Feds won’t weaken oil-train public disclosure rules
By Paul Nussbaum, Inquirer Staff Writer, May 29, 2015, 5:20 PM
An oil train passes through Philadelphia on April 15, 2015. (Jon Snyder/Daily News)
Responding to Congressional and public criticism, federal regulators said Friday they will not weaken rules requiring certain disclosures about trains transporting crude oil and other hazardous materials.
The Inquirer reported this week that new oil-train rules issued May 7 by the U.S. Department of Transportation would end a 2014 requirement for railroads to share information about large volumes of crude oil with state emergency-response commissions.
Instead, railroads were to share information directly with some emergency responders, but the information would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and state public records laws.
“Under this approach,” the new rule said, “the transportation of crude oil by rail . . . can avoid the negative security and business implications of widespread public disclosure of routing and volume data…”
But the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, an arm of the transportation department, said Friday it will not make the change.
Instead, the existing rule “will remain in full force and effect until further notice while the agency considers options for codifying the May 2014 disclosure requirement on a permanent basis,” the agency said.
Saying that “transparency is a critical piece of the federal government’s comprehensive approach to safety,” the agency said it supports “the public disclosure of this information to the extent allowed by applicable state, local, and tribal laws.”
U.S. Sen. Robert Casey (D., Pa.) was one of nine senators who asked the agency to keep the existing rule in place.
Casey said Friday he was “pleased” by the agency’s decision.
“First responders who risk their lives when trains derail deserve to know what chemicals they could be dealing with when they get to the scene,” Casey said in a statement.
The disclosure rules about train routes and general numbers of trains apply to all trains carrying 1 million gallons or more of crude oil from the Baaken oil deposit in North Dakota.
Two-person train crews necessary for safety, lawmakers say
By Zach Pluhacek | Lincoln Journal Star, May 28, 2015 1:45 pm
A BNSF Railway locomotive pulls cars of coal through Lincoln in January. FRANCIS GARDLER/Journal Star file photo
Trains need two-person crews to help prevent disasters like the 2013 derailment and explosion of a crude oil train that killed 47 people in Quebec, some Nebraska lawmakers argued Thursday.
The Federal Railroad Administration has signaled plans to require two-man crews on trains carrying oil and freight trains, which is the industry’s standard practice, but its proposed rule hasn’t been issued.
Rail lines would like to switch to a crew of one on most freight engines as they equip trains with positive train control, a new federally mandated wireless safety system that can force a train to stop automatically to avoid a potential crash.
“This is a risky development for public safety in Nebraska, particularly in light of the hazardous types of freight that are being hauled through our state,” said Sen. Al Davis of Hyannis on Thursday.
Nebraska is home to the nation’s two biggest railroads, Union Pacific, based in Omaha, and BNSF Railway, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha. UP operates the world’s largest railroad classification yard, the Bailey Yard in North Platte, and BNSF has extensive operations in Lincoln and the rest of Nebraska.
Davis sponsored a measure (LB192) this year that would have outright required two-person crews in Nebraska, but it failed to advance from the Legislature’s Transportation and Telecommunications Committee.
Instead, lawmakers passed a nonbinding resolution Thursday that doesn’t specifically call for two-person crews, but it urges the Federal Railroad Administration to adopt a rule that “ensures public safety and promotes the efficient movement of freight, while supporting interstate commerce.”
The resolution (LR338) was adopted on a 36-4 vote.
“These trains are some of the heaviest moving things on this planet, and just having one person in charge doesn’t seem to make sense,” said Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm, who cosigned the resolution.
But Sen. Tyson Larson of O’Neill argued human mistakes are often to blame when tragedy strikes. “Sometimes true safety does lie within automation,” he said.
Union Pacific opposes the resolution because it falsely implies trains are unsafe and ignores collective bargaining deals that have addressed safe train crew sizes for decades, said spokesman Mark Davis.
Two rail unions — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, which represent about 3,700 active members between them — support the resolution.
Cutting down on the number of crew members would almost certainly affect jobs and reduce the number of workers paying into shared retirement plans.
The more critical issue is what happens when a train derails or breaks down, said Pat Pfeifer, state legislative board chairman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
One crew member has to remain inside the engine at all times, so without a second person, there’s no one available on scene to help cut a crossing or take other emergency precautions.
Both unions are also backing a bill in Congress to require two-person crews.
“It’s about public safety; it’s not about jobs,” Pfeifer said.
