Safety of shipping oil by rail addressed in appropriations bill
By Jodi Weigand, Dec. 17, 2014
Provisions pushed by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey to improve the safety of crude oil shipments are included in the final version of the appropriations bill that will fund the federal government for the next nine months.
Casey began pushing for more money for rail safety after three train derailments in the state this year, including one in Vandergrift in February.
“This program was not included in the original House bill, so it needed a strong push from the Senate (and) Casey to make it in the final package,” said Casey’s spokesman John Rizzo.
The $54 billion in appropriations for transportation, housing and urban development includes funding for 15 new rail and hazardous material inspectors. It also calls for $3 million to expand the use of automated track inspections for 14,000 miles of track and $1 million to pay for online training for first responders on how to handle train derailments.
The Senate on Saturday approved the 2015 Omnibus Appropriations Bill that the House narrowly passed Thursday.
Casey’s bill requires the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to finalize regulatory action to change tank car design standards by Jan. 15. The PHMSA began the changes in September 2013.
Among the new requirements is that newly manufactured and existing tank cars that are used to haul crude oil have puncture resistance systems and protection for hatches and valves that exceed the existing design requirements for the DOT-111 tankers, an old-style variety that critics say are too flimsy.
In the event that there is a trail derailment that involves a crude oil spill, new funding will ensure that first responders have better training on how to handle it.
The money in the bill for a web-based hazardous materials emergency response training curriculum will help ensure that communities that lack the resources to send their first responders to training sites can still access education to contain oil spills and prevent danger to people and communities.
“Funding will also be used to expedite implementation of a remote automated track inspection capability to increase inspection mileage at a reduced cost,” Rizzo said. “There is too much track for manual inspections to cover it all.”
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, said she’s pleased the bill would mandate comprehensive oil spill response plans for railroads and provide funding focusing on providing safety training.
“I worked to set a deadline for the Department of Transportation to issue new safety standards for tank cars next month and worked to protect smaller communities without sufficient resources to respond to oil trains,” Murray said.
A federal investigation into the Feb. 13 derailment and oil spill in Vandergrift determined that “widening,” or spreading of the rails on that section track, was the probable cause.
The report said that speed did not cause the derailment. However, two railroad experts said it was a contributing factor because speed could have caused track problems on the curve.
Repost from The Huffington Post [Editor: This is a must read, a comprehensive summary by a visionary and influential old-timer. – RS]
Unsafe and Unnecessary Oil Trains Threaten 25 Million Americans
By Ralph Nader, 12/15/2014
Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, lawyer and author
Back in 1991 the National Transportation Safety Board first identified oil trains as unsafe — the tank cars, specifically ones called DOT-111s, were too thin and punctured too easily, making transport of flammable liquids like oil unreasonably dangerous. As bad as this might sound, at the very least there was not a lot of oil being carried on the rails in 1991.
Now, in the midst of a North American oil boom, oil companies are using fracking and tar sands mining to produce crude in remote areas of the U.S. and Canada. To get the crude to refineries on the coasts the oil industry is ramping up transport by oil trains. In 2008, 9,500 crude oil tank cars moved on US rails. In 2013 the number was more than 400,000! With this rapid growth comes a looming threat to public safety and the environment. No one — not federal regulators or local firefighters — are prepared for oil train derailments, spills and explosions.
Unfortunately, the rapid increase in oil trains has already meant many more oil train disasters. Railroads spilled more oil in 2013 than in the previous 40 years combined.
Trains are the most efficient way to move freight and people. This is why train tracks run through our cities and towns. Our rail system was never designed to move hazardous materials, however; if it was, train tracks would not run next to schools and under football stadiums.
Last summer, environmental watchdog group ForestEthics released a map of North America that shows probable oil train routes. Using Google, anyone can check to see if their home or office is near an oil train route. (Try it out here.)
ForestEthics used census data to calculate that more than 25 million Americans live in the oil train blast zone (that being the one-mile evacuation area in the case of a derailment and fire.) This is clearly a risk not worth taking — oil trains are the Pintos of the rails. Most of these trains are a mile long, pulling 100-plus tank cars carrying more than 3 million gallons of explosive crude. Two-thirds of the tank cars used to carry crude oil today were considered a “substantial danger to life, property, and the environment” by federal rail safety officials back in 1991.
