Category Archives: Massive increase in crude-by-rail

The Dangers of Crude Oil By Rail in California and the Nation: Official Evasions and Possible Solutions

Reposted from an email sent by the author, Dr. Paul W. Rea, PhD.  This article has also appeared in The Daily Censored.
[Editor – Highly recommended.  This is a comprehensive summary on the issues surrounding crude by rail to date.  – RS]

CAN’T YOU HEAR THE WHISTLE BLOWIN’?

The Dangers of Crude Oil By Rail in California and the Nation: Official Evasions and Possible Solutions

By Paul W. Rea, PhD

“Our regulators have got to figure out whether they’re working in the interest of the American people or the oil industry.”

—Tom Weisner, mayor of Aurora, Illinois who shudders when he hears trains hauling crude oil through his Chicago-area town.

Just a year ago, 63 tank cars exploded and a firestorm engulfed Lac Mégantic, Quebec. In the middle of the night, highly volatile crude oil exploded into boiling balls of fire. With a radius of one kilometer, the blast and firestorm incinerated much of the town.

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The remains of many among the 47 victims were never found. Today residues from crude oil and heavy metals have rendered areas Lac Mégantic uninhabitable.

Media Silence about Oil Trains

Mile-long freight trains are hardly quiet, but somehow a drastic increase in oil trains has, until very recently, gone largely unheard. Beyond a lack of media attention, the incremental, rather than sudden, increases in oil-train traffic have made them harder to notice. While some of us have been fighting the Keystone XL pipeline, we may not have noticed the surge coming down the track on a mega-pipeline on rails. In 2008, American railroads were running 9,000 tank cars; today the number has soared to 434,000 (https://www.aar.org/keyissues/Documents/Background-Papers/Crude%20oil%20by%20rail.pdf).

Few Americans are aware that, nationally, transport of crude oil by train has jumped 45-fold between 2008 and 2013, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report(http://time.com/2970282/a-year-after-a-deadly-disaster-fears-grow-about-the-danger-of-crude-oil-shipped-by-rail/).

Nor are many Californians aware that, since 2007, their state has experienced a surge in crude-oil trains of 400%; and in 2013, the trains shot up at the highest rate yet. The number will likely spike still higher this year and next. These sharp increases mean that railroads and refineries are both expanding, subjecting the public to additional risks. In 2011, a fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California belched out a huge cloud of toxic black smoke, sending 15,000 residents to the hospital (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Chevron-refinery-fire-a-close-call-3802470.php).

Even if no accident occurs, public health consequences follow the transport fossil fuels. These include increased air pollution (soot and particulate matter from diesel smoke and coal dust, toxic fumes from refineries). These pollutants affect public health—especially among lower-income people who cannot afford to live very far from railroads and refineries.

Fire Bombs on Rails

Increasingly, accidents are occurring. Twelve derailments have occurred in the past year—one a month.

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Some have sparked huge explosions and fires, such as one that happened in Casselton, N.D. in December of 2013. First note the size of the towering fireball relative to the rail cars below; then imagine the conflagration that would have occurred if all of them had been tankers full of Bakken crude.

So it’s not a matter of if, but of when, where, and just how disastrous the debacles will be. Diane Bailey, Senior Scientist for the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), warns that given the archaic regulations, high speeds, and aging infrastructure, accidents are just waiting to happen; “so far we’ve been lucky.”

While these trains commonly pull 100 tank cars and run a mile long, they can include 150 cars and run a mile and a half long (http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2014/community-leaders-advocates-call-on-secretary-of-transportation-to-ban-use-of-hazardous-rail-cars?utm_source=crm&utm_content=button). And these trains often carry highly flammable crude of the sort that caught fire in Lac Mégantic. Here in California, oil-train accidents have jumped from 3 in 2011 to 25 in 2013, even outpacing the steep increases in the number of trains. Nationally, train wrecks have increased 14 fold in the past five years, at an even faster rate than the increase in rail traffic (NPR “Weekend Edition” 7.6.14). The fact that mile-long trains carry nothing but crude oil increases the chances that if there is a derailment, a huge amount of liquid fuel suddenly becomes available, often feeding a chain conflagration

Nationally as well as locally, government officials have called for better preparation of first responders to fight crude-oil fires. This is hardy the solution to the problem, which surely lies with prevention. Fire Chief Greg Cleveland of La Crosse, Wisconsin indicates that despite upgrades, his firefighters have neither the advanced training nor the specialized equipment to lay foam on boiling balls of fire (NPR “Weekend Edition” 7.6.14). Moreover, they may not be able to reach a wrecked train quickly, if at all. Tragic experience with intensely hot forest fires surely suggests the inability of first responders to control huge fireballs pouring out toxic smoke.

