From Rep. Mike Thompson’s website
[Editor: Read the bill on Rep. McDermott’s website. Track the bill on GovTrac.us. Authenticated version of the bill is here. HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT: Sec. 4. Requires the Secretary of Transportation to immediately prohibit the shipment of oil in all DOT-111 tank cars, and unjacketed CPC-1232 cars. Allows jacketed CPC-1232 cars to remain in service. Requires the Secretary of Transportation to prohibit, after 2 years, the shipment of ethanol in all DOT-111 tank cars, and unjacketed CPC-1232 cars. Allows jacketed CPC-1232 cars to remain in service. – RS]
THOMPSON INTRODUCES CRUDE-BY-RAIL SAFETY ACT
Apr 15, 2015, Press Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-5) today co-authored and introduced the Crude-by-Rail Safety Act which establishes comprehensive new safety and security standards for the transport of crude oil by rail. The legislation is designed to help protect communities along the nation’s railway networks. The legislation comes amid growing concerns that current standards do not address the threat posed by transporting crude oil by rail. Representatives Jim McDermott (WA-7), Doris Matsui (CA-6) and Ron Kind (WI-3), and Nita Lowey (NY-17) introduced the legislation with Thompson.
“Public safety is priority number one when it comes to transporting highly volatile crude oil,” said Thompson. “Railcars transporting crude run through the heart of our communities, and as recent accidents have demonstrated, robust, comprehensive action is needed. The bill introduced today puts safety measures in place that will help make sure communities are secure, railcars are as strong as possible, and first responders are prepared in the event of an emergency.”
In recent months, the large growth in crude-by-rail transport has led to increased rail traffic and a rise in rail accidents. Four derailments in the US and Canada in under a month earlier this year underscored the urgency of action to curb the risks of transporting volatile crude oil. The legislation introduced today will increase safety standards and accountability.
The Crude-by-Rail Safety Act would establish new, commonsense federal safety standards for railcars transporting oil across the country. This legislation:
Establishes a maximum volatility standard for crude oil (propane, butane, methane, and ethane) transported by rail
Prohibits use of unsafe DOT-111 tank cars, including the removal of 37,700 unsafe cars off the rail network
Establishes the strongest tank car standards to-date
Requires comprehensive oil spill response planning and studies
Increases fines for violating volatility standards and hazmat transport standards
Requires disclosure of train movements through communities and emergency response plans
Requires railroads to implement a confidential close-call reporting systems
Congressman Mike Thompson is proud to represent California’s 5th Congressional District, which includes all or part of Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma Counties. He is a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rep. Thompson is also a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition and chairs the bipartisan, bicameral Congressional Wine Caucus.
Rules on oil train, pipeline safety not moving fast enough, lawmakers say
By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, April 14, 2015
A chorus of lawmakers expressed frustration Tuesday with the delays in approving and implementing various regulations related to the movement of hazardous materials by rail and pipeline.
The acting chiefs of two U.S. Department of Transportation agencies heard Republicans and Democrats in the House Transportation Committee complain that rules on railroad tank cars and oil and gas pipelines had been on the table for as long as four years.
“It’s just unacceptable,” said Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.
Sarah Feinberg of the Federal Railroad Administration and Tim Butters of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration noted that they have little choice but to work within a multi-step process that involves public comment, industry participation and multiple layers of review by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
“It’s not built for speed,” Feinberg testified. “I wish that it was.”
Butters said that his agency had received 30,000 comments on its proposed rule to improve the safety of oil trains. He said the agency needed to evaluate them as part of its process.
“We have to go through all of those,” he said. “And that takes time.”
But a series of train derailments and pipeline failures in recent years has caught the attention of members of Congress, who are hearing concerns from their constituents.
“That’s just an excuse,” said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., the panel’s chairman. “Four years is too long.”
Last week, Feinberg visited Denham’s district in Central California to discuss pending rules on the construction of tank cars used to carry flammable liquids, the way the trains are operated and the way the tracks are inspected and maintained.
She also visited the Sacramento-area district of Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat who last month introduced legislation to regulate the volatility of crude oil loaded into tank cars. Texas and North Dakota, the nation’s leading oil producers, currently set such limits.
Garamendi proposed that the committee write the new rules into the larger surface transportation bill Congress needs to pass this year.
“We could write laws that protect the public,” he said. “Why don’t we do that?”
Acts of Congress don’t always make things go faster. In 2008, lawmakers mandated that railroads install a GPS-based collision-avoidance system called Positive Train Control by the end of 2015. But the nation’s freight and passenger railroads are likely to miss the Dec. 31 deadline.
Once the new oil train rules become final, it could take years to retrofit or replace tens of thousands of tank cars used to transport the country’s supply of crude oil and ethanol.
As a sign of how slowly the process moves, Capuano noted that BNSF, the nation’s biggest hauler of crude oil in trains, has gotten ahead of regulators by voluntarily lowering train speeds, increasing track inspections and encouraging shippers to use better tank cars.
