Category Archives: Funding for emergency response

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Funding for emergency response, State regulation, Washington State

Washington State: two competing bills to strengthen oil train safety

Repost from Crosscut.com / Under The Dome, Seattle WA

Oil train safety draws quick attention in Olympia

A Republican proposal has already gotten a hearing, and a Democratic one is ready to roll.

By John Stang, January 15, 2015
Tank cars hours after they derailed under the Magnolia Bridge in Interbay.
Tank cars hours after they derailed under the Magnolia Bridge in Interbay. Bill Lucia

Two competing oil-train safety bills have come into quick play in the Washington Senate.

A Republican measure, proposed by Sen. Doug Ericksen of Ferndale, received a hearing on Thursday before the Senate Environment, Energy & Telecommunications Committee, which he chairs. Also on Thursday, Democratic Sens. Christine Rolfes of Bainbridge Island and Kevin Ranker of Orcas Island introduced a bill to cover what Gov. Jay Inslee wants to do.

A preliminary Washington Department of Ecology study, released late last year, said that rapid increases in the amount of oil moving by rail in the state require new measures to protect the public and the environment.

Both bills increase per-barrel oil taxes to cover emergency response and planning expenses. Rolfes’ bill would impose charges on both crude and refined oil, while Ericksen’s addresses solely crude oil. Rolfes’ bill requires advance notice to the state of crude and refined oil going by rail, pipe or ship. Ericksen’s bill does not have those provisions.

Ericksen’s bill pays considerable attention to mapping out oil-emergency response plans by region across the state. And the Ericksen measure has more detailed provisions about providing state grants to emergency-service responders.

Thursday’s hearing had railroad, port and oil representatives supporting Ericksen’s bill, while environmental groups contended it did not go far enough.

Bruce Swisher of the Sierra Club argued that the bills must make information about upcoming oil train shipments available to the public as well as emergency departments. “The communities, not just the first responders, need transparency about what goes through their communities,” Swisher said.

Johan Hellman, representing the BNSF Railroad, said the company spent $125 million on track and crossing upgrades in Washington in 2013 and another $235 million in 2014. The railroad has also trained roughly 4,000 first responders in Washington on dealing with train derailments, he said.

In a statement, Ericksen said, “We’re trying to identify the gaps in existing programs and fill them.”

In 2013 and 2014, the United States had four oil train accidents that produced fires — one in North Dakota, one in West Virginia and two in New England. Closer to home, three 29,200-gallon oil cars on a slow-moving train derailed without any spills or fire beneath Seattle’s Magnolia Bridge last July. Looming over this entire issue is a July 2013 oil train explosion in Quebec that killed 47 people.

The report by experts hired by the state Ecology Department mapped out the oil transportation situation in Washington and the United States. Nationally, the number of rail cars transporting crude oil grew from 9,500 in 2008 to 415,000 carloads in 2013. In 2013, 8.4 percent of oil arriving at Washington’s five refineries came by rail, although the report indicates that the volume of oil shipped by rail to the refineries here was insignificant until 2011.

Bakken Crude, Cleanup funding, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Funding for emergency response, Insurance and liability, Lac-Mégantic

Quebec town: Train disaster settlement provides very little

Repost from AP News, The Big Story
[Editor: Significant quote: “Lac-Megantic Mayor Colette Roy Laroche said over the weekend the estimated cost of rebuilding the town is about $2 billion.”  See also: repost from The Globe and Mail.  – RS]

Quebec town: Train disaster settlement provides very little

Jan. 12, 2015

MONTREAL (AP) — The deputy mayor of a Quebec town where a fiery oil train derailment killed 47 people said Monday a proposed settlement fund for victims represents just a fraction of what’s needed.

A $200-million settlement was announced last week, with more than one-half of the money going to various levels of government. About $50 million is destined for relatives of the 47 people who died in the July 2013 disaster, although the amount could rise. The settlement involves the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Canada Co., its insurance carrier, rail-car manufacturers and some oil producers. Three major companies have declined to participate — World Fuel Services, Canadian Pacific Railway and Irving Oil.

Lac Megantic Deputy Mayor Richard Michaud said the families of the victims will share in the settlement money, which is “very little considering there are more than 20 orphans who must rebuild their lives.”

“Two hundred million can seem like a lot of money but in my opinion, it’s very little,” Michaud said. “Much more than $200 million has been injected by the federal and provincial government to decontaminate the devastated territory alone, and we’re not even talking about reconstruction.”

Much of downtown Lac Megantic was destroyed on July 6, 2013, by a raging fire caused when an unattended train with 72 oil tankers carrying volatile crude derailed after it began rolling downhill toward the town of 10,000 people. More than 60 tankers derailed and several exploded. Forty-seven people died, and dozens of buildings were destroyed.

U.S. bankruptcy trustee Robert Keach is hoping the $200 million amount rises considerably before final approval of the plan in U.S. and Canadian courts.

