Category Archives: Emergency Readiness & Response

Air Quality, Bridge safety, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Evacuation zone, Phillips 66 Nipomo Mesa refinery, San Luis Obispo County, Santa Maria Refinery

No decision on Phillips 66 oil-by-rail proposal after fifth day of hearings

Repost from the San Luis Obispo Tribune

No decision on Phillips 66 oil-by-rail proposal after fifth day of hearings

By David Sneed, April 15, 2016 10:27 AM

HIGHLIGHTS
• Planning Commission continues the discussion to May 16, when a decision is expected
• Panel considered a range of issues, including air quality, bridge safety and emergency response
• Public turnout Friday was light because no public comment was taken

Planning commissioners listen Friday during the fifth hearing on Phillips 66’s oil-by-rail proposal for its Nipomo Mesa refinery.
Planning commissioners listen Friday during the fifth hearing on Phillips 66’s oil-by-rail proposal for its Nipomo Mesa refinery. Credit: David Middlecamp

After a fifth daylong hearing, the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission did not come to a decision on a controversial proposed rail spur project at the Phillips 66 Nipomo Mesa refinery and scheduled a sixth and possibly final hearing for May 16.

During Friday’s hearing, the commission considered a wide range of issues associated with the project, including air quality, bridge safety, hazards, emergency response and the composition of the oil to be shipped. One of the greatest fears regarding the proposed rail spur at the Phillips 66 oil refinery is that one of the long trains supplying the refinery could derail in a fiery crash.

“What is a rail car going to do if it turns over on the (Cuesta) Grade,” asked Commissioner Jim Irving. “Is it going to blow up?”

Jim Anderson, refinery manager, said the company will use the latest, most up-to-date tankers to transport the oil according to the Department of Transportation requirements to prevent that from happening. He also said the type of crude oil the tankers will be hauling is the heavier, less flammable kind.

“These cars are the state-of-the-art according to the DOT,” he said. “We will not start this project without those cars.”

John Peirson, a consultant with Marine Research Specialists of Ventura, which prepared the project’s environmental impact report, said even with the heavier crude oil, crashes have resulted in explosions and fireballs. He also said a thinner would be added to make the oil easier to pump and transport, and that this would increase its flammability.

“It is less likely, but it is possible,” he said.

For oil train accidents, the evacuation zone along the railroad is half a mile on either side. In San Luis Obispo County, 88,377 people live within half a mile of the tracks, said Ryan Hostetter, senior county planner.

The evacuation zone is the area adjacent to the tracks in which a person is liable to be injured in the event of a fire and explosion. Of greatest risk are densely populated areas and public facilities such as schools and hospitals. For example, Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo is near the railroad.

“These are areas where you would expect very severe consequences,” said Steve Radis, another MRS consultant. “Potentially, if you were outdoors, you could be injured, and evacuating a hospital would be a major disruption.”

The amount of crude oil transported by rail has increased 50 times since 2009. Since that time, three accidents a year involving oil cars have occurred nationally, none locally, Radis said.

In October 2015, Cal Fire conducted a simulated oil car derailment accident drill at the California Men’s Colony prison that involved 100 people. The simulation included multiple fires, creek pollution and inmate injuries, Battalion Chief Laurie Donnelly said.

It took several hours to put the oil fires out, but the most time-consuming part of the drill was treating the injured inmates.

“We did well, but we found a few areas of improvement, which is to be expected in a drill like that,” she said.

More than 50 people were in attendance Friday at the commission’s fifth hearing on the project.

Public turnout at Friday’s hearing was light compared with past hearings, which attracted hundreds of people. The light turnout was attributable to the fact that no public comment was taken.

The oil company has applied to build a 1.3-mile rail spur with five parallel tracks from the main rail line to its Nipomo Mesa refinery, an unloading facility at the refinery and on-site pipelines.

These improvements would allow the refinery to accept five trains a week for a maximum of 250 trains per year to deliver crude oil to the refinery. Each train would have three locomotives, two buffer cars and 80 rail cars carrying a total of 2.2 million gallons of crude oil.

