Category Archives: Local Regulation

Crude By Rail, Federal Rail Administration, Hazmat notification, Local Regulation, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Rail accidents, Rail Safety, Surface Transportation Board, Tank car design, Traffic, Train speed

Chicago Area Mayors Meet with Feds, Call For Improved Safety Measures For Oil Trains

Repost from CBS2 Chicago

Mayors Call For Improved Safety Measures For Oil Trains

August 20, 2014
Firefighters douse a blaze after a freight train loaded with oil derailed in Lac Megantic in Canada's Quebec province on July 6, 2013, sparking explosions that engulfed about 30 buildings in fire. More than 40 people were killed as a result of the crash and fire. (Photo redit: François Laplante-Delagrave/AFP/Getty Images)
Firefighters douse a blaze after a freight train loaded with oil derailed in Lac Megantic in Canada’s Quebec province on July 6, 2013, sparking explosions that engulfed about 30 buildings in fire. More than 40 people were killed as a result of the crash and fire. (Photo redit: François Laplante-Delagrave/AFP/Getty Images)

CHICAGO (CBS) – Federal railroad officials got an earful Wednesday from the mayors of several Chicago area towns that have been affected by a growing number of increasingly long trains hauling crude oil and other volatile materials.

WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reports the mayors expressed concerns about traffic congestion and public safety from freight trains that they said have been getting longer and more dangerous, due to larger amounts of flammable crude oil they haul in outdated tanker cars.

The mayors spoke directly to Federal Railroad Administrator Joe Szabo and Surface Transportation Board Chairman Dan Elliott III, at a meeting arranged by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.

The senator said approximately 25 percent of all freight train traffic travels through the Chicago area each day, including 40 trains hauling crude oil.

Barrington Village President Karen Darch said the village has seen a stark increase in the number of completely full freight trains hauling 100 or more carloads of crude oil or ethanol along the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway.

“Before, half of the community didn’t even know where the EJ&E Line was. There were a couple of trains at night. Now, several times a day, traffic – all traffic – comes to a halt as the train passes through town, and these can be hundred-car trains,” she said.

quebec derailment 1 Mayors Call For Improved Safety Measures For Oil Trains

 

Darch and other Chicago area mayors said their constituents have been plagued by frequent traffic jams caused by long trains rolling through the area, and are constantly worried that a fire or worse could erupt on old tankers carrying volatile liquids.

They mayors expressed concerns about a repeat of a July 2013 freight train derailment in Quebec that killed 47 people and destroyed dozens of buildings when multiple tanker cars filled with crude oil caught fire and exploded.

Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner said safe passage is mandatory.

“About a third of the rail accidents that do occur are related to failures of the rail infrastructure itself, and so our position is basically twofold: one, improve the tank cars and get rid of the ones that aren’t safe; and second, make the rails safe.”

Durbin said the issue requires some time to address.

“I’ve talked to the tank car manufacturers, and they understand that they have two responsibilities: build a safer car, but in the meantime retrofit existing cars,” he said.

The senator said there is no way to immediately and completely ban older style oil tanker cars, but said federal railroad officials are aware of the danger they pose, and that they must be upgraded or replaced as soon as possible.

Darch urged federal authorities to institute increased safety controls and reduced speed limits for even small trains hauling crude oil.

“A huge concern for us is what about all the trains that come through that have 19 cars or less of hazmat,” she said.

Federal railroad officials said proposed federal regulations would require increased testing to keep crude oil out of older style tankers. Railroads also would be required to notify local officials when crude oil trains will roll through, and impose a 40 mph speed limit on such trains.

Crude By Rail, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Local Regulation, State regulation

Publicity-stunt sit-ins, council resolutions won’t stop oil trains

Repost from Seattle PI.com
[Editor: This is a challenging think-piece for opponents of crude by rail.  Personally, I believe that sit-ins, songs and resolutions have a place in a multi-faceted approach to organizing against big oil and rail.  But Connelly has a point – we need to think hard and long on serious strategies for success.  – RS]

Publicity-stunt sit-ins, council resolutions won’t stop oil trains

Posted on August 1, 2014 | By Joel Connelly
A sight that won't be stopped by sit-ins and City Council resolutions: A coal train passes an oil train after tanker cars derailed in Magnolia this morning. Oil and coal could become the Northwest's "supreme shipping commodities" crowding our trade dependent economy..
A sight that won’t be stopped by sit-ins and City Council resolutions: A coal train passes an oil train after tanker cars derailed in Magnolia this morning. Oil and coal could become the Northwest’s “supreme shipping commodities” crowding our trade dependent economy.

In watching the Seattle City Council’s ritual of passing whereas-heavy, symbolic resolutions over the years, an observer can come way believing the council’s prime purpose in life is to send demonstrators home happy.