BNSF President Greeted by Bomb Train Protestors in Chicago
By Justin Mikulka, May 27, 2015 – 16:50
Today at the annual North American Rail Shippers Association, Carl Ice, president of rail company Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF) had his keynote address interrupted by members of Rising Tide Chicago. The activists carried banners reading, “BNSF: Profits over Safety” and “BNSF: Bomb Trains Kill.”
BNSF moves significantly more oil by rail than any other rail company and much of that oil passes through the Chicago area.
“BNSF makes billions of dollars putting our communities and climate at risk,” said protester Kevin Oliver. “So we took this action to take a stand against the obscene wealth that is being generated at the expense of our safety.”
Oliver was correct about BNSF making billions of dollars for its parent company Berkshire Hathaway, run by famed investor Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway purchased BNSF in 2009 and it has turned out to be an amazing investment, if you don’t mind the occasionally exploding oil train.
The success of the investment was summed up best by Jeff Mathews who has written books about Berkshire Hathaway.
“He [Buffett] stole it,” Matthews told Bloomberg. “He’s got to feel really good that he bought it when he did, because it’s a wonderful asset, and it’s done nothing but get more valuable in the time that he’s owned it.”
And that increase in value is directly related to the huge increase in moving Bakken crude oil in BNSF unit trains in the past several years. Trains that do not have modern braking systems, which is one of the issues raised by Rising Tide Chicago. And BNSF is certainly in no hurry to part with any of their profits to install modern braking systems.
As reported on DeSmog, BNSF and the rail and oil industries have lobbied extensively against requirements that the industry upgrade the oil trains to use a modern electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) braking system.
And while the new regulations released earlier this month will require some oil trains to use ECP brakes by 2021 and all of them by 2023, the American Petroleum Institute has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Transportation challenging this requirement, which is likely to delay even that long timetable.
The length of time the oil and rail industries have been allowed by the new regulations to implement safer technologies even surprised the former chair of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Cynthia Quarterman. PHMSA is the agency responsible for the new regulations and Quarterman led that agency for most of the time the regulations were being developed.
Extending the timeline for the regulations has been a top priority of the oil and rail lobbyists and their partners in congress in their efforts to weaken the new regulations and protect profits.
Prior to release of the new regulations Quarterman told USAToday that she thought ECP brakes were a top priority when it came to improving oil-by-rail safety.
“The more I think about it, the more I think that the ECP brakes may be more important than the tank car itself,” Quarterman said. “Because it would stop the pileup of the cars when there’s a derailment or when there’s a need to brake in a very quick fashion.”
And it isn’t just Quarterman who believes in the safety benefits of ECP braking systems. In 2007, long before the oil-by-rail boom, BNSF was touting the impressive safety benefits of ECP brake systems according to this press release.
ECP brakes have the potential to reduce train stopping distances by as much as 50 to 70 percent over conventional air brake systems. ECP brakes utilize electronic signals to simultaneously apply and release throughout the length of a freight train. This differs from conventional brake systems in which each car brakes individually as air pressure moves in a series from car to car.
But since the existing highly profitable and known to be flawed fleet of DOT-111 and CPC-1232 tank cars being used to move Bakken oil do not have ECP braking systems currently installed, BNSF and their allies at the American Petroleum Institute are now against ECP technology. An approach succinctly captured in today’s banner reading, “Profits over Safety.”
In 2006, the Federal Railroad Administration released a report on ECP brakes prepared by Booz Allen Hamilton which stated that the brakes are a “tested technology” that offers “major benefits” and could “significantly enhance” rail safety.
The question raised by today’s protest and the one that is really at the heart of the whole oil-by-rail discussion is how long will companies like BNSF get to continue to put profits over safety? The answer to that question is most likely the one given by former head of the National Transportation Safety Board Deborah Hersman. Hersman said that we’ve “seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safety rules being implemented if we don’t have a high enough body count.”
So in all likelihood, the only way that there will be significant safety improvements in the oil-by-rail industry is when the next fatal accident increases the pressure on regulators and the industry to finally part with some of their profits to protect the public.
Repost from Chico News & Review [Editor: This article is well-written and documents gutsy analyses by a regional firefighter and County officials who understand that local safety is at the mercy of federal regulators. Three years of Russian roulette – and more. A “must read.” – RS]
Russian roulette on the railways
Butte County train tracks are Bakken-free for now, but emergency responders fear a return of the volatile fuel
By Evan Tuchinsky, 05.21.15
Cal Fire Battalion Chief Russ Fowler says the Department of Transportation’s new rules regarding traincar safety are insufficient. PHOTO COURTESY OF CAL FIRE
What is ‘Bakken’?
