SACRAMENTO – Activists concerned about the danger of crude oil train shipments through populated areas took part in a national day of action Wednesday, including events in Sacramento and Davis.
Laurie Litman heads up 350 Sacramento, a group concerned about global warming. She notes that shipments of crude oil in California have increased 1,300 percent over the past four years.
Litman circulated a map at a rally outside a federal building in Sacramento showing neighborhoods and schools that would be affected by a fiery oil spill like the one that killed 47 people in Quebec, Canada a year ago.
“These are not fires that can be put out. They need to burn out, so if that happens when a train comes through the middle of Sacramento, we are in trouble” Litman said.
Sacramento Assembly Member Roger Dickinson addressed the gathering, telling them that emergency agency need to know what volatile oil shipments are being transported and when. He has authored a bill requiring rail companies to provide that information and have access to real time communications gear to get information to local officials.
Several rail spills occurred in areas where emergency responders had no little information of what was spilled.
“To assure that we get the information that we need, and the information that we need in a timely way,” said Dickinson.
Many at the rally were advocating a reduction in the use of crude oil as a long term solution to the threat of oil derailments.
“It’s not if, it’s when because it has happened before,” David Link, of the Sacramento Electrical Vehicle Association, said Wednesday.
Activists in Davis are particularly concerned about a plan to run 100 oil tank cars a day through Downtown Davis to a Valero refinery in Benecia. If approved, the trains would go from Roseville thorough Sacramento past Davis.
They handed out leaflets and circulated petitions at the Davis Rail Station.
Repost from The Los Angeles Times, Business [Editor: Significant quote: “Plans also call for safety drills and, possibly, the placement of safety equipment at potentially dangerous rail ‘pinch points.’ …These points include spots along rail routes through the Feather River Canyon and Donner Pass in Northern California, the Tehachapi Pass and San Luis Obispo in the central part of the state, and urban rail corridors in Southern California, officials said.” Hmmm … how about urban rail corridors in Northern California?? – RS]
State moves to improve safety in transporting oil by rail
Marc Lifsher, July 7, 2014
A year after rail tanker cars carrying crude oil in Canada exploded and killed 47 people, California is stepping up efforts to prevent a similar disaster on tracks crisscrossing the state. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
A year after rail tanker cars carrying crude oil in Canada exploded and killed 47 people, California is stepping up efforts to prevent a similar disaster on tracks crisscrossing the state.
In recent weeks, the state began pumping more money into a new rail safety program, the Legislature approved new fees on oil being carried by train, and the state’s Fish and Wildlife Department started planning how to better protect inland waterways from oil spills.
“We have a clear and present risk to Californians right now from potential spills,” said Chuck Bonham, Fish and Wildlife director. “We’re moving fast per the Legislature to best prepare California for that risk.”
There’s good reason for rushing, Bonham warned. Crude oil shipments to California last year rose to 6.3 million barrels, up 1.1 million barrels from the 2012 total. Imports could rise to 150 million 42 gallon barrels, a quarter of the state total, by 2016, the California Energy Commission estimates.
The Fish and Wildlife Department, which oversees the state’s Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, is set to hire 38 technicians to boost a current crew of 250 people, previously funded to deal mainly with coastal oil spills.
Top Fish and Wildlife officials already are meeting with other federal, state and local government agencies to set priorities and schedule a series of emergency response drills at high-risk stretches of rail lines, such as in the mountains, marshlands and densely populated urban neighborhoods.
The new hires and expanded responsibility will be paid for by a fee of 6.5 cents per barrel of crude oil transported through the state by rail or pipeline. The fees were approved by the Legislature in mid-June after a heated battle between California’s powerful oil industry, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown and environmentalists.
The governor basically got what he wanted: a dedicated source of money to help respond quickly to both maritime spills and potential and actual accidents involving pipelines and rail tanker cars bringing crude oil to refineries from in-state wells and fields in the Great Plains and Canada.
But that’s just part of the state’s response to the threat posed by train wrecks involving crude oil cargoes. The state Public Utilities Commission is hiring seven additional track inspectors to work with federal government counterparts to keep oil trains with up to 100 tank cars rolling safely.
And lawmakers still are considering even more measures to require railroads to provide greater information about oil trains passing through communities, establish round-the-clock emergency communications, and levy per-tank-car fees for emergency response activities.
“The funding in the budget is an important step,” said Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), author of one of three tank-car-safety bills, “but more actions can be taken to help prevent and respond to accidents.”
The Brown administration’s goal is to set up a comprehensive system for safeguarding an estimated 7,000 rail and 5,000 pipeline crossings over inland waters.
