Washington state judge denies Shell appeal on rail project review
HOUSTON | By Kristen Hays, May 21, 2015 11:34pm BST
A judge on Thursday denied Royal Dutch Shell’s appeal of a ruling that a proposed oil-by-rail project at its Washington state refinery must undergo a full environmental review, just two weeks after a crude train derailment caused a fire in North Dakota.
Shell had appealed a February ruling from a Skagit County Office of Land Use Hearings examiner that the plan to move 70,000 barrels per day of inland crude to its 145,000 bpd Puget Sound refinery in Anacortes must be comprehensively reviewed.
In 2014, the county said the project did not need that much scrutiny to get a permit, prompting challenges from several environmental organizations.
On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge denied Shell’s appeal, according to court officials.
The denial came two weeks after an eastbound crude train derailed in North Dakota, the latest in a spate of fiery mishaps since 2013 that have stoked fears about moving oil by rail.
Shell had sought to limit the review’s scope to exclude railroad issues overseen solely by federal regulators, but said it remains committed to working with the county and other agencies to finish the permitting process.
Shell’s refining competitors in Washington have been bringing in U.S. crudes by rail since 2012 to displace more expensive imports and declining Alaskan oil output. Shell was the last to seek oil-by-rail permits in late 2013, but by then opponents had taken notice of train crashes and safety concerns.
The rail issue is not Shell’s only concern in the state. The company also faces opponents to its plan to use the port city of Seattle to ready rigs before they travel to the Chukchi Sea off the north coast of Alaska.
(Reporting By Kristen Hays. Editing by Andre Grenon)
Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle, Opinion [Editor: These same warnings given – and ignored – years ago in regard to rail transport of high hazard freight. Positive Train Control is an absolute safety MUST for all trains. – RS]
Amtrak’s deadly spectrum gap
By David Sirota, May 21, 2015
In the public eye, the disaster on the rails last week in Philadelphia was not only tragic but also shocking. As a crowded Amtrak train approached a bend in the track, it was barreling along at more than 100 miles an hour — twice the mandated speed for that section. The resulting derailment killed eight people, highlighting grave deficiencies in Amtrak’s safety system.
But while Amtrak officials may have been devastated, they could not have been surprised: The accident confirmed clear vulnerabilities in the safety system, shortcomings that the rail company’s internal watchdog had been warning about for more than two years.
In a December 2012 report, Amtrak’s inspector general wrote that “formidable” and “significant challenges” were delaying deployment of a safety system known as Positive Train Control, which identifies cars that are traveling at excessive speeds and automatically slows their progress. Four years earlier, Congress had required that Amtrak and other American rail companies add the technology to their operations, but only a fraction of the rail systems were by then covered. Had the PTC technology been in place in Philadelphia, federal regulators say, the derailment might well have been prevented.
The inspector general’s 2012 report zeroed in on one missing element that was crucial to the broader deployment of the safety system: Amtrak had for years failed to acquire adequate rights to broadcast communications signals through the public airwaves. Without these so-called spectrum rights, Amtrak’s trains could not communicate with the electronic brains of the safety system, preventing its use along key stretches of track. This lack of spectrum had become the “most serious challenge” in the railroad’s efforts to deploy the safety equipment more broadly, Amtrak’s watchdog warned.
The failure to more quickly address this challenge seems like a story that the political world can oversimplify into a standard tale of cut-and-dry blame, featuring singular villains. But in this saga, many factors appear to have contributed to the disaster.
For one, there was a lack of adequate resources. Flush with profits, private freight companies had the cash to buy the spectrum they needed for their own PTC system. By contrast, Congress did not provide Amtrak with the same resources.
There was also a lack of political will. When public transportation officials begged Congress to pass a bill ordering the FCC to give the railroad unused spectrum for free rather than selling it to private telecommunications firms, lawmakers refused.