The light crude oil known as Bakken comes from fracking a geologic formation of that name under North Dakota, Montana and Canada. Less dense and with less carbon, light crudes yield more gasoline than heavier crudes, but also are more volatile.
Trains crash. That fact hit home last week when a passenger train derailed in Philadelphia and also last year, on Nov. 26, when a cargo train derailed in the Feather River Canyon.
The risk of devastation multiplies when the derailed train carries volatile crude oil. A recent spate of those accidents has garnered national attention, too, prompting the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) to release new regulations governing the conveyance of flammable liquids. The measures have drawn near-unanimous opposition, though, and done little to assuage lingering local fears.
“My constituents have raised concerns and the Board [of Supervisors] is concerned,” said Butte County Supervisor Maureen Kirk, who represents Chico. “We’re hoping that some of the legislation and some of the discussion that comes forward will make even stiffer requirements on the transport of this Bakken oil.”
The DoT regulations came out May 1. Five days later, another oil train crashed, in North Dakota. By last Friday (May 15), both the petroleum industry and environmentalists had filed legal challenges to the DoT’s so-called “final rule.”
The International Association of Fire Fighters also has voiced objections. Representing more than 300,000 firefighters in North America, the IAFF protested a provision that allows railroads to keep the contents of their trains confidential—under the banner of national security.
Russ Fowler, battalion chief with Cal Fire Butte County and coordinator of the local Interagency Hazardous Materials Team, has additional concerns. DoT regulations phase out tank cars that are not up to the current safety standard, rather than pull them off the rails for retrofitting or retirement. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has argued that the alternative would result in increased oil-tanker traffic on highways.
Fowler says one particular railcar commonly used to carry volatile Bakken crude oil, the DOT-111, “just [wasn’t] designed for that product.” Since railroads have until 2018 to get those cars up to standard, “we have three years of potential Russian roulette on our hands if light crude oil is transported down the Feather River Canyon like it was done last fall.”
Cal Fire has communicated with BNSF Railway, Fowler said, and has been told no crude oil deliveries have come through Butte County this year. “I have no reason not to believe them,” he added, though he’s seen DOT-111s riding on Chico tracks.
Lena Kent, BNSF’s spokeswoman for California, confirmed by email that “we are not currently transporting Bakken crude in your county.” She also wrote: “We do provide information to the Office of Emergency Services in California.”
That’s in contrast with last year, when train cars carrying millions of gallons of the explosive oil, reportedly around one shipment per week, did make their way way along the Feather River Canyon. Experts tie the reduction of imports to a reduced demand for the fuel, a lighter type that’s similar to gasoline and thus extremely volatile.
While Cal Fire dreads the prospect of an urban crash, the Feather River Canyon presents a distinct set of frets.
Train tracks head into remote areas that are difficult for emergency responders to reach. Access roads don’t always run adjacent to the rail route—not even parallel in certain spots. Depending on where a crash occurred, spilled oil could contaminate the Feather River and Lake Oroville—a major source of water for California—or could start a forest fire should it ignite.
Even without a blaze or river release, “it would make an ugly, oily mess in the canyon,” Fowler said. “It would be a terrible environmental disaster.”
Butte County supervisors articulated such concerns to the California Public Utility Commission and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, before the DoT released its regulations. OES responded by saying the state is investing in “purchasing new Type II hazardous material emergency response units” and in “local training specific to … rail safety incidents.”
For Supervisor Doug Teeter, the board chair who represents the Ridge, that’s little assurance. He has a powerless feeling—believing “it’s just a matter of time” before an accident happens locally, yet knowing “as a county we have no control” over the rails.
“We’re at the mercy of the federal regulators,” he continued. “All we’re really getting is a little response on improved training and equipment. That is not nearly enough to handle a 100-car spill.”
Either in populated or unpopulated areas.
“We as a hazmat team plan for worst-case scenarios,” Fowler said. “Just because you plan for a worst-case scenario doesn’t mean you can mitigate the worst-case scenario, because there are things that can happen that are so catastrophic that it would overwhelm local resources until more regional or statewide resources could come in to help.”
Should legal challenges fail, and in the absence of local authority, a remedy to the DoT regulations remains: Congress. Teeter recently met with a representative of Sen. Barbara Boxer. Meanwhile, North State Congressman John Garamendi has introduced legislation to make light crude safer for rail transport.
Teeter encourages constituents to write congressional representatives and senators. He finds encouragement even in the controversial DoT regulations, which arose amid an uproar.
“Maybe now we’ll have a voice,” Teeter said. “Maybe something can happen.”
Today at the annual North American Rail Shippers Association, Carl Ice, president of rail company Burlington Northern Sante Fe (