“Whose butt do we have to kick?” he asked. “Whose budget do we have to cut? Whose budget do we have to enhance to make this work?”
Repost from Emergency Management Magazine [Editor: An excellent online comment appears following this article: “Wultcom” writes, “As always it is heartening to see how first responders rise to the occasion to protect us all. If only such heroism rubbed off just a little on the railroad industry. The creation of courses for first responders is praiseworthy. But it does create a false sense of security, for when Bakken crude explodes, the force of the fire is too great to allow firefighters to get anywhere near it. The first duty of government is to protect citizens, not shareholders. The rail industry takes advantage of lax regulators, pro-business governments, frail labor unions, and our desire for oil independence to roll the dice on safety. They run 150 ton tank cars on 8000 foot trains with skeletal crews, well dictated by the profit motive. An alliance of railway workers, environmentalists, and blast zone citizens can force a safer method of transporting crude oil.” – RS]
The Ticking Rail Car: First Responders Are Preparing for the Worst
Railways are now carrying highly explosive Bakken crude oil, making emergency managers’ jobs even tougher.
By Jim McKay | April 10, 2015
Millions of people are potentially at risk from trains like this one carrying Bakken crude oil. Flickr/Brewbooks
Emergency managers have been asked in recent years to do a lot more with fewer resources. That job got even tougher with the advent of oil shipments from the Bakken shale region of North Dakota via rail around the country.
Bakken is obtained by hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling, which has increased since 2000 and can be highly explosive. And there have been several train derailments recently, including one in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July 2013 that killed 47 people.
In the U.S., a train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed in West Virginia on Feb. 16, 2015, sending orange flames skyward for days. There have been other derailments, and there’s concern of a scene like the one in Quebec happening in a major U.S. city, including those in Pennsylvania. A report by PublicSource said 1.5 million people are potentially at risk if a train carrying crude oil derails and catches fire there.
Emergency managers are concerned and doing what they can to mitigate a derailment and possible explosion in their backyards. There’s training available but questions remain: Do emergency managers have all the information they need? Can one locale handle an explosion caused by a 30,000-gallon oil tanker incident?
“From a people standpoint, the worst-case scenario is if you have one or more of these cars breach and start on fire,” said Rick Edinger, assistant chief of the Chesterfield County, Va., Fire and EMS Department and a hazardous materials expert. “There’s an ongoing debate about how volatile crude oil is. The feds and industry are coming to realize now that it really depends on where the oil comes from.”
Because of that and other reasons, it’s important to understand the nature of the product, according to Robert Gardner, technological hazards coordinator for the Maine Emergency Management Agency. Emergency managers should study lessons learned and best practices and have safety data sheets. This information should be part of a risk assessment that lets first responders develop agency-specific response protocols that ensure responder safety and accounts for those exposed to potential fire.
Regional planning groups such as local emergency planning committees should review the routes that trains may use and identify sensitive receptors like water supplies, fisheries or agricultural areas.
Good to Know
There’s ongoing debate about what information communities and emergency managers should know about train routes and shipments of crude.
“Flow studies have been around for a long time and that’s an old tool that could be applied to figure out what’s going through your community,” Edinger said. “You may not have it down to the gallon and the day, but you have a great sense of what’s coming through and frankly, from a hazmat standpoint, I don’t need to know a specific time, I just need to know the worst-case scenario.”
Gardner said that in terms of actual shipments, there’s never enough information available. “We may know when a unit over a million gallons may be coming or where they are traveling, but those trains carrying fewer than 30 cars become unknowns,” he wrote in an email.
Some railroads have systems in place that allow for real-time knowledge of what any particular train may be carrying and the tanks’ location in the train.
Gardner said planning for Bakken crude oil transport is no different from any other hazardous material or even natural gas because you have an assessment and understand what you’re planning for and the role of those involved. But he acknowledged that the volume of the product is a concern.
The biggest concern for many is that one or more cars loaded with crude breach can start a fire. “Once you get past anything the size of a 9,000-gallon oil tanker, very few departments have the resources or capability to mitigate anything bigger,” Edinger said. “If you’re talking about a 30,000-tank car incident, even that would be beyond the capabilities of most departments in the initial stages, anyway.”
New federal rules instituted last year require carriers to notify state emergency response commissions about the transport routes of cars carrying at least 1 million gallons of crude from Bakken. But some emergency managers say that doesn’t go far enough and doesn’t include the typical load of 30,000 gallons.
Training is available for mitigating such a circumstance, but managing the volume of an incident that size could be daunting, Edinger said. “With the exception of a couple of departments, most can’t afford to stock and maintain the resources you would need to even approach doing something with one of these incidents.”
Gardner said the local Maine railroads have worked to educate first responders on rail safety. “This is of particular importance as rail employees have the specific knowledge of cars and engines that not all responders have, but need [in order] to have a safe response.”
Need Some Help
Gardner said it would help if the railroads could assist with the cost of the “gap pieces” of response equipment that have been identified as needed through the assessments. “It would be an immense help to many of the small volunteer agencies that we have in Maine and throughout the nation,” he wrote.