County staff is recommending the proposal be denied. The project drew more than 400 speakers at previous hearings as well as thousands of letters and comments sent from around the state.

Opponents say the project will cause air pollution and other environmental consequences. They are also concerned about a derailment causing an oil spill and fire.

In order to reduce these environmental impacts, Phillips 66 has offered to reduce the shipments to three trains a week, or 150 per year.

Supporters say the project is needed to keep the refinery economically viable and protect its 200 jobs. They also point out that the refinery has operated safely and the state needs the oil products it will produce.

Whatever decision the Planning Commission makes will certainly be appealed to the county Board of Supervisors.

Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Let it burn, Pipeline transport, Tar sands crude

The Canadian Government is Blowing Up Bomb Trains for Practice

Repost from Vice News

ViceNews header 2016-03-18
Photo via the Defence Research and Development Canada – Centre for Security Science

The Canadian Government is Blowing Up Bomb Trains for Practice

By Hilary Beaumont, March 18, 2016 | 9:51 am

Two and a half years after a train carrying crude oil ran off the tracks in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and exploded, killing 47 people, the Canadian government set a tanker on fire and pretended to run a train off its tracks as practice in case it happens again.

On July 6, 2013, an unmanned train carrying ultra-flammable western crude plummeted into the downtown of 6,000-resident Lac-Mégantic, where it erupted in flames and flattened everything in its path. The Lac-Mégantic tragedy spurred a debate in Canada and the US about the safety of so-called “bomb trains”, and reinvigorated the discussion about shipping oil across Canada.

Exercise Vulcan. Photo via the Defence Research and Development Canada – Centre for Security Science

The debate has become a heated one, and largely comes down to whether to build large pipeline projects amid an uptick in the amount of volatile crude oil moved by rail. Both pipeline and oil by rail proponents argue their methods of transport are safe. Meanwhile, environmental groups argue both methods inevitably lead to spills or explosions, and that the oil should stay in the ground, while Canada should beef up its focus on renewable energy.

According to Transport Canada’s own data, crude oil moved by rail has increased dramatically in Canada over the past decade, from only four carloads in 2005 to 174,000 carloads in 2014.

In the case of Lac Megantic, an investigation showed a complex series of errors allowed the disaster to happen.

The goal of the recent train simulation, which used flammable liquid common in firefighter training rather than actual crude, was to improve emergency preparedness and public trust around the movement of crude and other dangerous goods by rail.

Exercise Vulcan. Photo via the Defence Research and Development Canada – Centre for Security Science

Firefighters arrived on the scene of 11 smoking tanks that had derailed. They were taught to identify the contents of the tanks and decide when it was better not to intervene, as that could make the situation worse. If tackling the fire directly, the firefighters were told to apply foam and water spray to extinguish the flames.

It’s taken two-and-a-half years to start upgrading the procedures around emergency response to train derailments involving crude, and they’re not done yet. Exercise Vulcan, as the simulation was dubbed, was a test run of those new procedures, and Transport Canada hopes to use the training in other parts of the country in the future.

“Better late than never,” one industry expert told VICE News in reaction to Transport Canada running the train derailment simulation last weekend.

It’s too soon to tell whether Lac-Mégantic has sparked real safety upgrades in the rail industry, transportation industry consultant Ian Naish said. “They’re replacing tank cars, [but] they’re doing it slowly.

“Speed of the oil trains is a big issue to me,” he continued. “I’d recommend they take another look at the maximum speed at which a train should operate because the two that went off the rails in Gogama last year were operating at around 40 miles per hour, which is 60 or 70 kilometres an hour, and since all the tank cars failed, that obviously was too fast.”

A photo of the aftermath of the Gogama derailment. Photo via the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

Just over a year ago, a crude oil train exploded in a fireball and derailed near the town of Gogama in northern Ontario. No injuries or deaths were reported in the March 7, 2015 explosion. It took three days to extinguish the flames.

At the time, it was the second CN train to derail near Gogama in a three-week period. Both incidents resulted in spilled crude oil.