The response to oil trains, arriving in every greater numbers, is the latest example of Seattle’s insular, echo chamber politics.  Its product is meaningless symbolism.

Councilman Mike O’Brien gins up an oil train resolution, much as he did on Occupy Seattle.  Council member Kshama Sawant shows up at the BNSF tracks for her demonstration of the day.  A Sawant mini-me running for the Legislature gets arrested.  The news is telephoned to a Stranger reporter who is supporting the candidate.

Will any of this impact the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad?  Will it influence the business of giant refiners like BP and Tesoro, increasingly dependent on rail shipments of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota?

Of course not.  The carbon economy has the Interstate Commerce Act on its side.  The U.S. Department of Transportation seems intent on accommodating shippers in its rule-making. Refineries support 2,000-plus jobs in northern Puget Sound.

For instance, the USDOT’s proposed safety rules tout a “two year” required phase out of old, explosion-prone tanker cars.  When you read the fine print, phase out period begins in September 2015.

Seattle_City_Hall_2014-02-21
Concerned citizens rally for the need of a statewide moratorium on potentially dangerous oil-by-rail projects Friday, Feb. 21, 2014, at City Hall in Seattle. Oil trains have exploded in different regions in the U.S., causing death and property damages. (Jordan Stead, seattlepi.com)

Here is how critics can effectively put the heat on, and deal their way into the safety debate. The recent and ongoing coal port/coal train battle is a model for dealing with obtuse agencies and potentially more lethal cargoes:

– Mass support, not just driblets:  Somewhere in Seattle, somebody (usually Kshama Sawant) is demonstrating every day.  Protests pant after a moment on the evening TV news.  Often, they leave as much impression as footprints in the snow.

By contrast, a well-planned event can signal (to politicians) that a movement has staying power.  It registered when 395 people packed a Bellingham City Club meeting for a debate on the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal.  Sponsors had appears to have it greased.  A bigger impression was made 2,500 people who showed up for a federal-state “scoping” hearing in Seattle.

In this image made available by the City of Lynchburg, several CSX tanker cars carrying crude oil in flames after derailing in downtown Lynchburg, Va., Wednesday, April 30, 2014. (AP Photo/City of Lynchburg, LuAnn Hunt)

– An agenda, not 1960′s slogans:  Coalport/coal train port critics asked  for an independent, comprehensive look  at impacts trains will have across Washington.  They wanted environmental studies to look at climate consequences of providing economical fuel to keep aging Chinese power plants in operation.

It is absurd, for instance, for the Army Corps of Engineers to limit “transportation” to the seven-mile spur line from Custer to Cherry Point in Whatcom County.  Big coal, railroads and construction unions were flummoxed by a reasonable demand.

– A real coalition, not just a paper list:  Seattle “coalitions” are populated by the usual suspects.  A real movement gets a cross-section of recruits.  Montana ranchers are not keen to see their land torn up.  Firefighters worry that long trains will block waterfront access, and (with oil) that they’ll be left holding the bag when a 1960′s-vintage tanker car blows up.

The proposed Pebble Mine, near Alaska’s Bristol Bay, shows REAL reach-out.  Opposition began with greens, quickly embraced Alaska’s commercial and sport fisheries, gained backing from the powerful Bristol Bay Native Corp., expanded to Washington fishermen, and found roles for restaurant chefs and major jewelry companies.

– Political work horses, not show horses:  Behind all the posturing on coal ports, state Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, put together letters to the feds and state laying out — precisely — potential impacts that must be known.  The letters helped shape the charge given by Gov. Jay Inslee to the Department of Ecology.

Security vehicles are shown at a gate to a Tesoro Corp. refinery , Friday, April 2, 2010, in Anacortes, Wash. An overnight fire and explosion at the refinery killed at least three people working at the plant. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

With oil trains, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., recently cornered — and treed — USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx at a recent hearing.  She delivered a message that MUST be driven home.  Faux safety measures won’t cut it.  Cantwell and Carlyle don’t go for whereas clauses.

– Fact and evidence, not just hyperbole:  Exaggeration is a basic activist weapon, broadly deployed.  It gets people riled, but has limited staying power.  What’s needed are activist-experts who learn the stuff, and steep themselves in places to be impacted.

A lighter touch should be put on heavy handed manipulation of the media.  Certain web sites and outlets can be counted on to spout the party line.  Others aren’t content to simply be fed.

The carbon economy is coming our way — big time — with proposed coal export terminals, a big terminal to receive oil trains (in Vancouver, Wash.), coal and oil trains taking over the rails, plus pipeline terminals and oil export ports in British Columbia.

It’s not going to be turned back by sit-ins or Council resolutions in a city with less than 10 percent of Washington’s population.