Reacting to a rash of train wrecks—particularly to a derailment, a fire, and an oil spill into the James River in May 2014—the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a safety alert citing an “immanent hazard” to the public. This emergency order requires that shippers indicate to state and local officials the number of trains each week, their specific routes, and the contents of the tank cars. It also requires railroads to inform state emergency commissions about any large (one million gallons or more) shipments of oil.

Railroads have long resisted such calls from local officials and first responders to know the amount and contents of the cars; the Association of American Railroads said only that rail companies would “do all they can to comply with the DOT’s emergency order.” Not surprisingly, the railroads have done little to comply:

County Commissioner Caren Ray from San Luis Obispo complains that she has repeatedly requested information on arriving trains but does not receive it (http://www.energy.ca.gov/2014_energypolicy).

Defective Tank Cars

For many years the standard tank cars, known to the industry as DOT 111s,have proved prone to rupture when overloaded or involved in a wreck. Two thirds of the tank cars still in use today are older models that safety experts have found vulnerable to puncture. Nevertheless, the railroads still use them to transport increasing flammable “extreme” crude oil.

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In Canada, the 111s built before 2011 are supposed to be phased out by 2017; in the US, however, the DOT is talking about a phase out but has set no date for taking “legacy cars” off the rails. Catering to the carriers and the owners, it has merely called for shippers to use the safest cars in their fleets and for outmoded cars to be replaced “to the extent reasonably practicable.” These recommendations are pathetically weak. They guarantee that the most flammable crude will be carried in the most dangerous tank cars (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/business/us-orders-railroads-to-disclose-oil-shipments.html?_r=0).

And are the newer models significantly safer? The Canadian Transportation Safety Board found that the post-2011 design, though an improvement, is still not safe enough for the transport of hazardous liquids like crude oil. Except for a few reinforced areas, the steel is still only a half inch thick.

One might suspect that federal regulators are “asleep at the switch,” but their own statements suggest something even more unsettling: Peter Geolz, former managing director at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the agency that investigates crashes, has remarked that the agency may be reluctant to phase out the older DOT-111s out of fear of slowing the U.S. energy boom (http://topics.bloomberg.com/national-transportation-safety-board). In other words, the feds figured “we wouldn’t want to over-regulate railroads; that might slow the biggest oil bonanza in history.”

California Regulators Also “Recommend” Action

While federal agencies largely control railroad traffic, clearly state government has an obligation to protect both the citizens of California and the state’s environment. Not until last winter did Gov. Jerry Brown finally convene an Interagency Rail Safety Working Group to deal with the oil-train juggernaut.

But rather than asking how much oil trains can haul without posing unacceptable risks to health and safety—and then finding ways to limit their length and number—the Working Group simply recommended safety measures for trains and sought to improve emergency responses. The Group’s report, “Oil by Rail Safety in California,” made many recommendations for improved safety procedures but mandated few changes in regulations (http://www.sfgate.com/file/830/830-SCAN6267.PDF).

Even if implemented, small measures such as more frequent track inspections only chip away at the monolith; they do not begin to deal with the big problems stemming from the great length, unprecedented number, and highly flammable contents of today’s crude-oil trains.

At best, these overdue safety recommendations seem utterly inadequate to handle current risks, let alone those involved with still more oil trains that are increasingly, as never before, running through populated areas.

On their way to Bay Area terminals, oil trains run right through cities such as Sacramento, where they endanger the 250,000 residents living near the tracks. How could this degree of risk escape the attention of the state legislators and regulators who work in downtown Sacramento? By the summer of 2014, the residents of Sacramento, Davis, Roseville, Pittsburg, and Benicia were becoming increasingly fearful of ever-more-frequent oil trains. Protests erupted in Sacramento and elsewhere along the line (http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/08/6541363/crude-oil-train-protests-planned.html).

Oil Trains To Rumble Down East Bay Urban Corridor

Railroads and refineries are now planning to run crude oil trains along the highly urbanized east side of San Francisco Bay. A proposed upgrade to the Phillips 66 refinery in Santa Maria, California (outside San Luis Obispo) would allow it to “crack” more Bakken crude arriving from North Dakota on trains passing through Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, and San Jose. The Oakland City Council passed a resolution opposing any additional trains running through that densely populated city (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/us-usa-crude-rail-oakland-idUSKBN0ET34620140618).

The Working Group’s Toothless Guidelines

Since the Rail Safety Working Group made recommendations, not regulations, it didn’t take the panel long to publish a report and hold a workshop. Both were intended to reassure the Californians (especially those living along the East Bay rail corridor) that state and local governments are preparing for the increased threats posed by the previous year’s spike in oil trains. The prevention of accidents received much less attention.

Held in Berkeley on June 22nd, a day-long California Energy Commission’s (CEC) Workshop was led by top state officials: Energy Commissioner Janea A. Scott, Chair Robert Weisenmiller, and Public Utilities Commission President Michael R. Peevey. Since this event required a full day from highly paid administrators, it cost taxpayers lots of money.

