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 Sacramento Bee [Editor: Check this out – Benicia’s uprail friends are getting out on the tracks, and they are getting the media’s attention. Thanks to everyone who is following this story. Benicia is in the “crosshairs” of a nationwide – worldwide – focus on this dangerous and dirty money grab by the oil and rail industries. More and more, thoughtful people are saying, “No, not here.” – RS]
Crude oil train protests planned in Sacramento, Davis
By Tony Bizjak, Jul. 8, 2014
Jake Miille / Special to The Bee | A crude oil train operated by BNSF snakes its way west through James, Calif., just outside the Feather River Canyon in the foothills into the Sacramento Valley.
Laurie Litman, who lives a block from the rail tracks in midtown Sacramento, says oil and rail companies are about to put her neighborhood and plenty of others in danger, and she wants to stop it.
Litman is among a group of environmental activists in Sacramento and Davis who will gather this week at the Federal Railroad Administration office in Sacramento and at the Davis train station to protest plans by oil companies to run hundreds of rail cars carrying crude through local downtowns every day. The protests, on the anniversary of an oil train crash and explosion that killed 47 people in the Canadian city of Lac-Megantic, will spotlight a plan by Valero Refining Co. of Benicia to launch twice-daily crude oil train shipments through downtown Roseville, Sacramento and Davis early next year.
“Our goal is to stop the oil trains,” said Litman of 350 Sacramento, a new local environmental group. “We are talking about 900-foot fireballs. There is nothing a first responder (fire agency) can do with a 900-foot fireball.”
Sacramento Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, an advocate for increased crude oil rail safety, will speak at noon Wednesday during the Sacramento event at 8th and I streets. The Yolano Climate Action group will distribute leaflets at the Davis train station Tuesday and Wednesday evening about the Valero proposal. The Davis City Council recently passed a resolution saying it opposes running the trains on the existing downtown Davis rail line.
The protests are among the first in the Sacramento area in response to a recent surge in crude oil rail transports nationally, prompted mainly by new oil drilling of cheaper oils in North Dakota, Montana and Canada. In California, where rail shipments have begun to replace marine deliveries from Alaskan oil fields and overseas sources, state safety leaders recently issued a report saying California is not yet prepared to deal with the risks from increased rail shipments of crude.
Oil and railroad industry officials point out that 99.9 percent of crude oil shipments nationally arrive at their destinations without incident, and that the industry is reducing train speeds through cities, helping train local fire and hazardous material spill crews, and working with the federal government on plans for a new generation of safer rail tanker cars. Valero officials as well say their crude oil trains can move safely through Sacramento, and a recent report sponsored by the city of Benicia concluded that an oil spill along the rail line to Benicia is highly unlikely.
In a letter last week, however, four Northern California members of Congress called on the federal government to require oil and rail companies take more steps to make rail crude shipments safer. The letter was signed by Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, George Miller, D-Martinez, Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove.
“We are especially concerned with the high risks involved with transporting .. more flammable crude in densely populated areas,” the group wrote to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “Should spills or explosions occur, as we have seen over the last year, the consequences could be disastrous.”
The four lawmakers said oil companies should be required to remove more volatile gases from Bakken crude oil before it is shipped nationally from North Dakota. The federal government issued a warning earlier this year about Bakken crude after several Bakken trains exploded during derailments. The California Congress members also encouraged federal representatives to move quickly to require railroads to install advanced train control and braking systems. Industry officials have said those systems, called Positive Train Control, are expensive and will take extended time to put into place.
Representatives from a handful of Sacramento area cities and counties are scheduled to meet this week to review Valero’s crude oil train plans, and to issue a formal response to the environmental document published two weeks ago by Benicia that concluded derailments and spills are highly unlikely. City of Davis official Mike Webb said one spill and explosion could be catastrophic, and that as more oil companies follow Valero’s lead by bringing crude oil trains of their own through Sacramento, the chances of crashes increase.
The Sacramento group has indicated it wants a detailed advanced notification system about what shipments are coming to town. Those notifications will help fire agencies who must respond if a leak or fire occurs. Local officials say they also will ask Union Pacific to keep crude-oil tank cars moving through town without stopping and parking them here. The region’s leaders also want financial support to train firefighters and other emergency responders on how to deal with crude oil spills, and possibly funds to buy more advanced firefighting equipment. Sacramento leaders say they will press the railroad to employ the best inspection protocols on the rail line.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/08/6541363/crude-oil-train-protests-planned.html#storylink=cp
Monday, June 30, 2014 Subject: two upcoming oil train EIR workshop opportunities July 3 & 8
Public Workshop 2 – Responding to Draft Environmental Impact Report on Crude-by-Rail Oil Trains through Davis
Thursday, July 3 and Tuesday, July 8 7:00-9:00 p.m. The Blanchard Room at the Davis Branch Library
Bring questions, ideas for topics, drafts and laptops
Bring a friend! Every letter adds impact!
