tanker cars and slower speeds for trains carrying a particularly volatile form of crude oil from the suddenly booming Bakken fields of North Dakota.

Bakken crude trains have been rolling through Canada and the Eastern United States for several years. In California, the crude oil by rail trend is just starting. Oil companies here are planning to receive up to 23 percent of their oil via rail shipments by 2016. Two years ago, only one-third of 1 percent of oil arrived at California refineries on trains.

As rail traffic has increased, the number of crude oil spills involving railroads in California has risen as well. California registered four rail-related crude spills or leaks between 2010 and 2012, according to the state database on hazardous-materials spills. The number jumped last year to 17. Twenty-six have been reported in the first half of this year.

The state saw 139 freight train derailments last year, up from 62 in 2010.

The vast majority of those incidents were considered minor. Most happened in railyards. One derailment caused a fire as a result of an alcohol spill. But Kelly Huston, deputy director of the state Office of Emergency Services, said cities, states and fire officials must make plans with the understanding that a bad incident could be just around the corner.

“It’s a simple matter of odds,” he said. “With more of these trains coming across, it is more likely there is going to be an incident. The magnitude – a small spill or a catastrophic event – is the uncertainty.”

What are those odds in the Sacramento region, which serves as a major rail crossroads and stop-over site?

Interviews and a review of state rail data suggest the likelihood is low but mounting.

Sacramento has experienced no spills in recent years, but fire officials are concerned. A Bakken train now traverses Sacramento to the Bay Area a few times a month. Another oil train regularly pulls into McClellan Business Park, where the oil is transferred to tanker trucks to the Bay Area. Next year, two more crude oil trains are expected to roll through Sacramento daily on their way to the Bay Area, possibly carrying Bakken. More could follow.

‘911 lines will light up’

Canadian officials are expected next week to announce the results of their investigation into what went wrong that July night in Lac-Megantic, a town of 6,000 just north of the Maine border. The Lac-Megantic train was pulling 72 oil tank cars, 63 of which derailed.

BNSF Railway won’t say how many oil tank cars its trains are pulling through Sacramento each month, but such trains typically haul 100 oil cars. Those trains come through the Feather River Canyon. They run alongside north Sacramento neighborhoods, past the Blue Diamond plant, the Spaghetti Factory restaurant in midtown, several light-rail stops, Sacramento City College and Luther Burbank High School, and exit toward Stockton after crossing Meadowview Road at street level.

Valero Refining Co. is pushing to run other daily crude oil trains starting next year on another rail line in Sacramento, next to the passenger platforms at the downtown Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis Amtrak stations.

Unlike a flood or wildland fire, there would be no early warning for evacuations.

“The first thing you will hear are crunches,” said state Fire and Rescue Chief Kim Zagaris. “Then explosions. The 911 lines will light up like no one’s businesses.”

Fire chiefs say they have pondered the possibility of a Lac-Megantic incident, and concluded that while their firefighters are well-trained, a big crude oil fire with dozens of tanker cars strewn across streets would be something new, and a major challenge. They describe a possible scenario:

The first-responders could find buildings on fire next to the tracks, forcing them to set a fire line away from the derailment, sacrificing the nearest structures. Police would go door to door within a half-mile or perhaps a mile, ordering evacuations. City, county and state officials would staff a command center, miles from the fire. Hospitals would be put on alert. Gyms could become evacuation centers.

Oil from ruptured tank cars could flow into sewers, creating a possibility that firefighters dread, and that some veteran firefighters remember well. In 1991, a tanker truck overturned on Fair Oaks Boulevard in Carmichael, spewing gasoline into the sewer system. It caught fire and blew manhole covers a dozen feet in the air as flames shot out of the ground. Houses caught on fire. Three hundred people were evacuated, but no one was seriously injured.

Two years ago, a small fire in a single propane rail tank car prompted the evacuation of nearly 5,000 homes in the city of Lincoln in Placer County. Oil and gas fire experts were flown in from Texas. They pumped water into the tank to repressurize it as the propane slowly burned. More than 100 firefighters from agencies around the region were positioned a mile away, ready to roll in case the tank car exploded. It took 40 hours for the fire to burn out. Fire officials said they felt lucky.

Crews at a train derailment fire scene may try to pull unexploded tank cars that haven’t derailed away from the fire, or pour water on them to keep them from rupturing. But if firefighters hear a pinging sound from a tanker, or if they notice a tanker starting to discolor, the federal emergency guidebook they carry in their trucks tells them bluntly: “Withdraw immediately.”

Fire officials say they might not have enough foam stored locally to douse a major oil fire. They would put out the call across the north state, including to airports, for foam, West Sacramento Fire Chief Rick Martinez said. “Figure out a way to get that stuff here, in real time, get it here, anyway you can.”

Did Benicia downplay risk?