The tankers that derailed in both Gogama accidents were the same type of Class 111 tanks that ruptured in Lac Megantic. The Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency tasked with investigating transportation disasters in Canada, has warned for years that Class 111 tanks are unsafe because they aren’t reinforced and tend to break open when they crash.

“It will be very silly for everybody, not only Quebec — any province, and any state in the United States — not to learn from what happened in Lac-Mégantic. What happened showed so many voids in the system, and so much lack of important information.”

But it won’t be until after May 1, 2017 that the notorious Class 111 tank cars — which are most susceptible to damage when they crash — will no longer be able to carry crude. Phasing in more crash-resistant tank cars will mean the Class 111s will be off the rails “as soon as practically possible,” Transport Canada spokesperson Natasha Gauthier told VICE News.

After the disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Transport Canada says it introduced strict new rules, including a two-person minimum for crews on trains carrying dangerous goods, a requirement for railway companies on federally-regulated tracks to hold valid certificates, new speed limits for trains carrying dangerous goods.

In the US, though, there’s been pushback from the railroad industry, with one representative saying there is “simply no safety case” for two-person crews.

Exercise Vulcan. Photo via the Defence Research and Development Canada – Centre for Security Science

Transport Canada also introduced more frequent audits, better sharing of information with municipalities, and increased track inspections. Plus, the agency amended the Railway Safety Act, researched crude for a better understanding of the volatile oil, and made it mandatory for some railways to submit training plans to the agency.

Since Lac-Mégantic, one improvement is that local first responders are now more aware of what dangerous goods, including crude, are travelling through their communities, Naish added.

And according to an engineering professor who witnessed first-hand the scene after the Lac-Mégantic explosion, while the railway industry is ramping up safety measures, the risk of increased shipments of oil by rail could balance those out, meaning it may not actually be any safer since Lac-Mégantic.

“Is it enough?” Rosa Galvez-Cloutier told VICE News when asked about the improved safety measures. “That’s hard to say. Zero risk doesn’t exist.”

Another major concern for Galvez-Cloutier is that when government and industry look at risk and safety, they tend do so project by project.

“Who is evaluating the big picture? Who is evaluating the whole thing?” She asked. “Government needs to put more interest and focus on the cumulative impacts of transporting dangerous goods.”

Exercise Vulcan. Photo via the Defence Research and Development Canada – Centre for Security Science

That debate is especially hot in Quebec, where the Lac-Mégantic explosion occurred. A recent poll of Quebec residents found they aren’t as likely as the rest of Canada to trust either pipelines or oil by rail.

According to a study by the Fraser Institute published last August, pipelines are 4.5 times safer than rail for moving oil — the rate of incidents for pipelines is 0.049 incidents per million barrels of oil moved, while that rate is 0.227 per million barrels of oil for trains.

“It will be very silly for everybody, not only Quebec — any province, and any state in the United States — not to learn from what happened in Lac-Mégantic. What happened showed so many voids in the system, and so much lack of important information,” Galvez-Cloutier said.

When asked if he would rather have a pipeline or a train carrying crude through his backyard, Naish laughed and said “Well I’d rather not live in the neighborhood, personally.”

“In the ideal world, the rail lines and the pipelines would avoid all populated areas all the time.”

Exercise Vulcan. Photo via the Defence Research and Development Canada – Centre for Security Science
Bakken Crude, California Public Utilities Commission, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Feather River Canyon, Fish and wildlife, Lac-Mégantic, Lake Oroville, Oil spill, Rail Safety, Water contamination

A looming disaster – Crude oil running on Butte County’s railways poses a threat to local, state watersheds

Repost from the Chico News & Review

A looming disaster – Crude oil running on Butte County’s railways poses a threat to local, state watersheds

By Dave Garcia, 03.10.16
DAVE GARCIA. The author, a longtime Oroville resident, is the spokesman for Frack-Free Butte County.

Scientists have found unprecedented levels of fish deformities in Canada’s Chaudière River following the Lac-Mégantic Bakken crude oil spill in 2013. This catastrophic train derailment, which killed 47 people and ravaged parts of the small town in Quebec, underscores the danger of spilled toxic crude oil getting into our waterways and affecting living organisms.

