Canada toughens train brake rules, to impose ‘audit blitz’
By Richard Valdmanis | Reuters – 29 Oct, 2014
Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt holds a press conference in the Foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hilll in Ottawa on Wednesday, October 29, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada has issued an emergency order to railways detailing how many handbrakes they must set on unattended trains to prevent deadly runaways, and will hire new staff to conduct an “audit blitz” of rail companies’ safety systems.
The changes are the latest in a slew of regulatory moves in North America since a train carrying crude oil crashed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, last year, killing 47 people and highlighting the dangers from a surge in oil transport by rail.
The announcement on Wednesday came in response to the Canadian Transportation Safety Board’s final report in August on the Lac-Megantic crash that found shortfalls in railway safety culture and federal oversight of the industry.
“We will always remember what happened in Lac-Megantic. I do believe that the measures that we are announcing today will improve railway safety, and make the transportation industry more accountable,” Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said.
Canada’s Conservative government has already imposed several new regulations in the wake of Lac-Megantic, including toughening tank car safety and requiring railways do risk assessments, produce emergency response plans, and improve the security of parked trains.
As part of the new rules, Transport Canada said railway operators had to test the handbrakes they set and use other “physical structures” to complement them.
In the Lac-Megantic crash, a train laden with light crude as volatile as gasoline had been left unattended on a main line several kilometers up a gentle slope. Investigators said the conductor had not set enough handbrakes and the airbrakes had been released after a fire broke out in the engine.
Transport Canada said it will hire about 10 new auditors and begin an “audit blitz” on railway companies’ safety systems. In some cases the regulator will also require rail companies, mainly short lines, to submit reports on how they train their staff, Raitt said.
Raitt said the government will bring in new monetary penalties for railways whose internal safety systems fall short. In its August report, the Transportation Safety Board found that Montreal, Maine and Atlantic, which operated the train that crashed in Lac-Megantic, had developed a safety management system in 2002, but had not fully implemented it.
The watchdog said Transport Canada needed to be more hands on with safety management systems, making sure they work rather than just check that they exist.
Transport Canada said it will also hire engineering and scientific experts to help research the properties of different kinds of crude oils carried by railways, and launch inspections to ensure they are properly labeled on trains.
“Crude oil is something that needs to be moved in the country,” Raitt said. “Our job is to make sure it is done in the safest way possible.”
(Additional reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Jeffreys Hodgson and Benkoe)
Benicia sees cash in crude oil; neighbors see catastrophe
By Jaxon Van Derbeken, October 23, 2014
Ed Ruszel and his family own a woodworking business that fronts the railroad tracks next to the Valero refinery in Benicia where the crude oil would be delivered. | Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
A plan to bring tank-car trains filled with crude oil from Canada and North Dakota to a Benicia refinery is pitting the Solano County town against Northern California neighbors who say they will be burdened with the risk of environmental catastrophe.
Benicia officials must decide whether to approve a draft environmental impact report on a $70million terminal at Valero Corp.’s refinery near Interstate 680, where two 50-car oil trains a day would deliver crude.
Supporters and the company say California consumers stand to benefit: With no major oil pipelines running to the West Coast and marine transport both costly and potentially hazardous, they say, rail is the best way to keep local gasoline prices low.
“Right now, that refinery relies on more expensive crude from Alaska,” said Bill Day, spokesman for Valero. “Rail is the quickest, most efficient and safest way of delivery.”
Benicia’s environmental study weighing the risks of the project, however, has done nothing to assuage critics who say the city is downplaying the dangers of delivering oil by rail.
Crude from North Dakota shale is extra-volatile, they say, and the city’s environmental report assessed only the chances of a spill along the 69 miles of track from the Sacramento suburbs to Benicia — not the chance of a catastrophic explosion, or the possibility of an accident of any kind along the more than 1,000 additional miles the trains would have to travel to reach the shores of the Carquinez Strait.
“This project is not in our region — it is outside of our region — but the impacts on the 2.3million people who live here we view as very significant, very troublesome, very disturbing,” said Don Saylor, chairman of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors and vice chairman of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which represents 22 cities and six counties through which the oil trains could travel.
‘A street fight’
Benicia itself is divided by the proposed project. Some locals worry about the environmental risks and traffic problems, while others tout the benefits of low-cost crude to Valero — a company that accounts for a quarter of the city’s tax revenue.
Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson hasn’t taken a stand on the Valero oil-trains terminal, but says, “We need to make sure that just because one industry wants to do something, we don’t ignore the adverse impact to the other businesses and the community.” | Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
“This is going to be a street fight,” said oil-train opponent Ed Ruszel, whose family woodworking business fronts the railroad tracks next to the refinery. “They have to come across my driveway every day — we’re at ground zero.”
