Category Archives: Derailment

Bakken Crude, Cleanup funding, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Environmental Impacts, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Hazmat notification, High threat urban areas, Oil spill, Public Health, Rail Safety, Tank car retirement, Tank car retrofit, Tar sands crude, Train speed, Water contamination

Riverkeeper sues U.S. DOT over oil train safety rules

Repost from The Times Union, State College, PA
[Editor: Note that this is a new filing, closely following the filing of May 14 by a coalition of environmental groups.  – RS]

Riverkeeper sues U.S. DOT over oil train safety rules

By Brian Nearing, May 18, 2015

The Hudson River environmental advocacy group Riverkeeper is challenging new U.S. Department of Transportation crude-by-rail standards in federal court, saying that they fail to protect the public and the environment from proven threats, according to a statement issued Monday.

The release states: Riverkeeper filed its lawsuit in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City on May 15, a little more than a week after the DOT issued a final tank car and railroad operation rule which had been the subject of scrutiny and controversy since its proposal in 2014. The suit closely follows another filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by a coalition of conservation and citizen groups that includes Earthjustice, Waterkeeper Alliance, ForestEthics and the Sierra Club.

The Hudson River and the Greater New York/New Jersey region, a thoroughfare for up to 25 percent of all crude shipments originating in the Bakken shale oil region, faces a daily risk of spills and explosions that could devastate communities, local economies, drinking water security, and the environment.

“These seriously flawed standards all but guarantee that there will be more explosive derailments, leaving people and the environment at grave risk,” Riverkeeper President Paul Gallay said. “The shortcomings are numerous, including an inadequate speed limit, unprotective tank car design, and time line that would allow these dangerous tank cars 10 more years on the rails. The DOT completely fails to recognize that we’re in the middle of a crisis – we don’t need bureaucratic half measures that are years away from implementation, we need common-sense protections today.”

Just this month, tank cars laden with crude oil derailed and exploded in Heimdal, North Dakota. Under the new DOT standards, the same type of cars that exploded in that disaster could stay in service hauling volatile crude oil for another five to eight years, or even indefinitely if they are used for tar sands.

Over the past several years, a series of fiery derailments, toxic spills, and explosions involving volatile crude and ethanol rail transport has caused billions in damages across North America. Crude-by-rail accidents threaten irreversible damage to waterways, many of which, like the Hudson River, serve as the source of drinking water for tens of thousands of people. This year alone,six oil-by-rail shipments have caught fire and exploded in North America. In July 2013, a derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killed 47 people. The total liabilities for that rail disaster could easily reach $2.7 billion over the next decade.

Here are some of the ways the new safety standards fail to protect people and the environment:

• Hazardous cars carrying volatile crude oil can remain in service for up to 10 years.

• The rule rolls back public notification requirements, leaving communities and first responders in the dark about explosive crude oil tank cars rumbling through their towns.

• While new tank cars will require thicker shells to mitigate punctures and leaks, retrofit tank cars will be allowed to stay in use with a less protective design standard.

• Speed limits have been restricted only for “high threat urban areas,” but only two areas in New York have received that designation, Buffalo and New York City.

• The “high threat” category relates to cities seen as vulnerable to terrorist attacks by the Department of Homeland Security. It is unrelated to actual risks posed by crude-by-rail.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Fire, Oil spill, Worst case scenario

Railroads Required to Plan for a Worst-Case Oil Train Spill in Washington State

Repost from Emergency Management

Railroads Required to Plan for a Worst-Case Oil Train Spill in Washington State

A new law requires railroads to plan for the “largest foreseeable spill in adverse weather conditions.”
Samantha Wohlfeil, The Bellingham Herald | May 17, 2015

(TNS) — Under a new state law signed by Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday, May 14, large railroads will be required to plan with the state for “worst-case spills” from crude oil unit trains, but exactly what that worst-case scenario looks like is not yet clear.

The law requires railroads to plan for the “largest foreseeable spill in adverse weather conditions,” but doesn’t define “largest foreseeable spill.”