With that in mind, Fish and Wildlife already has hosted a number of meetings with state and federal government agencies, including the State Fire Marshal and the U.S. Coast Guard, that also deal with oil spills. State officials are reaching out to railroad companies and tank car manufacturers, who are working on more crash-resistant rolling stock.
“The folks who transport oil and store oil in appreciable volume need to develop contingency plans for how to protect sensitive sites,” said Thomas Cullen, a former Coast Guard captain, who runs the state’s prevention and response program.
Plans also call for safety drills and, possibly, the placement of safety equipment at potentially dangerous rail “pinch points.”
These points include spots along rail routes through the Feather River Canyon and Donner Pass in Northern California, the Tehachapi Pass and San Luis Obispo in the central part of the state, and urban rail corridors in Southern California, officials said.
“We’ve got to go shoulder-to-shoulder working with industry,” Cullen said.
One of the first steps, he said, will be issuing emergency regulations for rail and pipeline oil transportation, which he hopes can happen by September.
Officials said permanent regulations should be ready about a year later, after Fish and Wildlife holds hearings to get input from railroads, oil companies, environmentalists, local government agencies and neighborhood groups.
Oil companies, which had opposed some parts of the governor’s program, including the fee for inland shipments, say they want to cooperate with the state’s expanding safety efforts.
“It’s going to add some additional expense to getting California energy to consumers,” said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn., a trade group.
“Our primary concern,” he said, is to see that state money goes to first responders “to give them the equipment and training necessary so people can have confidence that this is a safe transportation mode.”
Reps. Thompson, Matsui, Miller & Garamendi Send Letter To Secretary Of Transportation Foxx Requesting Immediate Action To Improve Safety Of Crude Oil Shipped By Rail
Jul 1, 2014 | Press Release
Letter calls on DOT to expedite rules and issue regulations to improve safety of crude shipments and prevent future accidents
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Representatives Mike Thompson (CA-05), Doris Matsui (CA-06), George Miller (CA-11) and John Garamendi (CA-03) sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx expressing strong concern over the increased shipments of crude oil by rail in their districts, and calling for action to increase safety.
“We are especially concerned with the high risks involved with transporting lighter, more flammable crude in densely populated areas. Should spills or explosions occur, as we have seen over the last year, the consequences could be disastrous, costing lives, damaging property, and harming the environment,” the members wrote. “While we are pleased with the many actions that DOT has taken thus far and we believe that your agency is making steady progress, we must still emphasize the utmost importance of demonstrated compliance with federal regulations by the railroad and petroleum industries. We believe there must be accountability and comprehensive oversight, as well as adherence to the most stringent of standards.”
Specifically, the letter calls on the Department of Transportation (DOT) to:
Provide a report on the level of compliance by the railroad and petroleum industry to the May 7th Emergency Order that requires information be shared in a timely manner with local entities.
Issue a rulemaking that requires stripping out the most volatile elements from Bakken crude before it is loaded onto rail cars.
Expedite the issuance of a final rulemaking to require the full implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) technology for all railroads transporting lighter crude and provide a status report on the progress of PTC implementation to date.
Expedite the issuance of a rulemaking that requires phasing out old rail cars for newer, retrofitted cars.
The full text of the letter is below:
July 1, 2014
The Honorable Anthony Foxx
Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20590
Dear Secretary Foxx:
As members of the California Congressional Delegation, we are writing to voice our strong concerns over the increased shipment of crude oil by rail in our districts and the safety risks associated with this upsurge. Northern California is already seeing a significant increase in the movement of oil through our local communities, and the number of shipments is only expected to rise in the coming years. We commend the Department of Transportation (DOT) for its focus thus far on more information sharing, slower speeds, and reinforced railcars. As you know, the solutions for this important safety issue must be multi-pronged and implemented as quickly as possible, which requires a strong and coordinated effort by the federal government to achieve an effective solution.
We are especially concerned with the high risks involved with transporting lighter, more flammable crude in densely populated areas. Should spills or explosions occur, as we have seen over the last year, the consequences could be disastrous, costing lives, damaging property, and harming the environment. While we are pleased with the many actions that DOT has taken thus far and we believe that your agency is making steady progress, we must still emphasize the utmost importance of demonstrated compliance with federal regulations by the railroad and petroleum industries. We believe there must be accountability and comprehensive oversight, as well as adherence to the most stringent of standards.
We appreciate your agency’s May 7th Emergency Order that requires carriers to provide State Emergency Response Commissions with advance notice because it is imperative that local emergency managers and first responders are given up-to-date information on what materials are being transported through their regions, when these transports are occurring, and where this crude oil will be stored. But, because improved coordination and communication between the oil companies, railroads, and emergency managers is so fundamental to the safe transport of highly flammable lighter crude, we request a full report on the level of compliance by the oil companies and railroads to date.