The remaining one-third of the tank cars are not much better — these more “modern” cars are tested at 14 to 15 mph, but the average derailment speed for heavy freight trains is 24 mph. And it was the most “modern” tank cars that infamously derailed, caught fire, exploded and poisoned the river in Lynchburg, Virginia last May. Other derailments and explosions in North Dakota and Alabama made national news in 2014.
The most alarming demonstration of the threat posed by these trains happened in Quebec in July 2013 — an oil train derailed and exploded in the City of Lac Megantic, killing 47 people and burning a quarter of the city to the ground. The fire burned uncontrollably, flowing through the city, into and then out of sewers, and into the nearby river. Firefighters from across the region responded, but an oil fire cannot be fought with water, and exceptionally few fire departments have enough foam flame retardant to control a fire from even a single 30,000 gallon tank car, much less the millions of gallons on an oil train.
Given the damage already done and the threat presented, Canada immediately banned the oldest of these rail cars and mandated a three-year phase-out of the DOT-111s. More needs to be done, but this is a solid first step. Of course, we share the North American rail network — right now those banned trains from Canada may very well be transporting oil through your home town while the Department of Transportation dallies.
The immense public risk these oil trains pose is starting to gain the attention it deserves, but not yet the response. Last summer, the U.S. federal government began the process of writing new safety regulations. Industry has weighed in heavily to protect its interest in keeping these trains rolling. The Department of Transportation, disturbingly, seems to be catering to industry’s needs.
The current draft rules are deeply flawed and would have little positive impact on safety. They leave the most dangerous cars in service for years. Worse yet, the oil industry would get to more than double its tank car fleet before being required to decommission any of the older, more dangerous DOT-111s.
We need an immediate ban on the most dangerous tank cars. We also need to slow these trains down; slower trains mean fewer accidents, and fewer spills and explosions when they do derail. The public and local fire fighters must be notified about train routes and schedules, and every oil train needs a comprehensive emergency response plan for accidents involving explosive Bakken crude and toxic tar sands. In addition, regulations must require adequate insurance. This is the least we could expect from Secretary Anthony Foxx, who travels a lot around the country, and the Department of Transportation.
So far, Secretary Foxx is protecting the oil industry, not ordinary Americans. In fact, Secretary Foxx is meeting with Canadian officials this Thursday, December 18, to discuss oil-by-rail. It is doubtful, considering Canada’s strong first step, that he will be trying to persuade them to adopt even stronger regulations. Will Secretary Foxx ask them to weaken what they have done and put more lives at risk? Time will tell. He has the power, and the mandate, to remove the most dangerous rail cars to protect public safety but he appears to be heading in the opposite direction. Earlier this month ForestEthics and the Sierra Club, represented by EarthJustice, filed a lawsuit against the DOT to require them to fulfill this duty.
Secretary Foxx no doubt has a parade of corporate executives wooing him for lax or no oversight. But he certainly doesn’t want to have a Lac Megantic-type disaster in the U.S. on his watch. It is more possible now than ever before, given the massive increase in oil-by-rail traffic.
Pipelines, such as the Keystone XL, are not the answer either. (Keystone oil would be routed for export to other countries from Gulf ports.) Pipelines can also leak and result in massive damage to the environment as we have seen in the Kalamazoo, MI spill by the Enbridge Corporation. Three years later, $1.2 billion spent, and the “clean up” is still ongoing.
Here’s the reality — we don’t need new pipelines and we don’t need oil by rail. This is “extreme oil,” and if we can’t transport it safely, we can and must say no. Secretary Foxx needs to help make sure 25 million people living in the blastzone are safe and that means significant regulations and restrictions on potentially catastrophic oil rail cars.
Rather than choosing either of these destructive options, we are fortunate to be able to choose safe, affordable cleaner energy and more efficient energy products, such as vehicles and furnaces, instead. That is the future and it is not a distant future — it’s happening right now.
Musi-Café, the business establishment that figured directly in the July 2013 Lac-Megantic rail disaster in Canada, has finally reopened. The restaurant-bar quietly opened its doors to the public on Monday 400 metres away from ground zero.