But some technology experts argue that Amtrak itself was also to blame for doggedly sticking to an outdated plan. They say that because communications technology has advanced so quickly, the railroad officials did not need to build a PTC system on exclusive spectrum — whose scarcity makes it difficult and expensive to obtain. Instead, they assert, new technologies would have allowed Amtrak to more quickly construct a system using shared spectrum, existing telecommunications infrastructure or even unlicensed frequencies that are used for things like in-home Wi-Fi.
‘’We have boatloads of fiber running alongside train tracks in the rights of way,” said Harold Feld, a senior vice president of the think tank Public Knowledge. “If I were architecting this system, I could deploy it tomorrow using unlicensed spectrum.” Amtrak’s “obsession with exclusive licensing kills,” he concluded.
How much each of these factors contributed to the catastrophe can certainly be debated. What is not debatable, however, is the existence of warning signs. The 2012 inspector general report proves they were there for all to see.
That, then, raises two pressing questions: Why were those warning signs not more urgently addressed? And will such warning signs be acted on in the future? America deserves answers.
Press Release from Riverkeeper New York [Editor: This from our contact in Albany: “New York State rescinds the Global expansion NegDec (aka, FONSI) and declares the application incomplete. Cites air issues, spill response issues, potential “significant adverse impacts on the environment”, and EPA concerns. Letter from the State attached.” – RS]
Riverkeeper Responds to Decision Regarding Albany Oil Terminal Expansion
For Immediate Release: May 21, 2015
Contact: Leah Rae, Riverkeeper
914-478-4501, ext. 238
Riverkeeper applauds the decision by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation regarding the proposed expansion of Global Companies’ rail-to-barge transfer terminal at in Albany, which would facilitate the transport of heavy “tar sands” crude oil. Riverkeeper calls on the state to follow through on what they’ve begun today and promptly issue a “positive declaration” requiring an environmental impact statement.
“It is good for New York State that the DEC came to a proper decision in one of the most important environmental matters facing the state. We look forward to participating with the state on a full public safety and environmental review that is robust and protective of our communities and our waterways.”
The shipment of tar sands crude oil would pose a whole new level of risk to the Hudson River. In the event of a spill, the toxic, sinking crude would mix into the water column and be unrecoverable.
A lawsuit filed by Riverkeeper and other groups in June 2014 challenged the DEC’s decision not to require an environmental impact statement. Riverkeeper had reminded the DEC that state law required an environmental impact statement on the proposal due to the significant environmental and public safety impacts, ranging from air pollutants to the increased risk of fire and explosion in downtown Albany. The DEC’s own Environmental Justice Policy requires that nearby communities be consulted and informed about proposals that may affect them so that those communities can be meaningfully involved in their review.
Amtrak Derailment Could Have Lead to Evacuation of Almost 20,000
This image appears on a legal complaint by law firm Kline & Specter, filed yesterday on behalf of several passengers injured in the Amtrak 188 derailment: USDC Eastern District 15-CV- 2744-LDD.
By Austin Nolen, May 20, 2015
The recent Amtrak derailment, which has already led to eight deaths, could have been far worse. As many already know, Amtrak 188 derailed near another train, which could have been carrying crude oil. As PhillyMag points out in a piece they ran on these so-called “bomb trains,” “a large-scale oil train fire in Philadelphia would be a fiasco. Federal officials recommend evacuating all people within a half-mile of an oil train fire—that’s how destructive they can be.”
The oil trains, carried by a company called Conrail, transport the oil, from a North Dakota shale formation, through Chicago to Philadelphia, according to a Conrail spokesperson and industry documents reviewed by The Spirit. The oil trains initially enter the Riverwards in Kensington along a line owned by Amtrak before branching off through Port Richmond near Bridesburg to cross the Delaware River. The freight then travels from Philadelphia across the Delaware River to South Jersey refineries.