An examination of the tank car fleet that carries flammable liquids may be necessary as well. Canada has banned certain cars that are known to be unsafe in crash situations, but the U.S. has lagged. Part of the reason is the price. It would cost up to $1 billion to retrofit all of the 300,000 DOT-111 tank cars in use and take years.
“The dialog is going in a good direction,” Edinger said. “There seems to be agreement within public safety and the rail industry that we can do better with the construction of cars and that will improve, and perhaps prevent some incidents from happening.”
Repost from The Columbian [Editor: Significant quotes: 1) “BNSF Railway…has offered training to local responders. But that training “just scratches the surface,” said Nick Swinhart, chief of the Camas-Washougal Fire Dept.” And 2) “About 88 percent of the cars now hauling crude oil in Washington are the CPC-1232 design, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. The railroad plans to phase out all of its older DOT-111 cars from moving crude within the next year, he said. It also plans to retrofit its CPC-1232 cars with internal liners during the next three years, he added.” – RS]
Cantwell: Act now on oil trains
Senator pushes for changes to improve safety of hauling crude by rail
By Eric Florip, April 8, 2015, 9:20 PM
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., walks past a firefighting rig with Vancouver Fire Department Division Chief Steve Eldred during a visit to Vancouver on Wednesday. Cantwell and local leaders highlighted the risks of crude oil being transported by rail. (Steven Lane/The Columbian)
Now is the time to act to reduce the continued risk of crude oil moving through the region by rail, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said during a visit to Vancouver on Wednesday.
The Washington Democrat and local leaders repeatedly stressed the volatility of the oil itself. Speaking inside Pacific Park Fire Station No. 10 in east Vancouver, the group noted that responders are ill-equipped to handle the kind of fiery derailments and huge explosions that have characterized a string of oil-train incidents across the country recently. In some cases, the fires burned for days after the actual derailment, Cantwell said.
“No amount of foam or fire equipment can put them out,” she said. “The best protection we can offer is prevention.”
Cantwell last month introduced legislation that would immediately ban the use of rail cars considered unsafe for hauling crude oil, and create new volatility standards for the oil itself. The bill would require federal regulators to develop new rules limiting the volatile gas contained in crude that is transported by rail — an important and somewhat overlooked facet of the larger debate over oil train safety, Cantwell said.
Much of the oil that now rolls through Clark County comes from the Bakken shale of North Dakota. Regulators there this month imposed new rules on the volatility of that oil, but critics argue they don’t go far enough. North Dakota, currently in the midst of a historic oil boom, lacks the infrastructure and facilities for more thorough oil stabilization that are commonplace elsewhere.
About two or three oil trains per day now travel through Vancouver on the way to other facilities. A proposal by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies to build the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal at the Port of Vancouver would more than double that number. The project, now under review, has fixed a spotlight firmly on Vancouver.
“Although crude-by-rail is a national issue, we firmly believe that Vancouver is the epicenter of the conversation,” said Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt.
Wednesday’s gathering also included two local fire chiefs, who said their crews don’t have the resources to respond to a major disaster involving an oil train. BNSF Railway, which carries crude oil through the Columbia River Gorge and Southwest Washington, has offered training to local responders. But that training “just scratches the surface,” said Nick Swinhart, chief of the Camas-Washougal Fire Department.
“No first responder is fully prepared for the threat posed by crude oil trains carrying highly volatile oil from North Dakota,” Swinhart said, noting his agency has 54 paid personnel. “The fire resulting from just one exploded oil train car, as you can imagine, would overwhelm our resources very rapidly.”
Concerns about oil train safety go far beyond the oil. Much of the discussion has centered around the tank cars carrying it. Cantwell’s bill would prohibit all DOT-111 and some CPC-1232 model tank cars from hauling crude oil. The move would affect tens of thousands of rail cars currently in use, phasing out older models many believe are inadequate for carrying crude.
About 88 percent of the cars now hauling crude oil in Washington are the CPC-1232 design, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. The railroad plans to phase out all of its older DOT-111 cars from moving crude within the next year, he said. It also plans to retrofit its CPC-1232 cars with internal liners during the next three years, he added.
BNSF expects tank cars to improve as designs evolve and federal rules change, Melonas said, and the company welcomes that trend.
“We are in favor of a stronger-designed tank car to move this product,” Melonas said. “In the meantime, we’re taking steps to make sure we’re moving it safely.”
As for whether BNSF supports Cantwell’s bill, Melonas said the company is still evaluating it.
Near the end of Wednesday’s event at the fire station, officials showed Cantwell a large rig equipped with foam tanks and other features. The Vancouver Fire Department acquired the vehicle as mitigation several years ago when Valero, a company operating at the Port of Vancouver, began handling methanol, said Division Chief Steve Eldred.
The Valero site later became NuStar Energy. NuStar has since applied for permits to handle crude oil at the same facility.