The Workshop was highly instructive not only about the dangers posed by oil trains but also about the attitudes of state and local officials toward them. The subscript was, “even though we’re not fully ready for accidents, we expect still more of these trains.” Moreover, presenters tended to assume that accidents were the only threat. Although arson, sabotage, terrorism, and especially earthquakes are always potential threats to infrastructure, officials made almost no mention of them.

Workshop Promotes Emergency Responses, Not Prevention of Emergencies  

Throughout the day, mounting dangers to public health and safety—not to mention to the environment—were repeatedly underestimated. Speakers typically welcomed the energy boom and found few problems with the vast increase in oil trains since 2007.

Discussion did not include possible scenarios such as that of an overloaded oil train derailing on an old trestle and starting a forest fire far from first responders or polluting highly sensitive waterways. The state’s worst “high-hazard areas” are both along tracks traversing the Sierras (http://www.energy.ca.gov/2014_energypolicy).

Yet with increasing frequency, oil trains are traversing antiquated iron bridges such as the 1000-foot Clio Trestle spanning the Feather River Canyon. That one was built in 1909, 105 years ago.

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Imagine a mile-long train of substandard tank cars groaning and clanking across an antique trestle over a river that provides a significant percentage of the drinking water needed by a drought-ridden state.

No Big Picture Is Presented

The CEC Workshop was much about normalizing the abnormal, about making mile-long trains carrying highly flammable crude seem not just acceptable, but even inevitable.

Rather than admit that the country is now awash in an oversupply of oil, both government and industry speakers left the impression that the crude coming into California would serve the needs of its residents and the region. Tom Umenhofer, Senior Environmental Advisor to the Western States Petroleum Association, asked the audience to believe that “crude by rail [is] needed to supply the Western US” (http://www.energy.ca.gov/2014_energypolicy).

Speakers failed to mention that the petroleum industry targeted these refineries because they are situated near deep-water ports—and that, once refined, much of the increasingly low-grade crude is already being exported to Japan, China, and India. The Chevron refinery in Richmond, the second largest in the state, is pushing to expand its capacity—but not for the production of California-grade gasoline, the demand for which has declined in recent years (San Francisco Chronicle 7.12.14).

America As a Colony, California as a Sacrifice Area

The stark reality is this: the oil industry is exposing the American people to health and safety hazards so it can profit by refining an oversupply of dirty crude for export. In an ironic reversal, the fossil fuel boom is making the USA into a colonial country, one that suffers the depletion of its resources and the degradation of its environment so it can export its fossil fuels. But “colonial” isn’t the right term, really; the country is not getting subdued or exploited by a colonial power—but by its own corporate giants and their lackeys in government. Ditto for Canada, which is supplying most of the crude coming to California. Odd as it sounds, both countries are plundering themselves and fueling climate chaos.

In doing so, they’re demanding that California bear the risks as they turn key coastal areas into a sacrifice zones. While most of the crude is just passing through on its way to Asia, for those who live along the way there’s no “just” about it.

Listening to state and corporate officials, one does not hear about the larger problems faced by the industry: fracking and acidification technologies have enabled it to tap the vast reserves of the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the tar sands in Alberta, but with nowhere nearly enough pipelines to carry all this crude. Resistance to pipelines in Canada has put additional pressure on the only other alternative carrier, railroads.

Tank-car trains haul the oil to refineries, which are usually located near seaports; but the industry has encountered resistance to its search for additional ports up and down the West Coast through which it can export gas and oil. Climate change activist Bill McKibbon sees grassroots resistance as part of a global movement to halt the overconsumption of fossil fuels (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-fossil-fuel-resistance-20130411).

At least the Canadians, who are ravaging their north country to extract heavy crude from the tar sands, are up front about why they’re doing this: the conservative government led by Steven Harper and the corporations involved both want the profits from exports.

The Governor, the Legislature,and Big Money

The accepting, often endorsing tone of officialdom at the CEC Workshop fits with the Brown’s administration’s stance on energy production. Much as it has supported fracking, the technology making possible the glut of crude, the administration has also avoided policies that could restrict incoming tanker trains, slow “the energy boom,” or otherwise reduce exports and corporate profits. Only recently—and surely belatedly—did the administration clamp down on the injection of fracking waste into the state’s aquifers (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/07/19).

As we all know, it pays to “follow the money.” In 2012, Jerry Brown received $5,000,000 from Occidental Petroleum to help fund a favored referendum campaign. Brown has consistently supported hydraulic fracking, calling it “a fabulous opportunity,” one he had to balance against climate protection (Mark Hertsgaard, “How Green Is Brown?” The Nation July 7/14, 2014).