Additionally, we urge your agency to prioritize implementing solutions in an expeditious manner that we believe will better protect our communities. One such solution would remove a significant amount of the volatile elements, flammable natural gas liquids (NGLs), from the crude before it is loaded onto rail cars and we understand that regulators are already considering this course of action. In order for industry to comply, they would need to build small processing towers known as stabilizers that shave off NGLs from crude before it is ultimately loaded for transport. Stabilizers are common in other parts of the country and we understand that this could also be feasible through equipment leasing. Because your agency has explicitly stated that all options are on table, we believe that requiring the petroleum industry to make lighter crude shipments by rail less volatile must be a part of the solution. And, although building infrastructure will require time and investment, industry experts have also publicly stated that stripping NGLs from lighter crude is a part of the equation for addressing railcar safety.
Furthermore, we believe that positive train control (PTC) advanced technology should be fully implemented as it is designed to automatically stop or slow a train before accidents can occur. Derailments must be avoided at all costs and PTC should be prioritized due to its accurate prevention of train-to-train collisions and derailments caused by excessive speed and unauthorized movement of trains. We believe that an expedited final rulemaking requiring full implementation of PTC is needed for those railroads that will be transporting lighter crude by rail through our communities.
Yet another solution that has been considered and in some cases the oil industry has initiated, is switching out older rail cars for new, retrofitted ones. We urge your agency to issue a rulemaking to require phasing out and retrofitting older tank cars that do not have the latest safety technologies installed in order to further minimize the impact of an explosion, if a derailment with lighter crude were to occur.
As all of these federal emergency orders and standards are being considered and final regulations are set to come out next year, we request that your agency provide us ongoing information regarding industry compliance and develop ambitious standards that will both prevent derailments and ensure that industry workers and communities are protected in cases where derailments do occur. We cannot allow communities to be in danger when viable solutions are available.
To sum up our requests, we would like your agency to:
Provide a report on the level of compliance by the railroad and petroleum industry to the May 7th Emergency Order.
Issue rulemaking that requires stripping out the most volatile elements from Bakken crude before it is loaded onto rail cars.
Expedite the issuance of a final rulemaking to require the full implementation of PTC technology for all railroads transporting lighter crude and provide a status report on the progress of PTC implementation to date.
Expedite the issuance of a rulemaking that requires phasing out old rail cars for newer, retrofitted cars.
We believe that we must be vigilant and put in place strict safety regulations that can adapt and meet the rapidly changing transportation and energy needs of our country. Thank you for your continued elevation of these important safety issues, and we look forward to working with you on this matter.
Repost from Texas Public Radio [Editor: This seems to be an early posting on Texas Public Radio, with actual interview audio to follow. I will return to add the audio when it is posted. – RS]
The Source: Derailments Spike Along With Oil Shipments
By Paul Flahive, July 1, 2014
Link to original image: http://bit.ly/1lvK3ci Credit Flickr user Paul Sullivan / cc
Transporting crude oil from areas booming with the hydraulic fracturing revolution relies heavily on railroads. Busier railroads means more derailments and more derailments with trains loaded with old cars filled with oil means more tragedies.
Chris Hart, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, noted the dramatic rise in flammables being transported by rail the in a letter to U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley while noting a number of specific oil derailments:
March 27, 2013, derailment of a Canadian Pacific train involving 14 tank cars of Western Canadian crude oil in Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, that released 15,000 gallons of product.
January 31, 2014, 11 tank cars of a Canadian National (CN) train transporting North Alberta crude oil in New Augusta, Mississippi, derailed, releasing 50,000 gallons of product.
February 13, 2014, 19 tank 2 cars of a Norfolk Southern train carrying Western Canadian heavy crude oil derailed in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, releasing 4,300 gallons of product.
January 7, 2014, 5 tank cars of a CN train carrying Western Canadian (Manitoba/Saskatchewan) crude oil derailed in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, releasing 60,000 gallons of product.
As we enter July, the property damage by oil on rail derailments has already surpassed all of last year and these derailments have affected every region of the country according to a Politico investigation.
As these trains travel through our communities, sometimes without the knowledge of first responders, are we safe? Should we have more information and the ability to keep these trains outside densely populated areas? Are there alternatives, and how does the Keystone XL pipeline figure in?
Tom “Smitty” Smith, Texas director of Public Citizen, a consumer and citizen advocacy group
*This is the second segment in the July 1 edition of The Source, which airs at 3 p.m. on KSTX 89.1 FM. Audio from this segment will be posted by 5:30 p.m.