In Lac-Megantic, evacuated residents stood on the hills to watch the conflagration below. Reports say it took more than 12 hours to put down the fire. A year later, the town is rebuilding, but large swaths of downtown remain empty, the soil polluted by oil. News reports on the one-year anniversary included stories of survivors who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. Canadian transportation officials will arrive next week to announce their findings on the incident. The mayor, meanwhile, is pushing for a railroad bypass.

A few weeks ago, on the one-year anniversary of the Canadian disaster, protesters hit the streets in Sacramento and cities across the continent, carrying photos of fireballs and posters saying “Stop the Bomb Trains!”

Railroad officials counter by saying the dangers of crude oil fires are limited, and that they have been working for years to make rail transport safer. According to the Association of American Railroads, 99.9977 percent of the hundreds of hazardous-material rail shipments daily arrive at their destination without mishap. Several rail experts noted the Lac-Megantic event is something unlikely to be replicated: The train was parked on a hill over town. It had suffered a minor fire earlier in the night that might have damaged the brakes. No one was on the train when it started to roll.

The author of “Train Wreck: The Forensics of Rail Disasters,” a book about lethal train crashes, suggests people should worry more about the vehicle sitting in their driveway.

“Society understands and accepts the risk of driving a car, and that is far more hazardous than a train falling on you,” said George Bibel, a University of North Dakota professor.

Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn doesn’t think Sacramentans who live near the tracks should live in dread, but said he understands the unease. “People are right to be concerned and want to know what the facts are. We’d be foolhardy not to take it seriously.”

Benicia recently completed its analysis of the spill risk from two planned 50-car daily oil trains between Roseville and Benicia, and came up with a controversial conclusion. It determined that an oil spill could be expected to happen once ever 111 years. Based on that analysis, Benicia concluded the project does not pose a significant hazard in cities along the rail line.

The report’s author, Christopher Barkan of the University of Illinois, an expert on hazardous rail transport, formerly worked for the railroads’ national advocacy group and does research supported by the organization. He said his analysis was not affected by that affiliation. He declined further comment.

Steve Hampton, an economist with the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response, said the Benicia report gives a false air of certainty about something that has far too many unknowns. “This is so new, anyone who says they know exactly what the rate is, they don’t.”

He noted the analysis failed to look at risks the project poses on the rail route east of Roseville, where trains will pass through areas designated by the state as “high-hazard” for derailments.

Jeff Mount, a natural resource management expert at Public Policy Institute of California, said a one-in-111-year spill event for the Valero trains refers to long-range averages. It doesn’t preclude a spill from happening at any time. If several oil trains come through Sacramento, as expected, the spill risks increase, Mount said.

Safety costs vs. benefits

So how do local officials prepare? And how much do you spend to safeguard against an event with an arguably low likelihood of occurrence but potentially huge consequences?

Similar assessments already have been done of flood and earthquake risks. California requires urban levees to be sufficient to handle one-in-200-year storms, prompting billions of dollars in spending for construction and ongoing maintenance. Officials have spent tens of billions of dollars on seismic upgrades to bridges and overpasses in Northern California to guard against earthquakes like the 1989 Loma Prieta event, which has a 67 percent chance of recurrence in the next 30 years, according to federal estimates.

Risk experts say floods and earthquakes are considerably more likely to cause widespread damage than an oil spill and fire, even one as major as in Lac-Megantic. Bibel, the North Dakota professor, said risks can never be brought to zero. At some point, safety costs outweigh benefits.

On the federal level, transportation officials have proposed requiring railroad companies to replace the current fleet of tanker cars with sturdier versions that have more safety measures. The government also is proposing lower speed limits for trains carrying Bakken crude, and new safety technology on trains, such as more advanced operating systems. There is a push to force mining companies to install more sophisticated equipment at well heads to reduce the volatility of Bakken before it is placed into rail cars.

In California, spill-prevention officials have launched discussions with railroads, oil companies and emergency officials to determine what a “reasonable worst case spill” into a waterway might look like, and how to plan for it. As a starting point, those officials last month suggested a reasonable worst case could be 20 tank cars of crude oil spilling from one train.

Regional leaders in Sacramento have called on Benicia to redo its analysis of the risk posed by crude oil trains traveling to the Valero refinery, and to assess the impact of an explosive derailment.

But even within the region, views are mixed on how much risk management is appropriate. Yolo County Supervisor Duane Chamberlain runs a farm and uses diesel fuel daily. He said he cringes when government regulations drive up prices. “How much can you protect everybody and everything?” he asked. “We shouldn’t make it harder for oil companies to do business in our state.”

In the Feather River Canyon, where in recent years boulders have punctured and derailed trains, Plumas County Supervisor Kevin Goss said a derailment could be catastrophic for the river, which helps feed faucets in Sacramento. He said he has taken calls from worried residents and has gone out to see the milelong oil trains that have begun snaking along the mountainside.

“I couldn’t believe how many oil cars were on this one train,” he said.