Sacramento is awash in both money and industry lobbyists pushing for more fossil fuels and less alternative energy. ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, remains a major player, just as it is in other statehouses and governor’s mansions. Bankrolled by Koch Industries, Exxon, and Philip Morris, ALEC led successful attacks on clean energy in Ohio and Oklahoma—and now they’re promoting fossil fuels in other states, notably California (http://www.energyandpolicy.org/alec_s_attack_on_clean_energy).

It’s indisputable that Brown and other prominent Democrats are influenced by the vast profits made by fracking oil, shipping and refining it, and then exporting a significant amount from California’s ports, including Richmond and Long Beach. It’s also important to factor in that enviable wages are earned during an energy boom, and that labor unions also make large contributions to Democratic candidates.

Actions State Agencies Should Take

Even if the governor and the statehouse are compromised and unwilling to act, state agencies can get tough. They can require that any new rail-related projects—and there are many just in California—do not go forward until regulations are significantly strengthened, speed limits are lowered, upgrades are made to existing infrastructure, and dangerous tank cars are no longer used in California.

That said, Sacramento cannot solve all the problems; it’s the feds—the DOT and the NTSB—who hold most of the power to regulate railroads and apply the brakes on runaway trains. Getting them to serve the public may be difficult, however, as recent disclosures about the Canadian government reveal. Internal government memos show how the government of Prime Minister Harper is so fixated on getting oil to market cheaply that it has ignored safety warnings from its own experts. The Canadian feds are relying on risky trains since pipelines involve a public review process like the one that has stalled the Keystone XL project (http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Blog/lac-megantic-one-year-later-what-has-been-don/blog/49833).

Though activists need to keep up the pressure on the feds, the public can’t wait for them to act; in the short term, both activists and regular citizens need to work with state officials, who are apt to be more responsive to sufficient public pressure. The precedent-setting victories of the “national fracking revolt” that surged up in the first half of 2014 provide a heartening example of how grassroots pressure can get results (http://earthjustice.org/blog/2014-july/small-town-fracking-victory-makes-waves-across-the-country?utm_source=crm&utm_content=button).

Challenging the Grand Illusions

State and federal officials in both countries tend to assume that environmental damage can somehow be mitigated or remediated. Both seem to forget the catastrophic oil spills that occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989 and the Kalamazoo River in 2010. Yet how could they forget Deepwater Horizon, the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico that surely challenged conventional ideas about restoring damaged ecosystems? Once large amounts of oil are released, it’s too late for remediation. Today, four years later, any Gulf shrimper can tell you that.

It’s high time to challenge the illusion of endless economic growth on a finite planet. Underlying the policies governing oil trains are the world’s addiction to fossil fuels and the denial, by government and industry alike, that this dependency can continue without destroying the ecosystems that support all life. The obsession with corporate profits is costing us far too much, and the costs can only rise.

At a time when the urgency for climate action is ascendant, when burning fossil fuels clearly exacerbates the earth’s problems, surely it’s irresponsible to focus on the most profitable methods to extract and transport gas and oil. With the survival of so many species now in question, wouldn’t it make sense to leave more oil in the ground and keep it off the rails?

Rather than accepting reality, gradually kicking the habit, and converting to more benign and sustainable energy sources, officials tend to grasp at short-term technological fixes to problems whose solution will require tough choices, clearer perception, and more enlightened values—including a reverence for life.

 Paul W. Rea, PhD, is a researcher, author and activist in Newark, California.

For Further Reading

http://us.wow.com/search?q=human+causes+of+global+warming+articles&s_chn=25&s_pt=aolsem&v_t=aolsem&s_cs=-2823176844128393677&s_it=rhr1_relsearch

http://us.wow.com/search?q=human+causes+of+global+warming+articles&s_chn=25&s_pt=aolsem&v_t=aolsem&s_cs=-2823176844128393677&s_it=rhr1_relsearch

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/fracking/fracking-action-center/

http://www.nrdc.org/

http://www.earthjustice.org/

—For updates on the Alberta Tar Sands: http://www.forestethics.org/

—For the routes of oil trains: http://www.blast-zone.org/

—Juhasz, Antonia. The Tyranny of Oil: the World’s Most Powerful Industry and What We Must Do To Stop It New York: HarperCollins 2008.

KQED: California Has Little Say Over Oil Train Safety

Repost from KQED Science
[Editor: Significant quotes: 1) by Alexia Rettalack of California’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) – “Spills happen. When product moves, things happen.”  2) by Paul King, deputy directory for rail safety at the California Public Utilities Commission – “My view is it’s pretty undeniably bringing in extra risks to the state.  These trains explode. If that were to happen in a town, there’s no telling the damage.”    – RS]

California Has Little Say Over Oil Train Safety

Molly Samuel, KQED Science | July 21, 2014
A BNSF train with tank cars crosses a trestle in the Feather River Canyon in Northern California. (Courtesy of Jake Miille)
A BNSF train with tank cars crosses a trestle in the Feather River Canyon in Northern California. (Courtesy of Jake Miille)

The number of trains carrying crude oil across California is increasing rapidly, and two official reports say the state is not ready. Regulators are preparing, with funds for disaster response and more track inspectors, but they’re limited in how much they can do to make rail transport safer.