The issue is so contentious that the city attorney recently told Mayor Elizabeth Patterson to stop sending out e-mail alerts about city meetings regarding the oil-train project. According to Patterson, the city attorney warned that her activism could open Benicia’s final decision to legal challenge.
Patterson said she has not taken a stand on the Valero terminal, but that “we need to make sure that just because one industry wants to do something, we don’t ignore the adverse impact to the other businesses and the community.”
She called City Attorney Heather Mc Laughlin’s warning “a blatant effort to muzzle me.” Mc Laughlin did not respond to a request for comment.
Canadian disaster
For Ruszel and other critics of the project, the danger is real. They cite several recent oil-by-rail explosions, including the derailment of a 72-car train that killed 47 people and wiped out much of the town of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec in July 2013.
The Valero refinery in Benicia wants to build a rail terminal where crude oil could be delivered by trains. | Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
The Valero-bound trains would pass through Sacramento, Davis and Fairfield, among other cities, en route to Benicia. Those cities have voiced concerns about the terminal, where trains would deliver a total of 2.9million gallons a day of shale oil and tar sands.
“We have lots of support here from our own local people,” said project critic Marilyn Bardet of Benicia, “but the real difference is that there are so many agencies and people from up rail looking at this problem. We feel exonerated — everybody has chimed in and agreed with us.”
Not everyone along the rail line is against the idea, however. State Sen. Ted Gaines, a Republican who represents Rocklin (Placer County) and is running for state insurance commissioner, called the project “beneficial environmentally and economically.”
It “can be done safely given the prevention, preparedness and response measures in place by both Valero and Union Pacific Railroad,” Gaines said.
Setting precedents
The Benicia battle will probably be a preview of numerous local fights over oil trains in California. Oil-by-rail shipments jumped from 1million barrels in 2012 to 6.3million barrels in 2013, according to government estimates. By 2016, the state could be awash with 150million rail-shipped barrels of crude a year.
What Benicia does could influence how future oil-train plans play out. Several cities have called on Benicia to require that all train tanker cars have reinforced walls and be better controlled by new, electronically activated braking systems, and that officials restrict what kind of oil can be shipped to Valero.
Such efforts, however, could run afoul of federal law that preempts states and local governments from setting standards on rail lines. Valero has already warned city officials that it may “invoke the full scope of federal preemption,” a thinly veiled threat to sue if Benicia imposes too many restrictions.
Much of the crude that would arrive via train at Valero is expected to come from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota. Federal transportation officials recently deemed Bakken crude to be an “imminent hazard” because it is far more easily ignitable than more stable grades of crude previously shipped by rail.
In issuing an alert in May, federal transportation officials warned that oil trains with more than 20 cars are at the highest risk because they are heavier than typical cargo and thus more difficult to control. The federal government is considering requiring additional reinforcement of tanker cars and more robust braking systems.
The federal alert about the danger of crude by rail comes as accidents have skyrocketed, with nine major explosions nationwide since the start of 2013. Last year alone, trains spilled more than 1million gallons of crude in the United States — 72 percent more than the entire amount spilled in the previous four decades combined, California officials say.
The consultants who wrote Benicia’s draft environmental impact study concluded that because the type of crude that would be brought to Valero is a trade secret, they could not factor it into their risk assessment. They calculated that a major spill on the 69 miles of track between Roseville (Placer County) and Benicia could be expected roughly once every 111 years.
Among those who think Benicia needs to take a harder look is state Attorney General Kamala Harris, whose office wrote a letter challenging the environmental impact report this month.
Harris’ office says the report’s authors assumed that the safest rail cars available would be used, disregarded spills of fewer than 100 gallons in determining the likelihood of accidents and, in looking only as far as Roseville, ignored 125 miles of routes north and east of the Sierra foothills town.
Some possible routes go through treacherous mountain passes that historically have seen more accidents, say oil-train skeptics. While not specifically mentioning a legal challenge, Harris’ office called Benicia’s study deficient and said it ignored the “serious, potentially catastrophic, impacts” of an accident.
Not her call
Valero says Harris can voice all the objections she wants, but that she doesn’t get a say on whether the terminal will be built.
“This is really the city of Benicia’s decision,” said Day, the company spokesman. The attorney general and others, he said, are “free to file comments” on the environmental report.
He added that “all the crude oil that Valero ships will be in the newest rail cars, which meet or exceed rail safety specifications.”