Conrail is a wholly owned subsidiary of CSX and Norfolk Southern, “two larger rail lines”. Though, according to a CSX spokesperson, the company operates independently. The federal government created Conrail in the 1970s to help bail out bankrupt rail companies. Though Conrail was privatized in the 1980s, it continues to receive federal funding today.
The company has since been involved with several notable environmental issues. A federal court convicted Conrail of multiple felony counts of environmental crime in 1995. The firm currently faces multiple lawsuits over a 2012 incident in Paulsboro, NJ, where a Conrail freight train derailed over a bridge in November of that year and released about 24,000 gallons of vinyl chloride, according to a National Transportation Safety Board accident report.
While a Conrail official has confirmed that the tankers near the Amtrak 188 derailment did not contain crude oil, and were in fact empty, what if they hadn’t been?
The Spirit’s analysis of the derailment suggest that had the passenger train hit nearby oil tankers, around 15,696 people from the area, including parts of Port Richmond, may have fallen within the evacuation zone: a half-mile radius around the crash site. This figure represents the total population in 12 Census block groups surrounding the crash site. The Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management did not respond to a request for comment.
However, as City Paper has reported, the office’s director during a public meeting speculated that if an incident involving crude oil did occur, the evacuation zone would be a half-mile radius. Furthermore, a recent report from PennEnvironment indicated that the same radius was put into place in other crude oil disasters. A Conrail representative did not respond to a request for comment about their safety operations.
The Spirit’s investigation of Conrail’s operations began before the recent Amtrak derailment, and relied upon industry documents provided to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency under a federal Department of Transportation order. The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records then mandated their public release. Subsequent changes to the laws have rendered these records once again inaccessible.
There have been several other documented instances of close calls regarding oil tankers in Philadelphia. A derailment left train cars dangling over the Schuylkill River in January 2014, and another train ran off its tracks in South Philadelphia a year later.
An April 2014 story in The Inquirer details a third incident, which involved Conrail tankers in Port Richmond on the train tracks crossing Aramingo Avenue near Castor Avenue, close to where Amtrak 188 derailed last week. Conrail spokesman John Enright told the Inquirer that three tanker cars of the nine-car train derailed in the 2014 Port Richmond incident. The cause of that derailment wasn’t known at the time. According to Conrail, the tankers were carrying acetone. The Philadelphia Fire Department found no leaks in the crash and no injuries were reported.
These scenarios aren’t unique to Philadelphia either. Two years ago, a runaway oil train in Lac-Mégantic, a town in Quebec, hit a nightclub and killed 47 people. Other instances in West Virginia, North Dakota, and Illinois had oil tankers catching fire in more rural area.
Philadelphia’s oil lines run through highly residential areas: University City, Southwest Philadelphia, and North Philadelphia. As maps show, if an emergency involving an oil spill were to occur, evacuating the area would be a huge undertaking and potentially result in mass casualties. The Inquirer estimates that 400,000 total Philadelphians live within a half-mile of rail lines that carry crude oil.
Some in Philadelphia have called for the creation of an “Energy Hub” in the city, especially Phil Rinaldi, CEO of Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), the company that owns a South Philadelphia crude oil refinery. This plan would make a Philadelphia a pipeline center for crude oil, natural gas and other gas liquids. The creation of a Philadelphia Energy Hub would greatly benefit the city’s manufacturing industry—an industry that’s been crippled since the deindustrialization of the city in the 50s—but also brings up a host of safety concerns.
City representatives maintain that Philadelphia has a comprehensive emergency protocol in place to respond to a disaster involving crude oil or any other hazardous materials. Some of the information, such as evacuation routes, is available on the city’s website. City officials, however, have refused to disclose information regarding the specifics of this plan to clean water activists, who believe the city has no such formalized plan.
“That’s one of our challenges—striking the balance between sharing information so the public can be prepared and not sharing information because we do live in this post-9/11 world,” Samantha Phillips, the city’s director of emergency management, told The Inquirer.