In April, BNSF railway employees told Washington emergency responders that the company currently considers 150,000 gallons of crude oil – enough to fill five rail tank cars – its worst-case scenario when planning for spills into waterways. Crude oil trains usually carry about 100 rail tank cars.

“We’ve already seen worse than that though, haven’t we?” asked Roger Christensen, Bellingham’s interim emergency manager, when asked about using that amount for worst-case planning. “It seems like a low number … I hate to respond without knowing where they’re coming from. It doesn’t seem like a worst-case scenario to me.”

The amount is lower than what has been spilled and partially burned off in several high-profile crude oil train derailments in the last three years:

    • Mount Carbon, West Virginia, Feb. 16, 2015: More than 362,000 gallons spilled in a CSX train derailment and fire.
    • Casselton, North Dakota, Dec. 30, 2013: Roughly 475,000 gallons spilled from a BNSF train that derailed and caught fire.
    • Aliceville, Alabama, Nov. 8, 2013: About 749,000 gallons spilled into a swampy area from a Genesee & Wyoming train after a derailment and fire.
    • Lac-Megantic, Quebec, July 5, 2013: Roughly 1.6 million gallons spilled from a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train in a derailment that killed 47 people.

“Water spills require special equipment such as boom and skimmers. The worst case release is used to make sure we have enough of this special equipment,” BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas wrote in an email to The Bellingham Herald. “For land spills we use vacuum trucks and heavy equipment to dig up the contaminant. Both of which are readily available in most areas.”

Melonas said in an interview that the 150,000-gallon number was based on studying historical derailments in the industry.

When asked if the company uses other amounts to plan for spills like the fiery derailments outlined above, Melonas replied, “We consider all scenarios when developing our emergency response plans with utilizing resources of local, regional and nationwide experts and equipment to safely and efficiently mitigate any hazardous materials incident including crude oil.”

“Until we have further regulatory clarity from the U.S. Department of Transportation on how the agency will require railroads to calculate ‘worst-case discharges’ to waterways, BNSF is considering using 150,000 gallons,” Melonas wrote. “BNSF is open to discussing the justification of this quantity with Federal or State environmental agencies.”

BNSF would not outline what its worst-case scenarios are for other situations, or say whether the company would adjust its scenario based on the new state law.

 Planning for the Worst

The new law tasks the state Department of Ecology with crafting the worst-case scenario for railroad contingency plans in a process that could take a year or longer, and will include input from the railroads and the public, said Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, preparedness section manager for Ecology.

“Preparedness regulations are all about planning for a potential worst-case spill,” Pilkey-Jarvis said. “It (all starts) with defining a worst-case spill volume, then that drives the whole rest of your plan.”

The volume helps planners decide which equipment needs to be staged where, and how many people need to be trained members of a spill management team, she said.

“In (Washington) state the Legislature has defined the standard of what a worst-case spill volume should be, and in general it’s a pretty high bar,” Pilkey-Jarvis said.

Washington state requires marine ships that transport oil to plan for a spill of the entire cargo, including whatever fuel is aboard to operate the vessel.

Planning for that type of all-in worst case creates pushback from the industry, which sometimes says, “That could never happen,” Pilkey-Jarvis said.

“Well, that doesn’t matter from a planning perspective if you think that could happen or not,” she said. “From a planning perspective, we’re defining everything as a worst case.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently ran through a worst-case crude oil train derailment scenario in Jersey City, New Jersey. The exercise took emergency planners through an imagined scenario that could potentially kill or injure more than 1,000 people, and displace even more from their homes near the incident.

The scenario started with five of 90 tank cars derailing and spilling roughly 100,000 gallons of crude oil, which caught on fire. The blaze heats up other tanks, which rupture and spill more oil. The scenario outlined 225,000 gallons being consumed by flames, with the other 225,000 left on the ground, for a total 450,000-gallon spill.

“This is consistent with other real world events, such as the Galena, (Illinois) tank car derailment,” FEMA spokeswoman Susan Hendrick wrote in an email to The Bellingham Herald. “Complex and progressive scenarios allow communities to prepare for a range of consequences they may be faced with, including the size, scope and severity of an incident.”

