Advocacy group: Thousands in Sacramento face the risk of crude oil train spills
by Tony Bizjak | June 19, 2014
More than 135,000 Sacramentans live within a half-mile of rail tracks and could find themselves in harm’s way should a crude oil train derailment cause a spill, according to a report published Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council in California. The group’s maps show 25,000 residents in Davis within a half-mile of train tracks.
The NRDC study includes maps of rail lines through seven California cities, showing areas likely to require evacuation in case of serious rail incident. It is unclear which lines might carry crude oil trains. Oil companies and railroads closely guard information about crude oil rail movements. NRDC said its analysis of a handful of oil company refinery and terminal projects indicates more than seven trains, each a mile long, could soon run through metropolitan areas daily.
Oil companies increasingly are turning to rail shipments of crude oil, responding to the availability of less expensive deposits in North Dakota and Canada. Diane Bailey, a scientist with NRDC, said the state does not yet have safety measures and adequate emergency response plans in place to handle the expected increase.
The NRDC report follows a report Tuesday authorized by the city of Benicia that said a plan for the city’s Valero Refining Co. to run 100 crude oil train cars a day through Sacramento, Roseville, West Sacramento, Davis and other cities is unlikely to cause a spill.
Those trains could begin operation later this year and are expected to run on the rail line shared by the Capitol Corridor passenger train service. That line loops into Sacramento near Business 80, and runs westward along the top of the downtown perimeter, passing through the downtown railyard, then over the I Street Bridge to West Sacramento. It continues through downtown Davis on its way to Benicia.
Acknowledging the growing concern, federal officials have issued warnings about the potential higher flammability of one crude oil type, Bakken oil, and have been exploring implementing tougher safety designs for crude oil tankers to replace the current fleet, which has been deemed inadequate to safely transport volatile crude oils.
In its report, the NRDC called for officials to:
• Remove antiquated oil tankers from service.
• Impose lower speed limits on crude oil trains.
• Reroute trains around sensitive areas.
• Require railroads to disclose the contents of trains.
• Make emergency procedures available to local residents.
• Assess fees on shippers to cover costs of improved emergency response to incidents.
• Elevate crude oil trains to the highest risk category for hazardous material shipments.
• Require oil companies to conduct “cumulative risk analysis” for oil rail infrastructure projects, so that the overall impact of all projects is adequately analyzed.
Repost from Natural Resources Defense Council [Editor: Excellent resources…. Be sure to see the downloadable fact sheet and blast zone maps for Bakersfield, Benicia, Davis, Martinez, Pittsburg, Richmond and Sacramento that follow below this article. – RS]
It Could Happen Here: The Exploding Threat of Crude by Rail in California
Diane Bailey | June 18, 2014
Key Points
More crude oil was transported by rail in North America in 2013 than in the past five years combined. Millions of Californians live near crude-by-rail routes and could face extreme safety risks.
Federal regulators have few safeguards in place to protect communities and the environment from accidents, spills and explosions resulting from the race to move millions of barrels of crude by rail.
NRDC calls on lawmakers to expedite rules mandating commonsense practices, including removal of defective tank cars, rerouting around sensitive areas, and requiring disclosure regarding the content of all shipments and relevant risks to local residents.
Nearly four million Bay Area and Central/San Joaquin Valley residents are at increased risk from oil train accidents occurring with the proliferation of new crude by rail terminal proposals. But dangerous crude oil train derailments are preventable if the mandatory safety measures NRDC recommends are enacted.
Soda cans on wheels. That’s what some call the dangerous rail tank cars that have suddenly become ubiquitous across the American landscape. In the rush to transport land-locked unconventional new crude oil sources, old rail lines running through communities across America are now rattling with thousands of cars filled with crude oil. Neither the cars nor the railroads were built for this purpose. Worse, federal regulators have few safeguards in place to protect communities and the environment from accidents, spills and explosions resulting from the race to move millions of barrels of crude by rail.
More crude oil was transported by rail in North America in 2013 than in the past five years combined, most of it extracted from the Bakken shale of North Dakota and Montana. In California, the increase in crude by rail has been particularly dramatic, from 45,000 barrels in 2009 to 6 million barrels in 2013. As “rolling pipelines” of more than 100 rail cars haul millions of gallons of crude oil through our communities, derailments, oil spills and explosions are becoming all too common. Between March 2013 and May 2014, there were 12 significant oil train derailments in the United States and Canada. As oil companies profit, communities bear the cost.