“My view is it’s pretty undeniably bringing in extra risks to the state,” said Paul King, deputy directory for rail safety at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

“These trains explode,” King said. “If that were to happen in a town, there’s no telling the damage. And of course we know what happened in little Lac-Mégantic.” That’s the town in Quebec where a train carrying crude from North Dakota’s Bakken formation derailed last July. The explosion killed 47 people.

Bakken crude is volatile. In the past year, trains transporting crude from the Bakken have also exploded in North Dakota, Virginia and Alabama.

Trains carrying Bakken crude traverse California, too, bringing the oil to refineries here. And while the CPUC regulates rail in California, the state can’t actually do much when it comes telling the railroads how they can operate. Almost all of those rules are up to the federal government.

‘Our Hands in California Are Tied’

The state can’t set speed limits on crude oil trains. It can’t tell railroads to choose less hazardous routes. It can’t tell oil companies not to bring trains carrying the volatile crude through cities. It can’t tell oil companies to ship that crude in stronger tank cars. It can’t require upgraded braking systems.

Neither can local governments, though the cities of Davis, Richmond and Berkeley have all passed resolutions expressing their opposition to the transport of crude oil by rail.

“I almost feel like our hands in California are tied, yet all these trains are going through our communities,” State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, a democrat from Santa Barbara, said at a hearing last month.

Trains carried nearly 6.3 million barrels of oil into California in 2013. That’s more than five times more than in 2012. According to the California Energy Commission, by 2016 that number could balloon to more than 100 million barrels.

That’s because there’s an oil boom in the middle part of the continent, and to get that crude from Alberta and North Dakota to California, oil companies have to use trains.

Firefighters douse blazes after in Lac-Megantic on July 6, 2013. (François Laplante-Delagrave/AFP/Getty Images)
Firefighters douse blazes in Lac-Megantic on July 6, 2013. (François Laplante-Delagrave/AFP/Getty Images)

Steps Towards Safer Shipping

There are ways to make the trains safer.

Most of the tank cars used to transport crude oil, including the volatile Bakken crude, are old, and can’t protect against explosions. After the disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Canada required that the most dangerous of the cars — the same tank cars that carry as much as 82 percent of crude oil in the U.S. — be removed from service, and that the rest be retrofitted.

The U.S. is considering stricter tank car standards. Last week, the advocacy group Earthjustice sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation, urging the agency to move faster by issuing an emergency order immediately banning the use of the unsafe cars.

But California can’t require any of this. The CPUC intends to urge the DOT to “move expeditiously” to update its tank car regulations. That, and other recommendations, are laid out in a recent report on crude-by-rail safety in the state. The state wants the feds to require that there be newer braking technology on oil trains and a GPS-based system that prevents accidents on oil train routes. According to King, the CPUC will submit those recommendations to the Federal Railroad Administration soon.

The railroads have already adopted some voluntary safety measures, including lower speed limits and increased track inspections. And Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, the company that is currently transporting large amounts of Bakken crude in California, is asking railcar manufacturers to submit bids to build 5,000 safer cars. (The railroads typically don’t own the cars used to ship material; the oil companies themselves either own or lease them.)

The CPUC has done one of the main things it can: hire more railroad safety inspectors. The CPUC keeps a list of the most hazardous sections of track, and according to a recent report, the most frequent cause of derailments at those sites are track problems. The new state budget adds seven positions, bringing the CPUC’s inspection staff to 38. CPUC staff checks all the tracks in California once a year and, going forward, will check the tracks on Bakken oil train routes twice a year

A Past Disaster

California once tried to introduce stricter railroad regulations.

In July, 1991, a train derailed in Northern California at a bend in the track where it crosses the Upper Sacramento River, near the town of Dunsmuir. It spilled 19,000 gallons of a pesticide called metam sodium into the river.

“It killed everything down to the bacteria,” said Mark Stopher, who was hired by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to assess the damage to the river.

The poison killed more than a million fish, and every insect and plant in the river for 40 miles. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like that before,” he said. In video from the time, you can see fish struggling to escape the river and get into tributaries. Stopher said they all died.

“It was kind of a blow to the heart to lose the river,” said Phil Dietrich, executive director of a conservation group called River Exchange.

The Upper Sacramento had been a popular fishing destination. So when the fish were gone, the tourists, and their money, disappeared too.

But it was a pulse of poison; metam sodium doesn’t linger. A few years later, the fish were back. The tourists are back, too. It could have been worse, if what spilled had been a substance that lasts in the environment for a longer time. Oil, for instance.

