New California Law Aims to Ease Oil Train Safety Worries
January 7, 2015, by Sonseeahray Tonsall
ANTELOPE- Last May, after devastating rail crashes made more damaging by a particular kind of crude oil being carried, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an emergency order.
It said if more than a million gallons of that crude was moving on the rails, local emergency crews had to be notified.
California’s legislature tried to make that kind of notice permanent – not just for oil but also for 25 of the most toxic substances traveling the rails.
But there may be a hitch in California’s new law.
“Yesterday was a good example of a derailment of a toxic substance, except it didn’t leak and there was no immediate threat. But imagine that same rail car going through the Feather River Canyon and polluting the water source for millions of people in California,” Kelly Huston, Deputy Director of the California Office of Emergency Services said.
A new state law in effect as of January 1 is supposed to reduce the worry of some of those what-ifs, especially when it comes to the growing number of rail cars shuttling through the Sacramento region, loaded with the kind of highly flammable Bakken crude oil that’s exploded in other train derailments.
“Accidents happen, but our job as a society is to make sure accidents don’t become tragedies,” Assemblyman Mike Gatto said.
The Glendale area democrat co-sponsored AB 380, the new law requiring rail companies to notify emergency responders of what threats could be riding the rails in their area.
“What’s unique about this legislation is that we’re working with the railroads to try to provide more real-time information…sort of like an Amtrak schedule,” Huston said.
Right now, those details come to emergency crews after the fact, not in advance when they could prepare.
The other unfortunately unique thing about this law is that rail carriers can still argue they don’t have to follow it, even though implementation is supposed to be complete by January 31.
“It is a delicate balance because the railroads are federally regulated which means federal laws pre-empt state laws in most cases,” Huston said.
So even though California’s done all it can, it remains to be seen if rail companies will cooperate with a law that could save lives.
Under the continuing federal emergency order, Cal OES gets the shipment information from rail carriers.
Huston would like to create a system that first responders can log in to themselves and get the information real-time.
The effort would not compromise a oil producer’s proprietary information, they said.
Repost from The Times Union, Albany NY [Excellent month-by-month review of CBR developments in New York’s capital region, and an excellent group of 14 photos. – RS]
Albany’s Top 10 stories: Region a hub in oil train surge
Converging lines drove growth in shipment
By Brian Nearing, December 29, 2014
View of the courtyard between the apartment buildings and the rail line that carries oil tankers to the Port of Albany Wednesday, July 16, 2014, at Ezra Prentice Homes in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)
More oil trains kept a-rollin’ last year in Capital Region from the booming Bakken fields of North Dakota, where massive hydrofracking has helped drop national gasoline prices below $3 a gallon.
It was only two days into 2014 in the aftermath of a massive oil train derailment and fire in North Dakota when federal regulators warned that Bakken crude was more likely to catch fire than regular crude. And at year’s end, critics were warning that federal plans to phase out less-sturdy versions of the most common rail tankers during the next two years were too slow.
In between, massive trains pulling dozens of all-black tanker cars — carrying millions of gallons of crude and ominously called bomb trains by opponents — kept coming.
Because of its geographic location, with rail lines converging from all four directions and its access to the Hudson River, Albany has become a major oil shipping hub, which drew little public attention when the oil boom began taking shape some five years ago.
Some oil is unloaded at the port for shipment down the Hudson in barges or tankers, while other oil continues by rail either south along the Hudson River to coastal refineries in New Jersey and Pennsylvania or north along Lake Champlain to Canada.
And there are many more trains than just a couple years ago. For the first 10 months of 2014, more than 672,000 oil-filled tanker cars moved by rail in the U.S., an increase of more than 13 percent from the previous period of 2013, according to federal statistics. That was more than twice as many as the 300,000 rail oil tankers that moved for the same period in 2011.
But for part of the oil train story in Albany, 2014 will end the way it began, with the state Department of Environmental Conservation still weighing plans by an oil terminal operator at the port, Global Partners, to build a facility that heats crude oil to make it easier to pump in cold weather.
Bakken crude doesn’t have to be heated in the cold, leading many to conclude Global wants to begin accepting trains carrying Canadian tar sands oil, a thicker crude that must be heated to be pumped in the cold. Global has never said either way. DEC extended the comment period on the project eight times amid growing community opposition.
Global and another terminal operator, Houston-based Buckeye Partners, have DEC permission to ship 2.8 billion gallons of oil a year that is arriving by rail. By the end of January, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had ordered a state review of safety and spill control plans while also pressing the Obama administration to act faster to toughen rules on the burgeoning energy network.
The governor did not wait for the report to act. By February, he was touting the first rail-safety inspections at the Port of Albany and elsewhere by state and federal regulators. By year’s end, eight such inspection “blitzes” had been done involving nearly 7,400 rail cars, including more than 5,300 oil tankers, and nearly 2,700 miles of track. A total of 840 defects have been uncovered.
In March, Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy slapped a county moratorium on Global’s crude heating project. By July, as many as 42 oil trains each week — each holding more than 100 million gallons of Bakken crude — were coming into Albany from North Dakota, according to figures released by the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.
This summer, two major rail companies — CSX and Canadian Pacific — revealed information about their shipments under an emergency federal order intended to help inform local emergency workers of potential risks. CSX transports oil through 17 counties on a line that runs upstate from Lake Erie and eastward roughly along the Thruway corridor, while CP runs oil through five counties in the Capital Region and the North Country on the way from Canada.