In Bellingham, planners have not yet decided what the worst-case scenario might look like, Christensen said.

However, planners have calculated that throughout the city, 27,000 Bellingham residents – about a third of the population – live within the half-mile evacuation zone of the railroad tracks, he said.

Whatcom County and Bellingham planners work with BNSF, BP Cherry Point and Phillips 66 refineries, and other involved partners, to plan for different emergencies in the county.

Last fall, planners ran through a tabletop discussion of what resources might be available if 60,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from a train near Squalicum Harbor, Christensen said.

“It was a tabletop so we never got to the point of actually ‘deploying’ resources, but we did get a handle on that there is a significant amount of resources in our community,” he said. “We’re much more prepared than a lot of them, because of industrial partnerships. They might be the reason the hazard is coming through … but at least in Whatcom County we do have the industrial partners that bring resources to the table as well.”

Whatcom County Fire District 7 Chief Gary Russell said he’s not worried about knowing BNSF’s worst-case scenario, as it doesn’t change how his firefighters would respond to a derailment. His district covers nine miles of mostly rural BNSF track, and includes the two Whatcom County refineries.

“If it was one tank car on fire, we’d address it the same if it was five, we’d just probably not have the ability to deal with it,” Russell said. “In a derailment out here, you’d be protecting the area while it eliminated its fuel source.

“We treat every day like it’s an all-risk hazard. It doesn’t matter if it’s a freight train or a passenger train, with a greater loss of life,” he continued. “I worry about the product I don’t know anything about that’s in a tank car. … I’d rather have oil going up and down the rails than I would acids, sulfurs, chlorine and other hazardous commodities, because they can harm people faster than oil.”

Different Reporting Requirements

Unlike stationary facilities that have hazardous materials or chemicals on hand, railroads are exempt from nearly all requirements of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).

After a disastrous release of toxic gas at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, that killed thousands of people in 1984, the U.S. Congress passed EPCRA to try to prevent similar accidents.

While businesses such as certain gas stations, water treatment plants, and fish processors need to report what hazardous chemicals are on their properties to state and local officials, and to make that information available to the public, railroads do not. The act “does not apply to the transportation, including the storage incident to such transportation” of chemicals otherwise included in the act.

Railroads do need to submit their worst-case discharge calculations and plans to the U.S. Department of Transportation, but they are not available to the public.

“It’s un-American to withhold these documents from the public,” said Fred Millar, an independent rail consultant who worked for environmental groups that helped pass right-to-know rules in the 1980s and ’90s. “For the first 20 years or so, the railroads said to us, ‘No law forces us to give you this information, we consider it confidential.’ After 9/11, they said ‘We won’t give you the information because of terrorism, you know.’

“Keeping it secret is a little like elephants tiptoeing through the tulips,” he said.

Pipeline companies are required to submit their oil spill response plans to the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. They are published online, but the worst-case scenario numbers are redacted from the reports.

Last year, DOT required railroads to notify emergency response agencies of shipments of 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude oil through their states, but the introduction of new regulations on May 1 ended that requirement.

Now, railroads will share that information directly with emergency responders, but it will be exempt from public records laws and the Freedom of Information Act, the way that other hazardous materials such as chlorine and anhydrous ammonia are currently protected.

The new Washington state oil safety law requires seven days’ advance notice from the facilities that receive crude oil, such as refineries, before trains are scheduled to come through the state. That information is supposed to be given to the state, which will make it available to emergency responders immediately, and will aggregate the numbers quarterly for release to the public.

McClatchy reporter Curtis Tate contributed to this report.

Blast zone, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Evacuation, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire

NYU Institute for Policy Integrity: New oil train safety rules spell delay, leaving citizens at risk

Repost from The Hill

New oil train safety rules spell delay, leaving citizens at risk

By Jayni Hein, contributor, May 18, 2015, 10:00 am

Chicago, Philadelphia and Sacramento, Calif.: These are just a few of the cities within the “blast zones” of mile-long trains carrying flammable crude oil across the country. Twenty-five million Americans live in these vulnerable areas; yet it will be years until dangerous tank cars are retrofitted or retired from the rails, based on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s new safety standards.

