Map shows 100 schools along crude oil train tracks
By: Mark Lungariello, December 01, 2014
On July 6, 2013, a train hauling more than 70 cars filled with volatile crude oil derailed in Quebec, Canada, after its engine caught fire and power to its air brakes was cut. Several DOT-111 oil tankers filled with crude mined from South Dakota’s Bakken Shale ignited, spilling oil and sending a fireball into the sky of the town of Lac-Mégantic that destroyed 30 buildings, according to reports.
Forty-seven people died. Several thousand more were evacuated while oil seeped into the soil and local waterways. The Quebec derailment and several other disasters have brought increased scrutiny on the transportation of crude oil by rail as the amount of oil mined domestically continues to multiply.
A map of schools in the Hudson Valley within a mile of crude oil train lines. (Click to go to interactive map page.)
New maps from state environmental groups show there are more than 100 public and private K-12 schools within a mile of train lines used to transport crude oil through the region. Albany-based Healthy School Networks released the maps last month in partnership with a coalition of environmental and education activists.
“They are crossing from Buffalo through Rochester and from the upper reaches of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks to the Port of Albany, then down along the Hudson River,” Claire Barnett, executive director of Healthy Schools Network, said. “A catastrophic event, should it happen near an occupied school, could devastate a community for a generation or more.”
From 15 to 30 trains carrying crude out of South Dakota travel through the Hudson Valley region each week. Each train can haul dozens or as many as 100 oil cars, each that carry tens of thousands of gallons of the Bakken crude, which experts say is more volatile and unstable than other forms of oil. Oil is also transported by barge on waterways through the region and plans are in the gestation phase to begin transporting other types of crude through the area by rail as well.
The maps also included BOCES schools. Statewide, the maps identified 351 schools within one mile of train lines. In Monroe County alone, in the Rochester area, 63 schools were within the one-mile zone.
Environmental group Riverkeeper prepared an additional several maps depicting the potential impact area of local crude oil accidents based on the 300-yard blast radius and 1,100-yard evacuation zone from the Quebec derailment and a Casselton, N.D., derailment that spilled more than 400,000 gallons of crude.
“Based on the human consequences of these two accidents, it is clear that communities on both sides of the Hudson River could be impacted by a crude oil rail disaster,” said Kate Hudson, Riverkeeper’s Watershed Program director.
A CSX Corp. rail line runs from Albany to the state’s border with New Jersey. Land trust organization Scenic Hudson said that 47.7 miles of that track are within yards of the Hudson River. The group estimates the risk area in the event of a derailment would be more than 200,000 acres and include 100,000 households and six drinking water intakes.
The U.S. Department of Transportation Emergency Response Guidebook recommends a half-mile evacuation zone for accidents involving rail cars with flammable liquids and a mile zone around any rail car filled with those materials if they are on fire.
Environmental groups are calling for state and federal government reforms. These include asking government officials to provide emergency planning aid to schools, reduce speed limits for crude oil trains and impose stricter regulations and inspections for deteriorating DOT-111 tankers. The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering stricter regulations of the cars, but environmental groups have said the proposed laws don’t go far enough.
The state has increased its inspection of cars in response to recent derailments, but oil industry experts look to continue to expand their processing capacities as the amount of crude mined through hydraulic fracturing surges. The amount of Bakken moving through the U.S. has risen from 9,500 rail carloads in 2008 to 415,000 rail carloads in 2013, according to the Department of Transportation.
Action must be taken to reduce the hazards from railroad shipments of Bakken oil
By Carolyn Heising, November 15, 2014
(Photo: CANADIAN PRESS )
Now is the time to ask: Is the growing practice of using trains to carry highly-flammable crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale field through communities in Iowa safe and even necessary?
Is it free of the hazards that led to the railroad accident in Quebec last year that killed 47 people and destroyed half of the town of Lac-Megantic? Or is it adding to the stress on the rail system?