After the accident, the CPUC tried to require stronger track at Cantara Loop, to keep it from happening again.

“We were trying to adopt regulations where there were none,” said King. But they couldn’t. The railroad sued the CPUC, and eventually the court sided with the railroad, reinforcing the Federal Railroad Administration’s jurisdiction. There is a large rail in place on the bridge now, to help keep trains from derailing into the river. According to the CPUC, there have been four derailments in the area since 2009.

“Our role is limited,” King said. “Our role is to ensure that the regulations that the federal government has in place are followed.”

Beefing Up Clean-Up 

Even if the the state can’t do all it wants to keep an accident from happening, it can prepare to respond to one.

In June, dozens of fire fighters, public health experts and Red Cross volunteers gathered near Cantara Loop to run a drill. The scenario was that an oil train had collided with an illegal marijuana grower’s truck at the site of the ’91 spill. The truck wrecked, and the train derailed and spilled oil into the river. 

Firefighters pulled the casualties (volunteers marked with paint) away from the scene, a helicopter brought tools to treat people who’d been doused in dangerous chemicals and a team deployed a drone to get a view of the (largely imaginary) disaster scene from above.

“We want to make sure California’s prepared to respond,” said Alexia Rettalack of California’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR). “Spills happen. When product moves, things happen.”

OSPR got more money in this year’s budget, so that it can prepare for inland oil spills. Until now, the agency focused only on marine accidents. The state Office of Emergency Services is also looking for ways to better prepare emergency responders, many of whom are volunteers, for an oil train explosion. And state lawmakers are considering a couple of crude-by-rail bills that would improve emergency responses.

Dietrich emphasizes that what happened in Dunsmuir in 1991 was a rare event, and yet, the memory lingers.

“It comes down to we care about our river and about our towns,” he said. “And we hope that the agencies and the railroad are on top of it.”

Crude oil rides Pa. rails: Should you be worried? (Answers to 12 basic questions)

Repost from The Pocono Record

Crude oil rides Pa. rails: Should you be worried?

Top Photo
A warning placard on a tank car carrying crude oil. | Associated Press
By NATASHA KHAN, PublicSource, July 13, 2014

More trains carrying crude oil to East Coast refineries mean a greater risk of accidents. Derailments in Pennsylvania and throughout the country are a signal to some that an accident could be disastrous.

Why is more crude oil moving through Pennsylvania?

North America is now the biggest producer of crude oil in the world, partly as a result of fracking in North Dakota and other Western states. Without pipelines to move the oil, much of it has been pushed onto the rails. In 2013, U.S. railroads carried more than 40 times what they carried in 2008. Refineries processing much of the crude from the Bakken formation in the West are in the Philadelphia area.

Are these trains dangerous?

As crude-by-rail traffic increased, so did its accidents. Some lawmakers and public safety groups are concerned that as production surges, people near railroad tracks are exposed to more danger. And some believe the crude boom has outpaced the necessary regulations to ensure safety.

There have been at least 12 significant derailments involving crude since May 2013 in North America. Some involved explosions, evacuations, environmental damage and injuries. The most devastating was in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013, when 47 people died after a train carrying crude exploded. Since January, Pennsylvania has had derailments involving crude in Philadelphia, Vandergrift and McKeesport. There were no injuries in any of the accidents.

How much crude oil do these trains carry?

Right now Norfolk Southern and CSX, the major railroads in the state, move as many as eight trains of crude oil a day combined through the state.

Dubbed “virtual pipelines,” these trains can have more than 100 tank cars and can carry millions of gallons of crude.

Is Bakken crude more volatile than other types of oil?

North Dakota Bakken crude is potentially more volatile, corrosive and flammable than other kinds of crude oil. Investigations found that the Bakken crude that exploded in Quebec was classified as a less dangerous type of oil. In February, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an emergency order requiring testing of all Bakken crude to determine its explosive nature.

Are other types of crude oil dangerous?

Other types of crude from the U.S. and Canada also could pose a threat. All crude oil is flammable and can cause environmental damage, Christopher Hart, acting National Transportation Safety Board Chairman, told the Associated Press in June.

What’s wrong with the rail cars?

Sometimes referred to as the “Ford Pinto of railcars,” the DOT-111 tank cars used to ship crude have been known to be a safety hazard for decades, according to federal safety investigators. Designed in the 1960s, they are prone to puncture and “catastrophic loss of hazardous materials” when trains derail, according to the NTSB.

The derailments have caused an outcry by state and federal officials and safety groups demanding that the cars be taken off the tracks. Canada has already ordered railroads to stop using them by 2017, but U.S. regulators have been slow to act. The U.S. DOT did advise railroads in May to stop using the cars to carry crude oil. The White House is reviewing new standards for tank cars, but it could take months before rules are in place.

How are trains carrying crude oil regulated?

