Category Archives: Spill prevention and response

Crude By Rail, Rail Safety, Spill prevention and response, State regulation

New Minnesota safety rules – prevention and response, but nothing about stopping crude by rail

Repost from The Perham Focus, Perham, MN

New rail safety rules now in effect in Minnesota

Focus staff report, 7/1/14

Laws designed to improve the safety of Minnesotans who live and work near railways that carry crude oil and other hazardous materials go into effect July 1.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation, the Department of Public Safety and the railroads will carry out the new rail safety legislation, which was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton in May. The new laws follow accidents involving crude oil in neighboring states and provinces and will implement stricter oversight of railroad companies, require more railway inspections and provide for better emergency response training and preparedness in communities across Minnesota.

“Trains carrying crude oil pass through our communities every day. We have learned from dangerous accidents in other states that without proper safety measures, that cargo could pose a very real risk to our citizens,” said Gov. Dayton in a press release from the state transportation department. “For the enhanced safety of all Minnesotans, I am confident that our departments of transportation and public safety will implement these new programs effectively, and strictly enforce all new regulations taking effect today in Minnesota.”

“These new safety measures go a long way towards making the state safer as the trains carrying crude oil pass through the state,” said MnDOT Commissioner Charlie Zelle. “The addition of more rail inspectors will allow us to inspect more tracks and equipment and keep them operating safely.”

“We welcome the opportunity to educate first responders on the unique challenges presented by the volume of crude oil making its way through Minnesota,” said Department of Public Safety Commissioner Mona Dohman. “We will also bring together community leaders, railroad and pipeline operators, and emergency planners to ensure all communities are prepared to respond to an incident involving crude oil.”

HOW THE NEW LAW WORKS

Minnesota is seeing an increase of trains carrying petroleum products from the North Dakota oil fields. In response, the legislation includes several key features designed to strengthen safety requirements and improve disaster response readiness in the state, according to the release:

Prevention Plans Required – Requires railroad companies to submit disaster prevention plans to the state of Minnesota. This new law will require companies transporting hazardous materials to develop safety measures that help keep Minnesotans and the environment safe.

Increased Safety Inspections – Increases the number of railway inspectors at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, paid for with an annual assessment on railroad companies.

Emergency Response Training – Requires railroads to provide emergency response training every three years to every fire department located along oil train routes. This training will help ensure Minnesota firefighters are prepared to respond to a disaster. This law also requires the Department of Public Safety to continue to provide training and response preparedness to emergency responders. This is paid for through an assessment on railroads and pipelines.

Planning Emergency Responses – Requires railroads to file emergency response plans with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and to update these plans. 

Improving Response Capacity – Requires railroads to deploy enough equipment to clean up within a specified time period any spills or leaks that may occur. This means that those who cause accidents or disasters will be held responsible for cleaning them up.

 

Spill prevention and response, State regulation

Tacoma Editorial: Washington should impose per-barrel fees like California

Repost from The News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington

Paying to protect ourselves from North Dakota crude

EDITORIAL, The News Tribune, July 1, 2014
Tank cars loaded with crude oil head east at Hurricane, West Virginia, on May 11. Oil trains have become an increasingly common sight traveling through South Sound communities – and their numbers are projected to continue growing. CURTIS TATE — MCT

There’s good news about the explosive oil tankers rolling through our communities: We can finally find out what the bad news is.

Until Tuesday, the public knew only that the state had suddenly become a magnet for thousands of antique tanker cars, each filled with 680 barrels of volatile crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken region.

We’ve all seen them: huge black tanks topped with what look like black caps. Their design is a half-century old. The National Transportation Safety Board has been yelling for years about their tendency to split open and explode in crashes.

Federal regulators finally took the risk seriously after one oil train — more or less identical to countless others — exploded in Quebec last year and incinerated 47 human beings.

The new gusher of North Dakota crude has sent a storm surge of tankers across the continent. The rail industry and some states haven’t been eager to tell the public where the trains are going and how many there are.

One particularly specious claim is the information might fall into the hands of terrorists — as if any terrorist with time on his hands couldn’t simply stand by the track in a given locale and count.

The U.S. government last month declared that the train movements aren’t state secrets. Washington state’s emergency preparedness people last week released the details. In Pierce County, for example, BNSF Railway is currently moving 11 to 16 major oil trains through University Place, Tacoma and other communities.

The typical train pulls about 100 cars. Trains that pull fewer than 35 or so aren’t reported. Keep in mind: Shipments are still curving up. In 2011, zero crude was sent to Washington refineries by rail. In 2013, that zero had grown to 29 million barrels.

It’s crucial that the public have this information. Without it, we couldn’t assess either the threat or the preventive measures.

BNSF appears to be trying to get ahead of the problem. (As common carriers, railways are legally obligated to carry oil trains.) It is upgrading its tracks aggressively and is funding training for the state’s first responders.

Railway companies don’t normally deploy cars of their own, but BNSF is buying a small fleet of modern, much-safer oil tankers. Credit where it’s due.