Iowa is one of a number of states that have become a corridor for the shipment of Bakken crude over the past three years. Canadian Pacific Railway ships heavy loads of oil south through five eastern Iowa counties. BNSF Railway ships crude through four western Iowa counties. The oil is transported to refineries on the Gulf Coast or to pipeline connections.
No question about it, U.S. oil production is booming. The shale revolution is the dominant economic and geopolitical event of the past decade. Its effects have been transformative.
The United States is on the verge of becoming the world’s leading oil producer. OPEC is no longer the threat it once was. The growth in the U.S. energy industry has more than doubled in the past 10 years and is now worth about $1.2 trillion in gross product each year, contributing about 30 percent of the job growth for the nation, according to a study by the Perryman Group.
And the oil boom is likely to continue unless a catastrophic event brings it to a halt.
One reason environmental groups seem relatively calm about railroad shipment of crude oil is that they know what a minor event it is amid the chaos of fossil-fuel production and the dangerous and destabilizing chaos of climate change. A big part of the problem is the paradoxically positive economic effect of shale-oil production, which is loading the atmosphere with an enormous amount of global-warming carbon dioxide and methane.
What’s the answer?
Long-term we need to reduce the amount of oil we use in transportation by shifting to electric cars with batteries powered by renewable energy sources and nuclear power. Right now, action must be taken to reduce the hazards from railroad shipments of Bakken oil, which is much more flammable than conventional crude oil.
Freight railroads have gone from being a relic of the past to being a key mode of transport for oil supplies. Currently about two-thirds of North Dakota’s Bakken oil production is transported by rail. And more than 10 percent of the nation’s total oil production travels by rail.
In the last quarter of 2013, more than 71 million barrels of crude oil were shipped by rail, more than 10 times the volume of oil shipped in 2008. Over the past six months, there have been at least 10 large crude oil spills in the United States and Canada because of railroad accidents.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has responded by proposing speed limits along with a system for classifying the oil and new safety design standards for rail tanker cars.
The railroads say there have been relatively few rail accidents and not much loss of oil, considering the huge quantities of oil being shipped around the country. However, oil companies — which own the oil rail cars — are shipping much of the crude in outdated tank cars called DOT-111s that are vulnerable to puncture in a derailment.
The trains have captured the attention of local emergency responders by the amount of oil they carry — 100-plus tanker cars carrying up to 30,000 gallons of highly flammable fuel are not uncommon. In New Jersey, a key rail route, the trains pass within a few feet of homes and schools in highly populated areas.
Those who believe that slower train speeds alone are the answer should think again. A train hauling Bakken crude derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Va., a bustling city of 75,000 people. Three tanker cars tumbled into the James River. One of the tanker cars ruptured, spilling 30,000 gallons of crude.
Fortunately, no one was killed or injured. But local fire officials, who are accustomed to dealing with oil accidents on a much smaller scale, said the train was traveling within the speed limit. After the Quebec disaster, major rail companies agreed to reduce the maximum speed of oil trains to 40 miles per hour when they are within 10 miles of a major city. Lynchburg set its own speed limit of 25 mph. The train was going slower than 25 mph when it derailed.
Because a lot is riding on rail safety, oil companies should consider what other industries that use trains to haul hazardous cargoes have done to prevent accidents. For example, the nuclear industry uses specially-built freight cars to transport used nuclear-fuel assemblies from one nuclear plant to another. Since the 1960s, there have been thousands of trips involving the rail transport of nuclear waste in the United States, without a single serious accident.
That’s a stellar safety record which bodes well for the rail shipment of nuclear waste to a deep-geologic repository — and nuclear power’s increased use for electricity production.
Admittedly, the number of oil trains and the amount of hazardous cargo they carry is far greater than it is for nuclear companies and most other industries. But if oil companies continue to use puncture-prone tanker cars to haul highly-flammable Bakken crude in 100-car trains traveling at dangerous speeds, the ultimate consequences could be dire, and we will wind up asking ourselves why something more wasn’t done to prevent it.
THE AUTHOR:
CAROLYN D. HEISING, Ph.D., is a professor of industrial, mechanical and nuclear engineering at Iowa State University. Contact: cheising@iastate.edu.