Two federal entities regulate railroads carrying crude: The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). The FRA has about 400 inspectors who sometimes work with state inspectors. In Pennsylvania, the state’s Public Utility Commission does spot inspections of tracks and rail equipment.

Emergency planning is largely left up to counties. A state agency oversees 67 Local Emergency Planning Committees, which can request general information from railroads about hazardous materials coming through their counties. That information is not public.

Can you find out when crude oil trains come through your neighborhood?

Officially, no. Railroads are not required to share information about hazardous materials under federal law. Norfolk Southern and CSX, for example, said they don’t give out that information, citing possible security incidents and competition.

In May, the DOT said it no longer viewed information on crude oil from the Bakken as security sensitive. The agency told railroads with trains carrying more than 1 million barrels of Bakken crude to give the information to states. At least six states, including Washington, California and Virginia, made the information available. Pennsylvania didn’t. The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency refused to release the information to PublicSource. The agency denied our Right-to-Know request, calling the information “confidential” and “proprietary.”

Bakken and other crude oils are believed to be shipped through Pittsburgh and other Pennsylvania cities on a regular basis on their way to Philadelphia refineries. A spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission told PublicSource that Bakken crude is shipped through Pittsburgh.

What has been done to improve safety?

U.S. regulators asked railroads to comply with a number of voluntary actions. The railroads agreed to slow crude trains to no more than 40 mph in high-risk urban areas. (However, a train that derailed in Lynchburg, Va., in April was traveling at just 24 mph.)

Recent proposed rules for crude oil, including new standards for tank cars, drew comments from the public representing more than 100,000 people.

In March, CSX agreed to give PEMA access to its real-time monitoring system that tracks crude’s movement through the state. Cory Angell, the agency’s spokesman, said it is working with Norfolk Southern on a similar agreement.

Are first responders prepared for a significant derailment in Pennsylvania?

Daniel Boyles, the emergency services coordinator for Blair County, told PublicSource he thinks railroads are doing everything in their power to prevent accidents. However, he said, first responders need more training. Trains carrying Bakken crude roll through his county twice a week, he said.

Emergency officials in Beaver, Allegheny and Dauphin counties said that awareness has increased and railroads have given emergency responders more training.

A PEMA spokesman said the state is prepared in the case of a major derailment. He added that Pennsylvania will soon use a DOT grant to train county hazmat teams and first responders.

Who doesn’t think first responders are prepared?

“No community is prepared for a worst-case event,” Deborah Hersman, former chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a Senate subcommittee in April.

Under voluntary safety measures effective July 1, railroads will contribute $5 million for training for emergency responders. And they will develop a list of emergency-response resources in case of a derailment.

But federal safety officials have questioned whether voluntary actions are enough. Currently, railroads don’t have to provide comprehensive emergency plans for the crude oil being transported. That’s what’s needed, Hersman said.

In a Jan. 23 letter to federal regulators, she said that without comprehensive crude oil response plans “(rail) carriers have effectively placed the burden of remediating the environmental consequences of an accident on local communities along their routes.”

Which officials are talking about this in Pennsylvania?

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., endorsed a bill he said would boost safety. The bill would include $3 million for track inspections and hire 20 new inspectors.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter backed a proposal to charge a federal freight fee to crude-oil producers and industrial consumers. The money would be used to improve tracks.

Christina Simeone, director of PennFuture’s energy center, said other states have shown leadership on the issue — but not Pennsylvania.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo commissioned a safety report for his state. The report laid out actions the state should take. Minnesota lawmakers allocated $6.4 million for more inspectors, specialized training for first responders and fixes for highway-rail grade crossings along crude routes.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has been silent about the safety issue, said Simeone, who commented that there is interest in “minimizing the issue” because of concerns about the refinery business in Philadelphia and gasoline prices in the region.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto has not been part of the conversation. In a recent meeting with PublicSource, Peduto said that he is “aware of the reality of what is coming through.” In the case of an accident, Pittsburgh could call on the PA Region 13 Task Force, he said. The task force is an initiative that allows counties to pull resources from the entire region in case of an emergency.

Time Magazine: A Year After a Deadly Disaster, Fears Grow About the Danger of Crude Oil Shipped By Rail

Repost from Time Magazine
[Editor: The message is getting out far and wide with this mainstream publication’s observance of the one-year anniversary of the killer wreck in Lac-Mégantic.  An intensely personal account of what it is like to live near these rolling “bomb trains.”  – RS]

A Year After a Deadly Disaster, Fears Grow About the Danger of Crude Oil Shipped By Rail

Sebastien Malo, July 10, 2014

When 21-year-old mother Kahdejah Johnson was told two years ago that she’d secured a spot at the Ezra Prentice Homes, a quiet housing project in Albany, she felt confident she’d found a stable home to raise her newborn son. With its manicured lawns and tidy beige row houses, the Ezra Prentice Homes are a far cry from the crumbling housing projects of large cities. “When people come into town they’re like ‘These are your projects? These are condos!’” says Johnson.