Exercise your civic rights with written comments!
Homework for July 3 and 8:
If you have a little time – Go to www.benindy.wpengine.com and browse to get an overview of the project, the EIR (table of contents), news article titles since last August, and how to submit your comments. You’ll have fun and get ideas for what aspect you want to address in your response.
If you have more time: pick an idea you might want to write about, such as liability issues in the event of an accident or spill, or the regional impact of one train of 100 cars each day; how to weigh risk vs benefit and how this project measures up, etc. Then look through the DEIR report (posted at www.benindy.wpengine.com) for a section that might address your topic and read it. See if you spot faulty reasoning, or important concepts that are missing, etc. Jot down notes or make a rough draft. It will be most effective if you can cite evidence!
If you can’t resist going deeper, or you have a knack for reading EIR reports, plunge in wholeheartedly and tackle as much as you wish. Your letter can address more than one point, but again, the more serious and thoughtful each point is, the better. Clearly separate each point you want to make.
Agenda for July 3 and 8
Updates
Check-in
—-Who has a draft for feedback?
—- Who has an idea? Needs suggestions for development? Evidence? Where it fits in the EIR?
—-Who needs an idea for a response?
Working together or in groups
Other assignments
—-Write to federal senators and congressional reps (testing the crude & reducing the volatility, tank car safety standards, train speeds, right-to-know issues, ideas from NRDC testimony, etc.)
—-Sign up to gather signatures.
—-Send model letters to us to use as models for others writers.
Join the nation-wide actions commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Lac-Megantic crude-by-rail derailment and explosion. In Davis, make a sign “Stop Crude by Rail” and join others at the Amtrak station on July 9th at rush hour. Contact Reeda Palmer for details at reedajpalmer@aol.com
Carpool to the Benicia Planning Commission Public Hearing on the Valero DEIR on July 10, 7pm, Council Chambers, City Hall,250 East L Street, Benicia. Up-rail participants are needed to show the regional impact of the project.
Judge denies competing harms defense to couple charged in Auburn train protest
Christopher Williams, Lewiston-Auburn |Saturday, June 28, 2014
AUBURN — Two protesters who said they sat on railroad tracks last year in an effort to stop an approaching train carrying dangerous crude oil won’t be allowed to argue at trial that their actions were justified because those actions would have prevented a more serious harm from occurring.
Justice Joyce Wheeler wrote in a nine-page decision this week that Jessie Dowling of Unity and Douglas Bowen Jr. of Porter are barred from using a so-called “competing harms” defense.
The two had argued at a May hearing in Androscoggin County Superior Court that they considered the act of criminal trespass to be of lesser harm than allowing a train hauling explosive cargo to pass through an urban area.
County prosecutors had filed a motion aimed at blocking that defense tactic.
Wheeler wrote that the defendants failed to show the four elements needed to successfully argue that defense at trial.
The defendants had testified that they feared another explosion in Auburn similar to that which occurred at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July 2013. They said they didn’t have time to pursue legal avenues to stop the train from passing through Auburn.
Although they believed that would create a risk of harm to people there, the two defendants were required to show “as fact that such physical harm is imminently threatened,” Wheeler wrote in her court order.
They were unable to show that because “their action was weeks in planning and they had no idea whether the train was even in Maine at the time of their action,” Wheeler wrote.
Bowen had testified that had he “actually believed there was an imminent threat, he would have gone to police and rescue, which he did not do, thereby undermining his claim of an imminent threat,” Wheeler wrote.
Dowling had said in court that she believed there was a high probability that the train would explode that day, but she didn’t call police or rescue, “undermining her concern of catastrophic danger,” Wheeler wrote.
The two defendants “failed to demonstrate that there were no other alternatives” to sitting on the railroad tracks, Wheeler wrote.
The case is expected to be put on the next trial list.
Roughly 70 protesters demonstrated outside the Androscoggin County Courthouse last month before and during the hearing.
Dowling and Bowen were arrested Aug. 28, 2013, by local police when they refused to leave the railroad tracks on which they sat.
With the competing harms defense no longer an option, prosecutors will be tasked at trial with proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants trespassed criminally.
Bowen had testified that he had been told the train was traveling through Auburn on its way to Canada from the Midwest and his group had exhausted all legal means to stop it.