Richmond residents, leaders warn of danger from Bakken crude by rail shipments
By Phil James, November 1, 2014
Kinder Morgan’s Richmond depot takes in dozens of DOT-111 train cars laden with Bakken crude oil from North Dakota every week. (Phil James/Richmond Confidential)
If you go to the website explosive-crude-by-rail.org and zoom in on Richmond, what you’ll find is disconcerting. According to the 1-3 mile buffer zone on the map, the entire city and its 107,000 residents are in danger if trains carrying crude oil explode.
Such is the concern of several Bay Area environmental groups in Richmond who have drawn the City Council into an escalating dispute with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and Kinder Morgan, which operates a local crude by rail transfer station.
“The health and safety of the community is at stake here,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said during a City Council meeting. “We are encouraging the air district to review the process.”
Richmond City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution to “review” and “if feasible, revoke” the permit given to Kinder Morgan – the 5th largest energy company in the United States — to take in crude oil by rail. Based in Texas, the company was founded in 1997 by two former Enron executives.
The crude, from the Bakken Shale of North Dakota, ignites and explodes more easily than more traditional crudes. On the heels of a major oil boom, transportation of crude by rail in the North America increased by 423 percent between 2011 and 2012, and more crude shipped by rail was spilled in 2013 than in the four previous decades combined.
In 2012, a train carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and decimating the small Canadian town. This, among other incidents, has prompted the U.S. Department of Transportation to label Bakken transport by rail as an “imminent hazard”.
Several community groups have rallied to ban the movement of crude shipments through Richmond. Megan Zapanta of The Asian Pacific Environmental Network said she’s worried that a lack of attention could have dire consequences.
“Bakken crude has not been well-documented here,” she said. “If there’s some disaster, how will we get the word out to our immigrant community?”
Evan Reis, a structural engineer for Hinman Consulting Engineers, released a report earlier this year assessing the probability of a crude-laden train derailing in the East Bay.
He estimates there is a six in 10 chance of derailment on the line running from San Jose through Richmond to Martinez within the next 30 years.
“Given the fact that these are highly urbanized places we are going through,” he said by phone, “A 60 percent probability would be of concern to me.”
McLaughlin pledged to support Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) as they consider appealing the air district decision to grant Kinder Morgan a permit to funnel crude through Richmond by rail cars. The city does not have the jurisdiction to revoke any licenses or permits from the company. The permit must go through the air district, where it can be reviewed with respect to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
In March, CBE filed a lawsuit against BAAQMD for failing to publicly disclose the permit to the residents of Richmond. The group only noticed the arrival of crude by rail because a local television station, KPIX, discovered that Kinder Morgan was bringing Bakken crude to its Richmond depot.
The Tesoro refinery in Martinez receives the Bakken shipments by truck after they are transferred from the rail depot in Richmond. Richmond’s Chevron refinery does not take in any of the Bakken crude.
In September, the lawsuit was dismissed on technical grounds because the complaint by the CBE was not filed within 180 days of the permit’s issuance.
The permit, which was filed by BAAQMD staff in 2013, drew ire from environmental groups because it was not subject to an environmental impact report, and was granted without review from the district’s board.
Andres Soto, a representative of Communities for a Better Environment in Richmond, appealed to Richmond leaders to counter the decision.
“Kinder Morgan issued an illegal permit to bring Bakken crude into Richmond without public notice or review,” Soto said.
Ralph Borrmann, public information officer for the BAAQMD, declined to comment until the end of the appeal period. The CBE has considered a challenge of the ruling.
The Kinder Morgan depot has been taking in ethanol by rail since 2010, but they have since diversified their intake to include Bakken crude. Kinder Morgan officials, though, say the concerns are overstated.
“We didn’t feel that the profile of the crude oil arriving was materially different,” Melissa Ruiz, a spokesperson for the Texas-based company, wrote in an email.
Charlie Davidson, a member of the Sunflower Alliance speaking on behalf of CBE, disagrees.