Californians Living Near Crude By Rail Routes
A new report from the State of California Interagency Rail Safety Working Group outlines serious vulnerabilities along California rail lines including close proximity to many population centers, numerous earthquake faults, a shortage of adequate emergency response capacity, many areas of vulnerable natural resources, and a number of “high hazard areas” for derailments, which are generally located along waterways and fragile natural resource areas. Millions of Californians live near crude by rail routes and could face extreme safety risks. Currently, there are five major new crude by rail terminals in the planning stages and two recently converted crude oil rail terminals that could collectively bring in up to seven or more mile long trains each day through metropolitan areas like Sacramento, putting up to 3.8 million people in harm’s way.
Explosions and Spills Threaten Lives
“Each tank car of crude holds the energy equivalent of 2 million sticks of dynamite or the fuel in a widebody jetliner,” write Russell Gold and Betsy Morris in the Wall Street Journal. In July 2013, an unattended oil train carrying 72 carloads of crude oil from North Dakota exploded in the center of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, near the U.S. border. The resulting inferno killed 47 people and destroyed much of the town center. Some 1.6 million gallons of crude oil was spilled. In the months following this devastating event, several more North American oil train derailments illustrated the sobering recurring public safety and environmental threats of catastrophic derailments due to the virtually unregulated surge in crude by rail. In 2013, rail cars spilled more crude oil than nearly the previous four decades combined (1.14 million gallons in 2013 compared to 800,000 gallons from 1975 to 2012).
Communities Lack Information And Control Over Hazardous Rail Shipments
Municipalities across the country are demanding increased communication about rail shipments of crude oil through their communities. However, crude oil — and other hazardous materials shipped by rail — have been exempted from the disclosure requirement of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). While the federal government finally directed rail companies to disclose this critical information to emergency responders, the general public remains in the dark about the nature of mile long tanker trains hurtling through their backyards at dangerous speed. Nobody has a choice about what gets transported through their community, how dangerous the cargo is, how frequently it goes through or whether it could be rerouted to more remote areas. Of the more than 3.8 million Californians who will be put at risk by proposed new crude by rail terminals, most are unlikely to even be aware of the significant new risks that they face.
Outdated and Dangerous Tank Cars Are Used to Carry Crude
Most of the rail tank cars used to carry flammable liquids, including crude oil are old “DOT-111s,” which are widely known to be unsafe. Speaking at a farewell address at the National Press Club in April 2014, outgoing National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairwoman Deborah Hersman repeated a long-held NTSB position that unmodified DOT-111 tank cars — non-pressurized rail tank cars that accident investigators report are easily punctured or ruptured during a derailment — are not safe to carry hazardous liquids. “Carrying corn oil is fine, carrying crude oil is not,” she said.
Thus, in 2009, the NTSB recommended these tank cars be equipped with additional safety features. Since October 2011, new rail tank cars built for transporting crude oil have incorporated these features, such as the use of head shields, thicker tank material, and pressure-relief devices. Yet regulators have not eliminated the use of the older, unmodified DOT-111 cars for carrying oil — out of 39,000 DOT-111 tank cars now used to carry crude, two-thirds still do not meet these modern safety standards. The Department of Transportation, simply recommended that shippers stop using these cars to transport oil, but they do not require it.
Commonsense Safeguards for Crude-by-Rail Are Overdue
In the longer term, our health depends on cleaner, renewable energy and moving away from fossil fuels. In the immediate term, we must tighten safety regulations on the rail transport of crude oil, or run the risk of devastating consequences. NRDC calls on lawmakers to expedite rules mandating commonsense practices, including but not limited to the following:
Remove Defective, Dangerous Tankers from Crude by Rail Service: The existing fleet of dangerous DOT-111 tank cars must be taken out of crude oil service immediately.
Impose Safer Speed Limits: Crude oil unit trains must adhere to speed limits that significantly reduce the possibility of an explosion in the event of a derailment.
Reroute Around Sensitive Areas: The National Transportation Safety Board recommendation that crude oil trains avoid heavily populated areas and otherwise sensitive areas must become mandatory.
Require Disclosure: Information regarding the content of all shipments and relevant risks and emergency procedures should be made accessible to local residents.
Provide Emergency Responder Resources: States should assess fees on shippers and carriers to fully cover the costs of providing emergency response services and safeguarding the public from oil trains, and ensure that there is adequate emergency response capacity.
Make Additional Operational Safety and Oversight Improvements: Unit trains of crude oil and other hazardous materials should be placed in the highest risk category of Hazmat shipments; and many other operational improvements should be made. Additional inspections of crude oil trains are also critical, including the funding necessary for more rail safety personnel.
Exercise Local Government Powers:
Local governments and states can require cumulative risk analysis of crude oil rail infrastructure and increased rail traffic.
Local governments should thoroughly evaluate all of the environmental and public health and safety risks of crude oil rail terminals that require land use permits or other forms of local approval.
Local governments should reject any new crude oil rail terminals within one mile of sensitive sites such as homes, schools, daycares, and hospitals.