The region can expect to see trains for a long time. By October, a Canadian Pacific official predicted increased transport of tar sands crude oil from Alberta in coming years would account for about 60 percent of the railroad’s oil revenue. That same month, the DEC rejected oil train opponents’ claims that the state had the power to immediately ban the most common type of tanker cars — called DOT-111s — from entering the port loaded with flammable oil.
Also in October, Global quietly withdrew plans before the DEC for a new oil terminal facility on the Hudson River in New Windsor, Orange County, so that oil could be moved from massive crude oil tanker trains onto vessels to continue downriver to coastal refineries. The company also announced it had voluntarily stopped using the oldest, least sturdy models of DOT-111s.
By December, officials in North Dakota announced new safety rules on Bakken crude oil shipments aimed at reducing its potential explosiveness, but the limits would not affect about 80 percent of oil arriving daily in Albany, leading oil train opponents to criticize the rules as almost meaningless.
And it looks like the surge of oil trains will continue to grow. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, two refineries in Linden, N.J., and Philadelphia are adding crude-by-rail terminals to handle up to 8.8 million gallons a day of incoming shipments.
For oil trains from North Dakota and Canada to reach these refineries, the trip would have to pass through Albany.
Safety Information For Alhambra Trestle In Martinez And Other Bridges Kept By The Railroads
Underneath the Alhambra trestle in Martinez (Jeffrey Schaub/CBS)
A KCBS Cover Story Special: Part 2 of 3, Produced by Giancarlo Rulli, December 30, 2014 – KCBS reporter Jeffrey Shaub and producer Giancarlo Rulli investigate the Bay Area’s aging railway bridges that will carry increasing loads of highly volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota in this three-part KCBS Cover Story Special.
MARTINEZ (KCBS) — Some local, state and federal officials are concerned that an old railroad bridge in Martinez, used to transport increasing car loads of highly volatile crude oil from North Dakota to East Bay refineries, may be unsafe.
Officials said they can’t obtain safety information about that bridge, and others like it, because the railroad that owns it is allowed to keep that information to themselves.
The Alhambra trestle was originally built in 1899 and later reinforced in 1929. The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway replaced the rail deck in 2003, but the trestle’s support structures are 85 and to 115 years old.
Each week it bears the load of hundreds of rail cars including a growing number that carry Bakken crude oil.
Jim Nue is a member of the Martinez Environmental Group who said he worries about a derailment and how it might affect the several schools and scores of homes nearby.
“We figured the effects within a half-mile blast zone of those tracks affects 12,000 people,” he said.
State and federal authorities are also worried about Alhambra trestle.
“We are concerned about failure,” Paul King, the Deputy Director of Rail Safety for the California Public Utilities Commission, told KCBS.
He’s concerned about shipments of Bakken crude oil over the Alhambra Trestle.
“The consequences of derailment failure are very high,” King said.
But there is no way to know for sure because ever since the Civil War, the railroads have been allowed to keep that information to themselves. While the Federal Railroad Administration does oversee the BNSF, there is only one bridge inspector to cover all eleven Western states.
In the Fall of 2014, The CPUC authorized the hiring of two bridge inspectors to evaluate the more than 5,000 railroad bridges in the state, including the Alhambra trestle. It’s a job that could take 50 years to complete.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) told KCBS that it’s a statewide problem.
“The main bridge across the Sacramento is more than 100 years old. It was built shortly after the Gold Rush,” he said.
BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent said the trestle is safe.
“Our bridges are inspected three times a year and, in fact, if they did detect—in any way—that that structure needed to be replaced, they would immediately put plans in place to replace the structure,” she said.
The state says they want the final say on what is safe and what isn’t—and not just leave it up to the railroads.
Back in Martinez, Nue, remains worried about the geography of the Alhambra trestle and his town.
“So if something happens on either end, you’re stuck,” he said.
In Part III, we will reveal how state and emergency response coordinators are concerned about their ability to battle a major railway explosion and fire.
New Law Gives Emergency Planners Oil By Rail Information
Monday, December 29, 2014, Amy Quinton / Capital Public Radio
Smoke rises from railway cars that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada, July 6, 2013. Credit: Associated Press
A new law that goes into effect Jan. 31 in California requires railroads to give more information to emergency planners about crude oil shipments.
Local and state emergency responders say they are given very little detail about the movement of trains carrying crude oil.
A 2013 Bakken crude oil train explosion that killed 47 people in Quebec raised awareness of the danger that poses.
Kelly Huston with the California Office of Emergency Services said with the predicted increase in the amount of imported crude oil, more information is needed.
“Being able to know what’s coming and then being able to prepare for it and take actions that may be needed whether it’s moving hazardous materials crews or whether it is, perhaps we know about an event that’s going on in a highly populated area and we would want to make sure the railroad is aware of that,” Huston said.
Under the new law, railroads will have to submit weekly schedules of trains, and the volumes of crude oil they carry. They would also have to set up a communications center for first responders and give local authorities access to emergency plans.
The California Energy Commission has estimated nearly a quarter of the oil imported into the state will be delivered by rail by 2016.
“It’s not only having the knowledge but also how we use that knowledge to both prevent an accident from occurring and then having adequate hazardous materials resources and first responder resources to respond in the event there is an accident,” Houston said.
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