“They’re basically running tin cans on 100 cars,” he told Richmond City Council. “The flash point [of Bakken Crude] is so volatile that it could burn in Antarctica.”
Randy Sawyer, Chief Environmental Health and Hazardous Materials Officer in Contra Costa County, acknowledged the dangers but also downplayed the risk of a major disaster.
“It’s a hazardous material and there’s concern of derailment and fire,” he said in an interview by phone. “But if you put it in relation to other materials, it isn’t as hazardous as chlorine or ammonia. It’s equivalent to ethanol or gasoline.”
“The biggest concern with crude by rail is not so much than the hazard being worse, it’s just the huge amount of quantity that’s being shipped by rail,” Sawyer said.
Since the dismissal of the lawsuit, other municipalities in the North Bay have rallied against crude by rail. In Sacramento, a lawsuit by Earth Justice prompted the local air board to revoke a permit from Inter-State Oil Company on the grounds that they did not disclose the potential public health and safety concerns to local residents.
Suma Peesapati, a member of Earth Justice, drew similarities between Sacramento and Richmond.
“Kinder Morgan’s project in Richmond is virtually identical to the air district issued permits for unloading crude in Sacramento,” she said. “The [Bay Area] Air District made it clear they issued a permit in error, rather than engage in this formal process.”
Despite the resolution passing, Richmond Councilmember Jael Myrick expressed just as much weariness as concern for the issue.
“The frustration that we had the last time we talked about this is it just seems there is so little we can do to combat it.”
Repost from WANE TV15 – Fort Wayne, Indiana [Editor: Regarding railroad hazmat notification … significant quote by a County Emergency Management Director in Indiana: “The first I heard about it was from you. I believe if the state was aware of that, I would have that information.” Excellent video on this 2-month investigation. Apologies for commercial content on the video…. – RS]
Through Your Backyard
By Adam Widener, October 30, 2014
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – The volume of crude oil being shipped via railroads is rising across the country. Much of it comes from North Dakota and is heading for the east coast. It’s a path that funnels millions of gallons directly through northeast Indiana every week.
The U.S. Department of Transportation said the increase in crude-by-rail poses a greater risk for incidents and recently ordered railroad companies to tell each state where and how often trains are hauling large amounts of the energy product. Federal officials cited several oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada as a reason for the order.
But some emergency responders in northeast Indiana had no idea about the growing threat traveling through their backyard, until 15 Finds Out began asking questions.
Energy independence
To understand the severity of that communications gap, one must first understand the reason for the rising number of oil trains. More and more petroleum crude oil is being drilled at the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota. Rail companies say it’s traveling to refineries in high quantities via the most economical option: rail.
“There’s an important development happening in this country and it’s happening here in this community,” said Dave Pidgeon, public relations manager for Norfolk Southern Corp. “We are moving towards greater energy independence.”
A fireball shoots into the air following a deadly oil train explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada in 2013.
On April 30, a CSX train carrying 105 crude oil tank cars derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia. The highly flammable crude oil caught fire. Emergency crews evacuated 350 people from their homes. Up to 30,000 gallons of petroleum crude oil spilled into a nearby river.
The most notable oil train derailment happened in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada on July 5, 2013. An unmanned, runaway oil train carrying crude oil derailed, exploded, caught fire, and killed 47 people. 2,000 people had to be evacuated from the town.
“Imminent hazard”
The dramatic rise in oil trains combined with recent derailments caused the USDOT to file an emergency order in May. Federal officials cited an “unsafe condition” or “unsafe practice” for crude-by-rail causing an “imminent hazard.”
The DOT ordered railroad companies to begin reporting to each state’s Emergency Response Commission. Beginning in June, railroads were to tell state officials the expected movement and frequency of trains transporting 1 million gallons or more of crude oil from North Dakota.
Norfolk Southern Corp. and CSX Transportation have lines in northeast Indiana. A media spokesperson for each company said they’re following the emergency order.
“We share information with the state emergency management services across our network,” said Tom Livingston, CSX’s regional vice president for government affairs in the Midwest.