Firefighters look at a train wagon on fire at Lac Megantic, Quebec, July 6, 2013. Canadian police expect the death toll from a fatal fuel train blast in a small Quebec town to be more than the one person confirmed dead so far, a spokesman said on Saturday. The driverless train and 72 tankers of crude oil jumped the tracks in the small town of Lac-Megantic early in the morning and exploded in a massive fireball. REUTERS/Mathieu Belanger
Yannick Gagne, Musi-Café owner, still vividly remembers how it all happened a year ago. “The sky, everything inside, outside became orange,” CBC News quoted Gagne, who shared the memory as if it only happened yesterday. “I felt the heat coming to the window, blowing heat. I saw a wall, a big wall of fire 300, 400 feet high.”
To say that the bar’s reopening is a testament of hope would be an understatement. The train derailment and explosion killed 47 people in Quebec. It took for months, the area endured painful and difficult memories.
Gagne was lucky to have left the bar 40 minutes before tragedy hit. It wasn’t the same for two of his employees as well as to some 28 others who were there at the time. He said until now, he still has nightmares of being trapped inside with them. In those, he saw how the people tried hard to escape.
On Monday’s reopening, only three of the original employees came back to work with him. One of those was the chef, a girl who had worked for him for three or four years and another good friend. The latter, identified as Karine Blanchette, will handle all the artists who will come to the resto-bar.
Forty-seven people were killed in Lac-Megantic when a train of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Canada, carrying 72 tankers full of crude oil, derailed and exploded in the town. It had been earlier parked uphill from Lac-Megantic, unattended, when it started its descent into the town. A gigantic explosion ensued, destroying 40 buildings and ripping a large area of Lac-Megantic. About 2,000 residents were forced to flee their homes.
Gagne almost left town because he felt people blamed him for the death of the 47. He said there were some who will look away when they see him coming nearby. “I know it’s normal, but it puts a lot of pressure … I’m not the devil, I didn’t put the train inside the Musi-Café.”
Yet there were also other people who pushed and motivated him to rebuild the café as a sign of healing and closure as well. Christian Lafontaine, a survivor, was one of them. He told him they needed the café to heal, and to move on. “All the people of Mégantic … they haven’t healed yet. They suffer still,” Lafontaine said.
Gagne said the new restaurant-bar will cost $1.5 million. He said the provincial government has provided a loan, “a financial bridge.” The federal government had likewise extended help. Musi-Café will have an official “red carpet and champagne” opening in February.
Berkeley Rent Board opposes crude oil transports by rail through city
By Tom Lochner, 12/16/2014
BERKELEY — The city’s Rent Stabilization Board added its voice to a growing body of opposition to crude oil trains rolling through the East Bay this week, warning that derailments could trigger explosions that could damage affordable rental housing stock as well as schools, health care agencies and businesses.
“An accident is not a question of if, but when and where,” board member John Selawsky said before voting to support a resolution co-sponsored by Alejandro Soto-Vigil, James Chang, Paola Laverde-Levine and vice Chairwoman Katherine Harr opposing a plan by Phillips 66 to ship crude oil by rail from outside the state to its Santa Maria refinery in San Luis Obispo County.
Phillips 66 has said it is confident that environmental and public safety issues raised by the project will be addressed in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act. The company also noted that railroads are federally regulated.
The trains, some 250 a year, each with 80 tank cars, would take several possible routes to Santa Maria, from the south through the Los Angeles basin or from the north via Sacramento, Martinez and along the shore of San Pablo and San Francisco bays through San Jose to the Central Coast, according to a revised draft environmental impact report under review by San Luis Obispo County. An alternate route could go through Stockton and Martinez and down the East Bay shore; yet another, through Stockton and San Jose via the Altamont Pass.
Tuesday’s vote was 8-0 with one abstention, by Judy Shelton, who said she firmly opposes transporting crude oil by rail through Berkeley, but questioned whether the rent board is the proper vehicle for that opposition.
Soto-Vigil noted that the rent board is a body separate from the City Council, and its own legal entity.
“Our mission is to preserve our rental housing stock,” he said.
Chang noted that the council already is on record opposing the project. In March, the council unanimously declared opposition to the transport of crude oil by rail through East Bay cities. And in November, the council signed on to comments to the DEIR by a group of environmental organizations opposing the Phillips 66 project.