Washington is reacting to the surge faster than the federal government did. This year’s Legislature appropriated nearly $1 million to develop response plans. State agencies are on task.

Unfortunately, lawmakers failed to take one obvious step: imposing a per-barrel fee on rail-borne oil, as California does and as this state already does with the seaborne crude that arrives at our refineries. As a result, taxpayers are footing the bill for much of the emergency preparation.

Heaven knows how many oil barons and CEOs are enriching themselves by rolling these potential bombs through our cities. It’s galling that we have to pay to protect ourselves from them.

Bakken Crude, Capitol Corridor, Crude By Rail, DEIR, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazmat notification, Local Regulation, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Rail accidents, Rail inspection, Rail routing, Risk Assessment, Spill prevention and response, Tank car design, Train speed, Valero Benicia Refinery

Sacramento Bee: NRDC report – thousands face the risk of crude oil train spills

Repost from The Sacramento Bee

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.

Bakken Crude, Emergency Readiness & Response, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazmat notification, Public safety funding, Risk Assessment, Spill prevention and response, State regulation

Washington Governor Inslee orders spill response plan

Repost from The Columbian

Inslee issues oil train directive

Dept. of Ecology ordered to develop spill response plan
By Lauren Dake, June 12, 2014
An oil train travels through downtown Vancouver in April. According to state estimates, crude oil shipments in Washington went from zero in 2011 to 17 million barrels in 2013. (Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian)

Gov. Jay Inslee directed state agencies Thursday to tackle mounting public safety concerns and develop an oil spill response plan as train traffic continues to increase, particularly in Southwest Washington.

He announced the directive at a meeting of The Columbian’s editorial board in Vancouver.

“The Pacific Northwest is experiencing rapid changes in how crude oil is moving through rail corridors and over Washington waters, creating new safety and environmental concerns,” the directive reads.

The governor asked the Department of Ecology to work with other state agencies, the Federal Railroad Administration and tribal governments to “identify data and information gaps that hinder improvements in public safety and spill prevention and response.”

Specifically, the governor’s directive asks agencies to:

  • Characterize risk of accidents along rail lines.
  • Review state and federal laws and rules with respect to rail safety and identify regulatory gaps.
  • Assess the relative risk of Bakken crude with respect to other forms of crude oil.
  • Identify data and information gaps that hinder improvements in public safety and spill prevention and response.
  • Begin development of spill response plans for impacted counties.
  • Identify potential actions that can be coordinated with neighboring states and British Columbia.
  • Identify, prioritize, and estimate costs for state actions that will improve public safety and spill prevention and response.

He set an Oct. 1 deadline for Ecology to respond.

He also said he’ll reach out to other states to develop coordinated oil transportation safety and spill response plans, and pledged to ask the 2015-17 Legislature for money for oil train safety.

The directive comes as the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council is reviewing an application by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies to build an oil shipping terminal at the Port of Vancouver. Bakken crude would arrive at Vancouver by train from North Dakota and leave by ship or barge via the Columbia River.

As governor, Inslee will have the final say on the Tesoro-Savage permit. Inslee said he had to be “very guarded” in his comments about the oil terminal while the review is happening. “We will make the right decision at the right time,” he said.

“I can tell you we have very serious concerns with safety associated with oil trains,” he said.

The governor said he would be “heavily invested in understanding the full ramifications” and plans to be as well-versed as anyone in the state on the topic.

Schools and bridges

The interview was wide-ranging; Inslee also talked about the need to close tax loopholes in order to find additional revenue to fund the state’s public schools.

“We have a sort of Swiss-cheese tax code because some lobbyists have been successful in getting some special favors over the decades,” Inslee said. “Some of those make sense … They are not uniformly virtuous.”

In this coming legislative session, he said, he will push lawmakers to increase the state’s minimum wage.

“I do believe minimum wage is one of the tools that are useful to give working people a fair break,” he said.

And, he said, the state continues to have a lot of “unmet needs” when it comes to transportation.

“Many of them are here (in Southwest Washington), the (Columbia River Crossing) just being one of them. We know there are other needs as well,” Inslee said.

Inslee said once the region has “legislators that really want to find a solution for Southwest Washington,” the area would be better represented in any transportation package.

Inslee was asked about Republican efforts to organize a new bistate bridge coalition. He said the only thing he’s heard is “there have been some discussions.”

It’s an effort spearheaded by Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, and Rep. Liz Pike, R-Camas. Yet another bridge plan is being promoted by Republican County Commissioner David Madore, who vows to open his bridge to traffic in five years.

“The last bridge took, I think, 10 to 13 years to get all the permitting done,” Inslee said. “This is an arduous, lengthy, multijurisdictional process … There might be 1,000 other plans.”

A new bridge is “pivotal to the entire state” and he planned to spend his day in Vancouver talking to “people of good faith and open minds” to discuss the best way to move forward.

The first-term Democrat spent all day Thursday in Vancouver. He presented awards to state Department of Transportation employees, and visited a local technology firm, Smith-Root, that is expanding. Thursday evening he gave the commencement address at the Washington School for the Deaf’s graduation ceremony.