Crude oil train accidents are preventable. All Californians should be calling for the crude oil and rail safety standards listed here.
Report minimizes risk from oil trains through Roseville, Sacramento
By Tony Bizjak and Curtis Tate The Sacramento Bee | Jun. 17, 2014
A crude oil train operated by BNSF travels just outside the Feather River Canyon in the foothills into the Sacramento Valley. Jake Miille / Special to The Bee
A much-anticipated report released Tuesday offered new details and some controversial safety conclusions about a Bay Area oil company’s plan to run crude-oil trains daily through Roseville and Sacramento to Benicia.
Valero Refining Co., which operates a sweeping plant on a hillside overlooking Suisun Bay, plans to transport crude oil from undisclosed North American oil fields on two 50-car trains every 24 hours through the Sacramento region to the Benicia site. One would run at night and the other in the middle of the day to minimize conflicts with Capitol Corridor passenger trains, which share the same line.
If the project is approved, Valero would begin shipments later this year or early next year. The trains would cut through downtown Roseville, Sacramento and Davis, and pass within a quarter-mile of 27 schools, 11 of them in Sacramento, according to the draft environmental impact report, which was commissioned by the city of Benicia, lead agency on the project.
In findings that already are provoking debate, authors of the draft report concluded that the shipments would not constitute a significant safety risk for communities along the rail route because those trains are very unlikely to crash or spill their oil.
“Although the consequences of a release are potentially severe, the likelihood of such a release is very low,” wrote the report’s author, Environmental Science Associates of San Francisco. The report notes that safety steps by federal officials and railroad associations, such as slower train speeds through some urban areas and more track inspections, already are reducing the chance of crashes.
A spill risk assessment included in the report calculates the probability of a spill of 100 gallons or more in the 69 miles between Roseville and Benicia as occurring only once every 111 years. The key report section regarding impact on up-rail cities, including Sacramento, Davis, West Sacramento and Roseville, concludes: “Mitigation: None required.”
Several local Sacramento leaders on Tuesday said they had not yet read the Benicia report, which runs hundreds of pages, but that they weren’t soothed by a declaration that oil spills are unlikely.
Mike Webb, director of community development and sustainability in Davis, said the assessment misses a frightening reality for people living along the rail line: “It only needs to happen once to be a real problem.”
Across North America, six major crude-oil train crashes in the last year resulted in 2.8 million gallons of oil spilled, some of it causing explosions and forcing evacuations. The worst of those occurred last July in Lac-Megantic, Canada, where a runaway Bakken train crashed, spilling 1.6 million gallons of crude and fueling an explosion that killed 47 people and leveled part of that city’s downtown.
State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, introduced a bill last week to charge the oil industry a rail-related fee to pay for safety measures. In an interview earlier this week, he said he believes “it is not a matter of will (a spill) happen, it’s when. We have to be prepared.”
The debate over the Valero project is part of a growing discussion nationally about crude oil safety, prompted by increased pumping in recent years of less-expensive crude oil from Canada and the Bakken fields of North Dakota.
The surge in extracting North American oil is enabling some companies, such as Valero, to reduce reliance on overseas shipments of foreign oil. At the same time, it has caused a dramatic increase in the number of trains crisscrossing the country, pulling 100 cars or more of flammable crude through downtowns, with almost no notice to the public and minimal warning to local fire departments.
The debate was heightened by a federal warning earlier this year that Bakken crude may be more volatile than other crudes, and by federal concerns that the fleet of train tanker cars in use nationally is inadequate to safely transport crude oils. Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration issued a report saying California is behind in taking steps to protect cities and habitat from potential oil spills given the increase in crude oil shipments.
The draft environmental impact report released Tuesday does not state whether Valero will be transporting Bakken crude to Benicia. Valero has declined to disclose publicly exactly which crude oils it will ship. But the report lists Bakken as one of the lighter crudes Valero could ship.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering amending tank car design standards in light of concerns raised by recent fiery spills. Valero officials say they already have purchased some tank cars that have more safety features than most rail cars in use nationally. Valero spokesman Chris Howe said his company would expect to phase in retrofits of those cars, depending on what the federal government ultimately requires.
In California, the Valero crude-by-rail project is one of a handful planned by refineries. Another by Phillips 66 in Santa Maria likely will involve crude oil shipments through Sacramento. Several Kern County refineries also are adjusting or planning to retrofit their sites to receive crude shipments by rail. Trains last year began delivering crude oil to a transfer station at McClellan Park in Sacramento.
Rail companies are insisting that details of those shipments not be disclosed to the public, saying they are worried about security issues and don’t want to divulge “trade secrets” to competitors.
Local officials, including fire chiefs, recently have said they want to know more about the Valero project in particular. The Davis City Council has passed a resolution saying it does not want the shipments to come through the existing UP line in downtown.