Seattle politics is sandlot.  What we’re facing, and trying to influence, is a big-league challenge.

 

 

Crude By Rail, donner, Local Regulation, Sacramento CA, State regulation, Take Action, Valero Crude By Rail

Crude oil train protests planned in Sacramento and Davis

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor:  Check this out – Benicia’s uprail friends are getting out on the tracks, and they are getting the media’s attention.  Thanks to everyone who is following this story.  Benicia is in the “crosshairs” of a nationwide – worldwide – focus on this dangerous and dirty money grab by the oil and rail industries.  More and more, thoughtful people are saying, “No, not here.”  – RS]

Crude oil train protests planned in Sacramento, Davis

By Tony Bizjak, Jul. 8, 2014
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Jake Miille / Special to The Bee | A crude oil train operated by BNSF snakes its way west through James, Calif., just outside the Feather River Canyon in the foothills into the Sacramento Valley.

Laurie Litman, who lives a block from the rail tracks in midtown Sacramento, says oil and rail companies are about to put her neighborhood and plenty of others in danger, and she wants to stop it.

Litman is among a group of environmental activists in Sacramento and Davis who will gather this week at the Federal Railroad Administration office in Sacramento and at the Davis train station to protest plans by oil companies to run hundreds of rail cars carrying crude through local downtowns every day. The protests, on the anniversary of an oil train crash and explosion that killed 47 people in the Canadian city of Lac-Megantic, will spotlight a plan by Valero Refining Co. of Benicia to launch twice-daily crude oil train shipments through downtown Roseville, Sacramento and Davis early next year.

“Our goal is to stop the oil trains,” said Litman of 350 Sacramento, a new local environmental group. “We are talking about 900-foot fireballs. There is nothing a first responder (fire agency) can do with a 900-foot fireball.”

Sacramento Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, an advocate for increased crude oil rail safety, will speak at noon Wednesday during the Sacramento event at 8th and I streets. The Yolano Climate Action group will distribute leaflets at the Davis train station Tuesday and Wednesday evening about the Valero proposal. The Davis City Council recently passed a resolution saying it opposes running the trains on the existing downtown Davis rail line.

The protests are among the first in the Sacramento area in response to a recent surge in crude oil rail transports nationally, prompted mainly by new oil drilling of cheaper oils in North Dakota, Montana and Canada. In California, where rail shipments have begun to replace marine deliveries from Alaskan oil fields and overseas sources, state safety leaders recently issued a report saying California is not yet prepared to deal with the risks from increased rail shipments of crude.

Oil and railroad industry officials point out that 99.9 percent of crude oil shipments nationally arrive at their destinations without incident, and that the industry is reducing train speeds through cities, helping train local fire and hazardous material spill crews, and working with the federal government on plans for a new generation of safer rail tanker cars. Valero officials as well say their crude oil trains can move safely through Sacramento, and a recent report sponsored by the city of Benicia concluded that an oil spill along the rail line to Benicia is highly unlikely.

In a letter last week, however, four Northern California members of Congress called on the federal government to require oil and rail companies take more steps to make rail crude shipments safer. The letter was signed by Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, George Miller, D-Martinez, Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove.

“We are especially concerned with the high risks involved with transporting .. more flammable crude in densely populated areas,” the group wrote to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “Should spills or explosions occur, as we have seen over the last year, the consequences could be disastrous.”

The four lawmakers said oil companies should be required to remove more volatile gases from Bakken crude oil before it is shipped nationally from North Dakota. The federal government issued a warning earlier this year about Bakken crude after several Bakken trains exploded during derailments. The California Congress members also encouraged federal representatives to move quickly to require railroads to install advanced train control and braking systems. Industry officials have said those systems, called Positive Train Control, are expensive and will take extended time to put into place.

Representatives from a handful of Sacramento area cities and counties are scheduled to meet this week to review Valero’s crude oil train plans, and to issue a formal response to the environmental document published two weeks ago by Benicia that concluded derailments and spills are highly unlikely. City of Davis official Mike Webb said one spill and explosion could be catastrophic, and that as more oil companies follow Valero’s lead by bringing crude oil trains of their own through Sacramento, the chances of crashes increase.

The Sacramento group has indicated it wants a detailed advanced notification system about what shipments are coming to town. Those notifications will help fire agencies who must respond if a leak or fire occurs. Local officials say they also will ask Union Pacific to keep crude-oil tank cars moving through town without stopping and parking them here. The region’s leaders also want financial support to train firefighters and other emergency responders on how to deal with crude oil spills, and possibly funds to buy more advanced firefighting equipment. Sacramento leaders say they will press the railroad to employ the best inspection protocols on the rail line.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/08/6541363/crude-oil-train-protests-planned.html#storylink=cp