“Rail companies have products moving on the rails every day that are flammable,” Day said. “The overwhelming majority of everything transported gets there safely, on time, with no incidents.”
Benicia’s City Council now has to decide whether to order to certify the draft study, order it revised or reject it entirely. When that decision comes, Benicia will be getting a lot of out-of-town attention.
“We have near-unanimity in our region to address the safety issues of the crude-oil shipments by rail,” said Saylor, the Yolo County supervisor. “For us, it has been strictly about public safety. It’s a high-risk operation — we have no choice but to take on this issue.”
Repost from HuffPost GREEN, The Blog [Editor: Note reference near the end on federally designated National Heritage Areas and Estuaries of National Significance which “require special protection from potential explosions and spills. Rerouting bomb trains away from such specially designated regions would avert a disaster-waiting-to-happen to prime assets along their rail lines.” The San Francisco Estuary Partnership is one of 28 Estuaries of National Significance. (I am trying to confirm that the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a National Heritage Area – their website is out of date.) How might these agencies be brought into the discussion on Valero Crude By Rail? – RS]
Fed Measures on Crude Oil Fall Short, Put Hudson River at Risk
Last May, we wrote about how the Hudson River Valley has become a virtual pipeline for the transport of highly flammable Bakken crude oil in unsafe DOT-111 railcars–the same tankers whose derailment has caused numerous explosions across the U.S. and the death of 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Canada.
Since then, very little has changed, which means the situation has just gotten worse.
Each day, more than 320 of these oil-laden cars continue to pass through our communities and along the shores of the Hudson River, one of the world’s most biologically diverse tidal estuaries. To date, we’ve escaped disaster, although three trains pulling empty DOT-111s have derailed in the Hudson Valley. Each time a rail accident occurs in the region, as it did just last week, the environmental community holds its breath, expecting the worst.
What will happen if cars full of Bakken crude do go off the tracks? The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA), quoting the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), recently provided the answer: They “can almost always be expected to breach,” making them “vulnerable to fire.” The result would be catastrophic to the public health, vital natural and historic resources, and drinking water supplies of a region stretching from Albany to New York Harbor. It would cause long-lasting, if not permanent, damage to the estuary’s entire ecosystem and the foundation of a vibrant, $4.75-billion tourism economy.
Both Scenic Hudson and Riverkeeper have been advocating vigorously for increased federal protections, including an immediate ban on the use of DOT-111s for transporting crude. Therefore, we were bitterly disappointed and frankly frustrated by new draft regulations proposed by the PHMSA regarding tanker redesign and other measures for reducing the risks of explosions and spills from these “bomb trains.” They just don’t go far enough fast enough, meaning our communities remain at grave risk. It also means the proposed rules don’t comply with federal law, which requires strict safety upgrades that will protect the public.
In formal comments on the regulations our organizations submitted jointly, we outline how the PHMSA’s rules are replete with loopholes and weak safety proposals.
Despite acknowledging the safety hazards of DOT-111s, the proposed regulations would very slowly phase out their use for transporting Bakken crude and allow 23,000 of these outdated, dangerous cars to remain on the rails for shipping heavy Canadian tar sands crude, which presents different but equally serious safety and environmental risks.
The regulations fail to require full disclosure of rail traffic information to first responders, and instead ask the industry if it would prefer to keep this information confidential.
The regulations fail to require the most protective braking improvements or speed restrictions, and fail to even consider limits on the length of trains that could reduce accident risks and impacts of a derailment.
The regulations would allow railroads to continue operating 120-car trains of Bakken crude oil without requiring any train-specific spill response plans–despite the fact that a 120-car train carries as much oil as an oil barge or tanker, both of which must have spill response plans approved by the Coast Guard.
Put simply, these rules defer to the rail and oil industries at every turn–and they won’t stop the next bomb train disaster. As the NTSB warned in its official comments on these proposed rules, “Each delay in implementing a new design requirement allows the construction of more insufficiently protected tank cars that will both increase the immediate risks to communities and require costly modification later.” Further, the NTSB concludes that the government’s proposed standards for new and existing tank cars offer options that “do not achieve an acceptable level of safety and protection.”
We deserve real protection for our communities and the environment. And we deserve it now.
For these reasons, Riverkeeper and Scenic Hudson have called on the PHMSA to issue an emergency order requiring immediate adoption of the most stringent tank car standards, speed restrictions and use of electronic controlled pneumatic braking in all trains carrying crude, as well as closing loopholes in the rule that leave heavy tar sands crude and trains carrying fewer than 20 cars of Bakken crude completely unaddressed. (Scenic Hudson also has called for rules requiring Bakken crude to be processed at its source in North Dakota, making it much less volatile for shipment. This is done at many Texas oil fields.)