Keach, a court-appointed trustee in the defunct railroad’s bankruptcy case in Maine, said the draft sets aside about $50 million of the $200 million pool for wrongful death claims, which could increase through a reallocation of the federal government’s share to as much as $57 million.

Up to $29 million could go to property damage, while another $19 million could go to bodily injury and moral damage claims, Keach said.

Those amounts reflect a possible reallocation of the federal government’s take. As it currently stands, more than 52 percent of the overall funds would go to provincial, federal and municipal governments. The formulas could change if the amount goes up.

“This is only a draft, so there are separate but parallel processes on both sides of the border,” Keach said. “The hope is we’ll have all the approval orders in place in early to mid-April so we could have a distribution in place by June or July.

“We are hoping (the final amount) grows between now and then, but the deadline for it growing is going to be those final hearings,” he added.

Yannick Gagne, owner of the Musi-Cafe, a business that was destroyed and where the majority of the victims died, said money won’t bring back the lives lost but could help with the relaunch of the downtown. Plenty more money will be required, however, to rebuild the town center essentially from scratch, he said.

Reconstruction costs are significant and Gagne himself has taken out loans, used insurance money and paid out of pocket. He also spent seven months out of work.

“For many people, it was a difficult time financially,” said Gagne, whose cafe quietly reopened on Dec. 15. “The mayor said it best —that $200 million is not sufficient.

“We are a long way from what we need. And it’s not up to the population to pay for this tragedy.”

Lac-Megantic Mayor Colette Roy Laroche said over the weekend the estimated cost of rebuilding the town is about $2 billion.

Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Funding for emergency response, Rail inspection, Tank car retrofit

Senate appropriations bill takes on safety of shipping oil by rail

Repost from TribLIVE, Pittsburgh, PA

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.

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Funding for emergency response, State regulation

Washington Gov. Inslee eyeing a tax on oil shipments arriving by rail

Repost from Crosscut.com, Seattle, WA

Inslee is eyeing a tax on oil shipments arriving by rail

His measure could also target pipeline shipments.
By John Stang, December 6, 2014
Tanker cars can carry oil or LPG.
Tanker cars can carry oil or LPG. Paul K. Anderson, Chuckanut Conservancy

The Inslee administration’s leaders expect to introduce a bill to extend Washington’s 5-cents-a-barrel oil tax to pipelines and railroad oil cars.

Currently, the tax on the 42-gallon barrels applies only to oil arriving in Washington by ship. Dale Jensen, director of the Washington Department of Ecology’s oil spill program, briefed the House Environment Committee on the matter Friday.

Officials are also considering the possibility of increasing the current 5-cents-a-barrel tax on oil arriving in the state. Part of the money goes to oil spill prevention and response programs across the state. The administration has not yet calculated how much money will be needed in upcoming years, meaning it has also not decided yet whether to increase the five-cents tax or keep it intact, Jensen said.

Extending the tax to oil railcars and pipelines reflects the shrinking of the amount of oil arriving in Washington by ship, while pipeline traffic and rail oil traffic are increasing, Jensen said.

In 2003, 91 percent of the oil going to Washington’s refineries came by ship, with 9 percent arriving by pipeline, and none arriving by rail. In 2013, 67.4 percent arrived in Washington by ship, 24.2 percent by pipeline and 8.4 percent by railroad.

A typical tanker railcar holds 29,200 gallons. Washington’s five refineries process roughly 24.3 million gallons of crude oil a day, and have the capacity of processing 26.5 million gallons daily. At 42 gallons per barrel, that translates to approximately $34.75 in tax per tanker car or roughly $28,900 per day for the amount of imported oil to be refined in Washington.

In the 2014 legislative sessions, Sen. Rodney Tom of Medina — who retired this year and was the leader of the Senate’s Majority Coalition Caucus at that time — introduced a bipartisan bill to extend the oil tax to railroad oil cars, but not pipelines. With support from both parties, the Senate Ways & Means Committee recommended passage on March 10. But that bill did not make it to a full floor vote by the time the 2014 session ended on March 13.

Frank Holmes, representing the Western States Petroleum Association, said the organization supported Tom’s 2014 bill, which the association membership believed accurately reflected Washington’s oil traffic shifting from ship to rail. However, the association opposes installing the tax on pipeline oil. Holmes said Washington’s pipelines have had an excellent safety record during the past 50 years.

All this unfolds as Gov. Jay Inslee is digesting a draft state report on factors to consider on designing legislation to improve oil train safety in Washington. In the Legislature’s 2014 session, Democrats and Republicans introduced somewhat similar oil train emergency prevention and response bills, including requirements that oil companies and railroads provide advance information on each oil train to emergency agencies. But the two sides could not get past one major point. The Democrats wanted to make the volumes and chemical compositions of the oil in each upcoming train available to the public. The Republicans were against that provision, arguing it would expose proprietary corporate secrets.

Jensen speculated that Inslee may push for full public disclosure of the oil train information.