“Be as well-informed as possible”
The emergency order makes other important recommendations. It says state and local first responders should “be as well-informed as possible as to the presence of trains carrying large quantities of Bakken crude oil” in their area. That way, they have “reasonable expectations” to “prepare accordingly for the possibility of an oil train accident.”
15 Finds Out uncovered that wasn’t the case for some first responders in northeast Indiana. On October 1, 15 Finds Out spoke with Michael “Mick” Newton, emergency management director for Noble County. At the time, Newton had never heard of the emergency order and didn’t know about the increase in crude-by-rail in his county.
“The first I heard about it was from you,” Newton said. “I believe if the state was aware of that, I would have that information.”
15 Finds Out obtained proof that the Indiana Department of Homeland Security (IDHS) actually did have that information and delayed passing it along. I-Team 8 at our sister station, WISH-TV in Indianapolis, recently got a copy of an email sent to several emergency management directors across northern Indiana.
The email included Norfolk Southern’s oil train route maps and how many of its oil trains travel through 12 northern Indiana counties with more than 1 million gallons every week.
Norfolk Southern sent IDHS that information in a letter dated June 3, 2014. But IDHS didn’t forward it to EMA directors until October 8, ironically after 15 Finds Out and I-Team 8 began asking questions.
The Federal Railroad Administration has noted those crude-by-rail stats are public. Still, IDHS denied a request for copies and said that information could hurt public safety by creating a vulnerability to terrorist attacks.
Millions of gallons “through your backyard”
Northfolk Southern weekly shipments: Click image to see full-screen graphic.
Because of legal concerns, 15 Finds Out is not releasing Norfolk Southern’s oil train exact routing maps. Noble and DeKalb Counties have 13 to 24 trains carrying a million gallons or more of crude oil every week. Whitley and Allen Counties have between 0 and 4 trains carrying a million gallons or more every week.
Leaders with CSX were more forthcoming with oil train information. Livingston said 20 to 35 trains carrying a million gallons or more of North Dakota Crude Oil travel on its Garrett line every week.
15 Finds Out shared those stats with Newton on October 1.
“Nobody’s come up with, other than you, of any information like that to me,” he said.
It was a similar story in DeKalb County. EMA Director Roger Powers said he hadn’t received any crude-by-rail notifications from IDHS until, ironically, the day of his interview with 15 Finds Out.
CSX weekly shipments: Click image to see full-screen graphic.
“It’s always good for us to know,” Powers said. “When we don’t know, that’s when we get caught sometimes and have to pull back and regroup and think about how we are going to attack this.”
“Internal delay”
When asked why it took IDHS four months to give first responders the oil train notifications, public information officer John Erickson released a statement that said in part:
There was an internal delay at IDHS with respect to the first notification the agency received regarding the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) order. This notification was not evaluated as efficiently as it could have been, and as a result, was not forwarded to the local responders as quickly as IDHS would have liked.
The statement said the agency has since modified its evaluation process of these notifications and will, in the future, get them to local emergency responders as quickly as possible.
There was an apparent confusion at IDHS regarding the oil train notification. The statement said officials weren’t sure if it was the particular notification required under the DOT order. Since IDHS considers the information to be highly sensitive, the agency said the documents had to be “carefully evaluated regarding which agencies had a need to know.”
In the end, Newton argued that his department’s response would be the same whether they knew how many oil trains pass through or not. Despite the four month delay, both Newton and Powers are each thankful they now have the proactive information. They are now passing those stats down to first responders, like Auburn Fire Chief Mike VanZile.
“Since you said something to me I’ve done some research, and now I think through your efforts and some other folks’ efforts, now the state has given our EMA director, homeland security office, some vital information that he has passed on to me,” VanZile told 15 Finds Out. “Millions of gallons going across these rails, that’s a huge concern.”
15 Finds Out continues its investigative series “Through Your Backyard” next week. Tune in Thursday, November 6 at 6:00 p.m. to hear what the railroad companies and U.S. Department of Transportation are doing to make crude-by-rail safer.
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