In addition, we are calling on federal rail regulators to designate the Hudson River Valley, as well as other similarly situated regions, highly important natural and cultural resources under PHMSA routing regulations. This means that the natural and cultural resources within this federally designated National Heritage Area (one of only 49) and Estuary of National Significance (one of 28) require special protection from potential explosions and spills. Rerouting bomb trains away from such specially designated regions would avert a disaster-waiting-to-happen to prime assets along their rail lines. In the Hudson Valley, those assets include six drinking water intakes; 91 state, county and municipal parks; 40 Significant Coastal Fish and Wildlife Areas; nine colleges; 69 public schools and 80 medical facilities.
The federal government has the responsibility to ensure the public’s safety. Until Washington steps up and fulfills this obligation, we’ll have to keep on holding our breath.
FAIRFIELD – Solano County wants to let people know about its rail emergency plans and to identify weaknesses, even as a Valero pursues a controversial proposal to ship crude oil by rail through the region.
The county held a rail safety workshop on Monday billed as a “community conversation.” About 60 people attended the evening meeting in the county Board of Supervisors chamber.
This meeting came against the backdrop of a proposal by Valero to transport crude oil by rail on the Union Pacific tracks to its Benicia refinery. The tracks passed through the heart of Fairfield, Suisun City and Dixon, as well as the wetlands of Suisun Marsh. Crude rail derailments in other areas have caused explosions.
County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Linda Seifert said there are already various hazardous materials that pass through Solano County by rail on the way to factories and other destinations. Local governments cannot regulate these freight rail trips because of interstate commerce laws, she said.
County Emergency Services Manager Don Ryan and Dixon Fire Chief Aaron McAlister talked about the local response system for emergencies. They talked about how local emergency responders work together, with a mutual aid system in place. Various fire departments and other emergency responders train together on possible disasters ranging from hazardous materials spills to shooter situations.
“The fire rescue system in California, the mutual aid system, is one of the finest in the country,” McAlister said.
Chris Howe of Valero Refinery talked about the crude-by-rail proposal and stressed the safety measures that Valero takes and the emergency resources that it has. He noted that Vallejo called on Valero to help respond to a major asphalt spill within that city.
“Preventing accidents is a top priority of ours and it’s something we focus on constantly in our business,” Howe said. “We handle flammable materials every day. That’s our business.”
Union Pacific spokeswoman Liisa Stark talked about the inspections done by her company by running equipment with computers and sonar over the tracks. She talked of detection boxes along tracks that can tell if a train has a hot wheel bearing or other problems.
“I just can’t say enough about how much we invest in time and energy to ensure we continue to run safely,” she said.
Investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz said that crude-by-rail trips have increased from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 400,000 last year. Bakken crude oil coming from North Dakota is more flammable, volatile and dangerous than other crude, she said.
“This is a new phenomena,” she said. “This is a new problem.”
She showed a photo of a fireball in the sky from a crude oil derailment on Jan. 1 in Casselton, North Dakota. She showed a photo of a April 30 crude oil derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia that left an oil slick 17 miles long in the James River. Altogether, she showed photos of 10 derailments in the United States and Canada, all during 2013 or this year.
“We don’t know how to regulate it yet,” Juhasz said.
Danny Bernardini spoke on behalf of state Sen. Lois Wolk. Wolk has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation containing suggestions and recommendations for crude-by-rail shipments. Among other things, she recommended the speed of these trains within all cities be set at 30 mph and that shippers and carriers have sufficient insurance or financial means to cover the costs of crashes and spills.
Also speaking were Paul Hensleigh of the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District, Brandon Thomson representing Rep. John Garamendi and Solano County Resource Management Director Bill Emlen.
Then the gathering broke into three groups and members of the public talked about their concerns.
Karen Schlumpp of Benicia expressed concern about the time it might take for regulations to be passed and implemented to deal with the new crude-by-rail issues.
“After tonight, I’m feeling like we’re on a huge catchup on a train that’s already rolling,” Schlumpp said.
Katherine Black of Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community expressed skepticism that crude-by-rail shipments can be done safely.
“This is too dangerous,” she said. “It’s like preparing for an atomic bomb.”
The meeting lasted for two-and-a-half hours. Participants wrote down their concerns and ideas and turned them into the county.
“This is an essential conversation that needs to happen,” Emlen told the gathering.