I find the Canadian government’s report very distressing—even for Butte County. That’s because, just last week, I observed a train of 97 railcars loaded with crude oil traveling through the Feather River Canyon and downtown Oroville.

The California Public Utilities Commission has designated this rail route as high risk because of its sharp curves and steep grade; it travels next to the Feather River, which feeds into Lake Oroville, an integral part of California’s domestic water supply.

If you think that railway shipping is safe, think back to 2014. That’s the year 14 railcars derailed, falling down into the canyon and spilling their loads of grain into the Feather River. The last thing we need, especially in a time of drought, is crude oil poisoning the water of our second-largest reservoir.

In 2010, it took over $1 billion to clean up the Kalamazoo River crude oil spill. But you can never really clean up a crude oil spill in pristine freshwater, as the deformed fish from the Chaudière River reveal.

Keeping crude-oil-carrying railcars on the state’s tracks is simply not worth it. Less than 1 percent of California’s imported oil is transported by railway. Californians receive little benefit, but bear the risks to their communities and watersheds from this practice.

Since Lac-Mégantic, there have been nine more crude oil derailments, explosions and spills into waterways. We need to learn a lesson from those catastrophes. We must convey to our politicians—local, state and federal—our priority of protecting our communities, fisheries and waterways. Let’s not let what happened in Quebec happen in Butte County.

Air Quality, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Diesel pollution, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Local Regulation, Rail Safety, San Luis Obispo County, Tar sands crude

San Luis Obispo Phillips 66 oil-by-rail hearing packed, continues next month

Repost from the San Luis Obispo Tribune

Phillips 66 oil-by-rail hearing continues next month

By Cynthia Lambert, February 25, 2016 11:11am

HIGHLIGHTS
• After a third all-day hearing, the county Planning Commission will revisit the issue March 11
• Hundreds of speakers have praised or panned the plan to bring crude oil by rail to the Nipomo Mesa refinery
• Supporters stress the refinery’s safety record and jobs; opponents cite environmental worries

A packed room listens to comments on the Phillips 66 oil-by-rail plan Thursday before the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission.
A packed room listens to comments on the Phillips 66 oil-by-rail plan Thursday before the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission. David Middlecamp

After a third all-day hearing with more than 100 speakers decrying or praising a plan by Phillips 66 Co. to upgrade its Nipomo refinery to receive crude oil by train, the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission said Thursday that no decision will be made on the project until March 11 — or even later.

The dozens of speakers Thursday were fairly evenly split on either side of the debate, with supporters stressing the need to maintain about 200 “head-of-household” jobs at the refinery, as well as its long track record of safety and that it’s been a good neighbor in the community.

“The actual crude production in California is going down, not going up,” said Richard Black, a training administrator at Phillips 66’s Rodeo refinery in the east San Francisco Bay Area. “We have to make up the difference from somewhere.”

Opponents, meanwhile, said commissioners should not take into account the company’s safety record or personal relationships. Residents and elected officials from communities along the main rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles have told commissioners they fear a catastrophic train derailment.

“Their plan is an irreversible disaster,” Nipomo resident Nora Lee said. “The effects will be felt instantly with poisonous air pollution.”

The company has applied to San Luis Obispo County to build a 1.3-mile spur with five parallel tracks from the main rail line to the Nipomo Mesa refinery, an unloading facility at the refinery and on-site pipelines.

The public has another chance to speak March 11 — county planning staff believe they’re nearing the end of public comments — and then the commissioners can ask questions, deliberate and even make a decision, or continue the process once again to a future date.

Whatever decision they make is expected to be appealed to the county Board of Supervisors, and a new round of hearings would be held.

The first two days of the Planning Commission hearing, held Feb. 4 and 5, drew hundreds of people to San Luis Obispo from around the state, with many urging the commissioners to reject the project. Planning staff has recommended denial of the project, which as proposed would allow five trains a week, for a maximum of 250 trains per year to deliver crude oil to the refinery.

Each train would have three locomotives, two buffer cars and 80 railcars carrying a total of about 2.2 million gallons of crude oil, according to county planners.