Sacramento Rep. Doris Matsui, responding to questions by email Tuesday, expressed concern as well. “As the number of cars coming through Sacramento increases, it is clear that our risk also increases,” she wrote.
Webb, the Davis community development director, said representatives from Sacramento area cities will meet in two weeks to discuss the Benicia environmental report. Several local officials have said they would like Valero and UP to work with them on safety measures, including more communication about train movements and hazardous materials training.
The Benicia report declines to specify the routes trains may take to get from oil fields to Roseville, saying that any potential routes beyond Roseville are speculative. The most likely routes, according to people knowledgeable about rail movements, are through the Sacramento Valley via Dunsmuir and Redding, as well as over Donner Summit or through the Feather River Canyon.
The conclusion that an oil spill between Roseville and Benicia is a once-in-111-years event was made by Christopher Barkan, an expert on hazardous rail transport at the University of Illinois who did a risk assessment attached to the draft environmental impact report. Barkan previously worked for the American Association of Railroads, the industry’s leading advocacy group in Washington, and does research supported by the railroad association, according to his institute’s website.
Barkan, in an email, said his work for Benicia was not influenced by his relationships with the railroad association.
“The AAR had nothing to do with this project,” he wrote. “Whenever I am approached about conducting projects such as this, I discuss any potential conflicts of interest with other sponsors, as I did in this case, and it was mutually agreed that there was none … My role is to apply the best data and analytical methods possible to assess risk, irrespective of the sponsor.”
Benicia city officials did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The draft EIR will be circulated for public comment this summer. Those comments will be incorporated into a final environmental document, to be voted on by the Benicia City Council. The council has the authority to approve changes at Valero’s plant to allow the oil company to begin rail shipments.
Howe, the Valero spokesman, complimented the city of Benicia on “the thoroughness and detail” of the report.
“We are reviewing the material published today and will be developing comments as part of the process. We look forward to working with the community and the city of Benicia toward completion of this important project.”
California’s Not Ready for Influx of Oil Trains, Says Report
Molly Samuel, KQED Science | June 12, 2014
Trains carrying oil can pose serious risks to public safety and the environment, and California isn’t prepared, according to a report released by state agencies this week.
Crude-by-rail is a growing concern, as an oil boom in North Dakota has meant increasing amounts of crude traveling to refineries by rail. A series of fiery derailments in the past year, including one that killed 47 people in a Quebec town, has focused attention on the need to prevent accidents and be prepared for emergency response.
‘Even though we haven’t had an accident, which is great, we want to be able to respond to it when there is an accident.’– Kelly Huston, Office of Emergency Services
The report warns that a derailment in California could kill people, destroy neighborhoods, damage water supplies and threaten natural areas.
“Even though we haven’t had an accident, which is great, we want to be able to respond to it when there is an accident,” said Kelly Huston, a deputy director at the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES). “With the increase in the amount of crude oil on rail coming through California’s cities and counties, we believe there should be some increased training for first responders.”
The report was released by an inter-agency group that includes the OES, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), among others. It recommends boosting funding for emergency responder training, and for equipment to handle hazardous material accidents. It also supports an item in Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget that would provide more money to the Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, which has focused on marine oil spills in the past, but is now preparing for the possibility of inland spills.
It’s not all about accident response; there are also recommendations for prevention. Most rail regulation is up to the federal government; the CPUC helps enforce safety rules with its own rail inspectors. There are 52 of them, responsible for monitoring more than 5,400 miles of track in the state. “This staffing level is seriously inadequate,” the report says.
Paul King, deputy director for the rail safety at the CPUC, said the Governor’s budget aims to help. “To meet the volume of trains and the magnitude of the risk that [crude-by-rail] presents,” King said, “the Governor has put in his budget for extra staffing.”
There are other gaps the state cannot fill alone. As the CPUC pointed out in a report released last year, there is only one federal railroad bridge inspector for 11 Western states.
The report also raised the need for more information. As of last weekend, railroads that are transporting large shipments of Bakken, the volatile crude oil from North Dakota, must notify states. Huston of the OES said he got the first batch of documents Monday, but he said they’re of limited use and not timely enough. He said the OES is following up with BNSF and the federal Department of Transportation, the agency that issued the notification order.
Huston said he’d also like to see a map that the public could access, showing where the oil train shipments are headed. The railroads are resisting releasing information about crude shipments to the public.
Most of California’s oil comes either from within the state or overseas, and travels to refineries here by pipeline or ship. And that’s still the case. According the the California Energy Commission, only about one percent of California’s crude came by train in 2013. But trains carrying oil are becoming more frequent, and the CEC projects that by 2016, trains could be bringing in about 23 percent of California’s crude.