The standards, released on May 1, cover railcars that carry the nation’s growing supply of volatile crude oil produced in the Bakken region of the northern United States and the Canadian tar sands. While the new rules mark incremental progress, they give residents little reason to rest easy. And more implementation delays could be coming — the American Petroleum Institute filed a petition in federal court on Monday challenging the new rules, and other legal challenges may be on the horizon.

When it comes to oil train derailments, it’s no longer a question of “if,” but “when.” Driven by growth in the production of oil in the U.S. and Canada, there has been a staggering increase in rail transportation of crude oil over the past five years, with a corresponding spike in the number of accidents — many causing explosions, oil spills and fatalities. The latest incident happened earlier this month, when a train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed and caught fire in central North Dakota, forcing the evacuation of a small town.

In 2008, only 9,500 tank car loads of crude were transported by rail in the United States. By 2013, that number rose to 400,000. In 2013, more oil spilled from U.S. trains than in the previous four decades combined. In addition to putting citizens directly at risk, these trains pass over important sources of drinking water — such as the Sacramento River in drought-stricken California — and share track with commuter rail in many urban areas, including Philadelphia.

The Department of Transportation initiated a rule-making last year to update railcar design standards, speed limits and routing requirements for trains carrying 20 carloads or more of flammable crude oil. The agency’s final rule maintains some of the positive aspects of its proposed rule: new electronically controlled pneumatic brake requirements, lower speed limits for older tank cars moving through “high-threat urban areas,” and new routing analysis requirements.

But, in other ways, the final rule represents a step backwards from the Department of Transportation’s initial proposal. And more fundamentally, the rule puts a Band-Aid on a chronic condition caused by booming fossil fuel production, ongoing reliance on oil and aging transportation infrastructure.

First, the final rule exempts many trains that would have been made safer under the initial proposal. Originally, any train carrying 20 or more cars with flammable oil or ethanol was defined as a “high-hazard flammable train” subject to these standards. The final rule applies only to trains carrying at least 35 tank cars of flammable oil or ethanol, or 20 cars of flammable liquid in a continuous block. This final definition, then, encompasses fewer trains.

Second, the rule suffers from a lengthy, five- to eight-year retrofit or phaseout of DOT-111 and CPC-1232 railcars that have been known to puncture upon derailment for many years. These are the same cars that were involved in the Lac Mégantic, Quebec tragedy in July 2013 that killed 47 people and in the five major accidents in 2015 (thus far) in West Virginia, Illinois, North Dakota and two locations in Ontario. The protracted phaseout means many additional years of dangerous tank cars sharing track with commuter rail, traveling through dense population centers, and crossing water bodies and other sensitive environmental habitats. The delay is especially striking, as National Transportation Safety Board reports dating back to 1991 detail the high failure and puncture rates of DOT-111 tank cars. However, the agency determined that a quicker phaseout of DOT-111 cars would cause negative effects by temporarily shifting oil transportation from rail to trucks, increasing hazardous air pollution and traffic-related fatalities.

Finally, while the rule imposes 40-mph speed limits for non-retrofitted trains traveling through “high threat urban areas,” only a few dozen cities around the nation have been so designated, leaving many towns, cities and drinking-water sources highly vulnerable.

In the next year, the Department of Transportation should prioritize additional measures, like increasing railcar and track inspections, lowering speed limits in additional urban areas, sharing risk reduction “best practices” among the railroads and potentially tightening design standards for retrofitted cars to align with the standards for new cars.

The department should also coordinate closely with the states to modernize communication systems, improve spill prevention and response planning, ensure that states are empowered to train and fund additional rail inspectors, and collaborate to identify high-priority infrastructure needs, such as bridge and track improvements.

Ideally, these safety improvements should be made as part of an “all of the above” strategy to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels while ensuring that domestic production and transportation are as safe as possible in the near-term. The new rail safety rules are a necessary first step on what looks to be a long, uncertain journey.

Hein is the policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, focusing on climate change, energy and transportation issues.