But today, Johnson is losing sleep over how close her house is to railroad tracks congested, day and night, with tanker cars carrying crude oil, visible just outside her bedroom window. The fear of an accident is so great that Johnson has taken to evacuating her apartment some nights, to spend the night at her mother’s home, further from the tracks. “Now I’m afraid to be in my own home,” she says. “Do you know how fast we could die here?”

Albany is one of a growing number of cities where residents like Johnson fear the devastating consequences of accidents involving railcars filled with crude oil. They have reason to fear—on July 6, 2013, a train carrying oil derailed in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, causing an explosion that destroyed more than 30 buildings and killed more than 40 people. This past Sunday, Johnson and other Albany residents held a vigil to commemorate the Lac-Megantic derailment—and draw attention to the growing opposition to transporting crude oil by rail

“Jo-Annie Lapointe, Melissa Roy, Maxime Dubois, Joanie Turmel,” participants in the vigil intoned into a microphone, naming Lac-Megantic residents killed in the explosions. In a line, they held portraits of each of the deceased and read their names, pinning the pictures to a black metal fence. “You may not say that they lived right next door to you, but they were your neighbors,” said Pastor McKinley Johnson, who officiated part of the ceremony. “You may not say that you understand all the language, but they’re your sister and your brother.”

As in Lac-Megantic, oil tankers containing highly flammable crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and Montana roll right through their residential areas. Rows of train-cars filled with crude oil often stand idle for hours on the tracks that hug the curves of the housing project, so tightly only 15 feet at most separate the two in some areas. “Once I found out that these are the same tanks that were in Canada, I was like ‘Oh my God, someone pray for us, We’re in danger’,” Johnson said.

This fear is a consequence of the unconventional oil boom in states like North Dakota, where for the last several years producers have been using hydrofracking techniques to pump oil previously locked in underground shale rock. The new oil fields have helped America’s oil production rise to a 28-year high. But that crude oil has to get to refineries, most of which are located in coastal cities—and much of that oil is moving by rail. Nationally, transport of crude oil by train has jumped 45-fold between 2008 and 2013, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

While the U.S. has yet to experience a rail catastrophe on the scale of Lac-Megantic, the country has had its share of close calls. The National Transportation Safety Board counts five “significant accidents” of trains containing crude oil in the United States in the past year alone. The latest, in Lynchburg, Virginia, saw a train carrying crude Bakken oil derail and burst into flames in the town’s center this April, producing black plumes of smoke and billows of flames taller than buildings nearby. The crude oil also spilled into the James River, though one was injured.

The worrying trend has opened a new front to the national environmental debate. Some 40 cities and towns across the country scheduled similar events to mark Lac-Megantic’s one-year anniversary. Many of the rallies will take place in the usual hotbeds of environmental activism —in places like Seattle and Portland—but also in blue-collar tows like Philadelphia and Detroit, where activists will voice demands ranging from a moratorium on oil-trains traffic to increased safety controls.

But the problem has also presented environmentalists with a conundrum. One of the factors behind the rapid rise of railroad shipment of crude oil has been the shortage of oil pipelines, which could move greater quantities of oil from landlocked states to coastal refineries. Front and center to this debate is the multi-billion dollar Keystone XL pipeline project, which would connect the oil sands of western Canada to the Gulf Coast, but which President Obama has yet to approve—in part because of objections raised by environmentalists, who fear the potential for a spill.

Fewer pipelines has meant more oil moved via rail. “If Keystone had been built we wouldn’t be moving nearly the volume of oil that we’re moving by rail,” said Charles Ebinger, the director of the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

That has exposed the Keystone’s opponents to criticism that by standing in the way of pipeline projects, they are raising the risk of rail accidents. Though hazardous material like crude oil makes its way safely via rail 99.998 percent of the time, according to the Association of American Railroads, a plethora of research suggests that pipelines result in fewer spillage incidents, personal injuries and fatalities than rail. That includes an authoritative environmental review the State Department released last January, which concluded that “there is… a greater potential for injuries and fatalities associated with rail transport relative to pipelines.”

Still, environmentalists like Ethan Buckner of ForestEthics, the group coordinating the string of events to commemorate the Lac-Megantic tragedy, reject that dichotomy. “The industry is trying to present Americans with a false choice between pipelines and rails,” he says. “We want to choose clean energy.”

Back in Albany, the vigil was deemed a success, drawing a crowd of about a hundred. But Kahdejah Johnson wasn’t among them. Why not? Her fear, she said, got the best of her. “Honestly, I don’t really hang by my house,” she said. “I don’t like to be in that area if I don’t have to be there.” She is now on a waiting list to be transferred to another development—something she’s told could take up to four years. In the meantime, the trains will keep rolling.