During a previous hearing day, representatives from Phillips 66 urged the commissioners to approve an alternate plan to allow three trains a week instead of five, or a maximum of 150 trains a year.

The county staff report states that three trains a week — or 150 a year — would reduce the significant toxic air emissions to no longer be considered a “Class 1 significant impact” at the refinery, which refers to the highest level of negative impacts referenced in the project’s final environmental impact report.

But emissions of diesel particulate matter would still remain a “Class 1” impact on-site, according to the staff report, and there would still be 10 “Class 1” impacts along the main rail line, such as impacts to air quality, water resources, potential demands on emergency response services and an increased risk to the public in the event of a derailment.

A few residents brought some audio-visuals along: One person showed a news clip of coverage of a massive train derailment in West Virginia last year; another played an audio recording of what he said a “typical crude oil terminal” sounds like, with train wheels squealing along tracks.

And the commission also watched a video comment from Marilaine Savard, a witness of the 2013 Lac-Mégantic, Québec, oil train disaster.

“Once an oil train derails and catches fire, you and your town will never fully recover,” she said. “Lac-Mégantic was a peaceful and beautiful community, just like San Luis Obispo.”

In response, supporters of the Phillips 66 project said that heavier crude oil — not lighter crude oil from the Bakken field in North Dakota or Canada that was linked to the Lac-Mégantic disaster and was being carried by a CSX train when it derailed in West Virginia — would be type of crude oil that would be transported and can be processed at the refinery.

The commission heard from more than a dozen Phillips 66 employees who work at the Nipomo Mesa refinery or at the company’s other facilities in California, as well as union representatives and other businesses owners and individuals in support of the project.

Rachel Penny, a safety and health professional at the Nipomo Mesa refinery, said she chose to work in the oil and gas industry because “it’s vital to the economy.”

“In order for us to continue providing energy and improving lives, we need crude oil,” she said, noting that the refinery would not be increasing the amount of crude oil processed at the refinery with the project.

“It is the safest company that I’ve ever worked for,” said Jerry Harshbarger, who works in purchasing. “We still have a strong demand for fossil fuels and stopping this project will not stop that demand.”

Another San Luis Obispo resident said the products of gas and oil could be seen throughout the room, and he urged: “We as a community should work toward how to do this.”

“You drive a car and go up to the pump,” Laura Mordaunt said. “A truck is there filled with gas that is way more volatile. Your vehicle parked in your garage is far more dangerous than this process and yet you continue to drive.”

But another local resident, Gary Lester of the opponent organization Mesa Refinery Watch Group, said Nipomo residents moved there knowing the refinery existed and are not calling for it to be closed.

“We respect you as individuals and the work you do,” he said. “We are objecting to the construction of a loud, dangerous, invasive rail terminal just 3,000 feet from our homes.”

Phillips 66 officials have said that California crude oil production is declining and the company is looking for alternate sources outside the state. According to the company’s website, “The proposed change will help the refinery, and the approximately 200 permanent jobs it provides, remain viable under increasingly challenging business conditions.”

An attorney for Phillips 66 said during a previous hearing that crude oil would still come into California by rail should the project be denied — a point that is included in the “no project” alternative as laid out in the project’s environmental impact report, Phillips 66 officials said.

An average of about 6,800 barrels a day of crude oil is already being delivered by truck from the Paloma rail unloading facility near Bakersfield to a pump station east of Santa Maria, where it is moved by pipeline to the Nipomo Mesa refinery. That could increase to 26,000 barrels a day, according to the environmental document, adding about 100 truck trips a day traveling to the pump station for unloading.

If the rail project does not move forward, it’s likely that additional out-of-state crude oil would be brought to various rail unloading terminals in California and transferred to trucks to deliver to the Santa Maria pump station, according to the environmental report.

If this happened, some impacts would be shifted to the area in and around Santa Maria: trucking would generate higher levels of air emissions, resulting in significant cancer risk to the residences in close proximity to the roads; traffic congestion impacts; and potentially significant impacts to biological and water resources from an oil spill because of a truck accident.