AMTRAK, Derailment, Positive Train Control, Rail infrastructure, Rail Safety

Amtrak crash highlights neglect of busy rail corridor

Repost from the Centre Daily Times, State College, PA

Amtrak crash highlights neglect of busy rail corridor

By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, May 13, 2015
Amtrak Crash
An aerial photo Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in Philadelphia, shows the scene after a fatal Amtrak derailment Tuesday night, in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia. PATRICK SEMANSKY — AP

WASHINGTON — The derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia this week has renewed attention to the safety and infrastructure challenges facing the nation’s busiest passenger rail corridor.

As investigators began reviewing the data from the locomotive event recorder and collecting other key pieces of evidence to determine the cause of the derailment, information emerged Wednesday that the train had been traveling around a sharp curve at twice the posted speed when it left the tracks.

The accident coincided with a debate in Washington over funding for Amtrak. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee voted to cut Amtrak’s annual subsidy from $1.4 billion to $1.1 billion. Further, Amtrak’s authorizing legislation expired two years ago and hasn’t been renewed.

Congress funds Amtrak from year to year, making it difficult for the railroad to make needed improvements to aging bridges and tunnels and to the systems that power the trains and keep them out of one another’s way.

“Amtrak’s living on a shoestring,” said Steve Ditmeyer, a former associate administrator for research and development at the Federal Railroad Administration. “Some things are falling through the cracks.”

The seven-car train traveling from Washington to New York derailed after 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday in Northeast Philadelphia. Of the 238 passengers and five crew members on board, seven were confirmed dead Wednesday by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

The fatalities included a U.S. naval midshipman and an employee of The Associated Press. The chief executive of an online startup company was missing.

As seen from TV news footage and pictures posted to social media, pieces of the train were strewed askew the track, which bends in a sharp curve in Northeast Philadelphia. Part of the train overturned, and one car was reduced to a twisted heap of shredded metal.

“It’s a devastating scene,” National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt said Wednesday morning.

The NTSB confirmed Wednesday afternoon that the train had approached the location of the accident, Frankford Junction, at more than 100 mph. The speed limit there is 50 mph.

Ditmeyer said a Northeast Corridor improvement project in the late 1970s and early 1980s was supposed to straighten out curves, but that got cut from the budget.

Amtrak’s flagship Acela Express has a top speed of 150 mph but rarely reaches it. Numerous curves, bridges and tunnels restrict the speed of all trains on the Northeast Corridor. The speed limit through two tunnels under Baltimore, built in the 1870s, is 30 mph.

According to a five-year plan for the Northeast Corridor published last month, half the line’s bridges were built between 1900 and 1920, and it would take 300 years to replace them at current funding levels.

“These are ancient things,” Ditmeyer said. “They’re well over a hundred years old. They are decaying.”

The twin tunnels under the Hudson River in New York, built in 1910, sustained heavy flood damage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Tens of thousands of commuters depend on them every day, and Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman has said they need to be replaced soon.

“I don’t know if it’s seven (years). I don’t know if it’s four or less,” Boardman said in an interview last year. “We’ve got to do it. The nation has to do it. We have to find the money.”

Amtrak is in the process of installing a collision-avoidance system by year’s end on the Boston-to-Washington Northeast Corridor. The system, called positive train control, is designed to prevent trains from exceeding speed limits as they approach curves.

Ditmeyer said the Northeast Corridor was long ago equipped with a system called automatic train control. While that system prevents trains from running past stop signals, it doesn’t correct for excessive speed ahead of curves.

Congress mandated positive train control in 2008 for much of the nation’s rail network, and some lawmakers are floating a three- to five-year extension for its installation.

Unlike Amtrak’s long-distance trains, which are diesel powered, the Northeast Corridor is electrified. But the system of overhead wires and supports that supplies power to the trains dates to the Great Depression.

Amtrak’s five-year plan for the corridor says 62 percent of the overhead wires and 42 percent of the steel supports need to be replaced.

The plan also notes that the economic cost of losing service on the Northeast Corridor could reach $100 million a day. As of Wednesday afternoon, Amtrak service was still suspended between New York and Philadelphia.