http://truth-out.org/news/item/27276-oil-on-the-tracks-pacific-northwest-rises-for-rail-safety
Oil on the Tracks: Pacific Northwest Rises for Rail Safety
Thursday, 06 November 2014 11:26 By Martha Baskin, Truthout | Report
If there were ever any question about how the public feels about "moving
time bombs," or oil trains carrying volatile crude through the state's
coastal estuaries, aquifers, population centers and tribal lands, the
answers began at the crack of dawn and ricocheted into the night. At a
five-hour-plus hearing, the public weighed in on a draft report on oil
train safety and spill response issued by the Washington State
Department of Ecology.
Raging Grannies, chained together in rocking chairs, started the day by
blocking the entrance to Ecology offices. The Department of Ecology,
said the Grannies, was closed for a workshop on "How to Say No to Oil."
By evening, the stand-off was over, but the public hearing had just
begun. Longshoreman, railroad workers, and first responders expressed
concerns about safety, crew capacity, and training. Tribes spoke of
threats to drinking water and fishing rights. Millennials and boomers
demanded fossil fuels stay in the ground. Mayors and county
commissioners, including some who had passed resolutions against any oil
trains moving through their communities, demanded clean energy alternatives.
In June, Governor Inslee, considered among the nation's greenest, issued
an Oil Transport Directive to the Department of Ecology outlining key
issues he wanted to see addressed in a draft marine and oil train
transportation study. Public safety and a "continuous supply of oil
spill response equipment" were central. But for longshoreman Cager
Clabaugh, President of ILWU Local 4 in Vancouver, Washington, a port
city at the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific, the
draft doesn't go nearly far enough. "Industry has proven that they
cannot handle their product safely," he says, "and that worries us."
There are hurricane force storms "pretty much September through May,"
says Clabaugh. "How does that clean-up look when you've got waves that
are moving Volkswagen-size boulders on the jetty? How do you clean that
up? And the answer is you don't…"
The risks to the public and to the safety of the 8,000 firefighters he
represents, said Geoff Simpson from the Washington State Council of
Firefighters, are too great. The council issued a unanimous resolution
calling upon the Governor to halt the transportation of Bakken crude
"until it can be determined it can move safely through our communities."
Last year's explosion of a train loaded with crude from North Dakota
which killed 47 and leveled a section of the town of Lac-Mégantic in
Quebec still has the public and firefighters on edge. Since then, there
have been accidents in Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota,
Pennsylvania and Virginia. In July, a train derailed in downtown
Seattle, but the oil was contained. Even the most well-equipped fire
departments in Washington, says Simpson, are not prepared or equipped
for disasters of the kind that have been seen across the continent.
Bakken crude from shale formations in North Dakota and provinces in
southern Canada is headed in record volume to the Pacific Northwest.
There's so much oil planned for movement via rail and pipeline to the
area that the region couldn't begin to refine it all, the Sightline
Institute's energy analyst, Eric de Place, told Truthout. Sightline has
written numerous reports on the race oil refineries are engaged in to
get permits to build more capacity. Oil refineries along the Pacific
Northwest coast are racing to get permits to build more capacity. Eleven
refineries and port terminals in Washington and Oregon are either
already operating oil-by-rail shipments or in the planning and building
stage. Were they to operate at full capacity, state officials estimate
it would put 19 loaded mile-long trains per day on the Northwest's rail
corridors.
Testimony by Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, Mike
Elliott, brought cheers from the estimated 800 member crowd. "The
railroads," said Elliott, referring to BNSF which owns the Pacific
Northwest Corridor, one of eleven federally designated high speed rail
corridors in the US, "keep pushing the envelope on safety and try to
remove crew. Why? For more profit. We need to put our foot down and say
enough is enough. You've gone from six member crews to five, to four, to
two. Now they want to go a single-person train crew." BNSF spokesperson
Gus Melonas denies the railroad has plans to reduce crews to one. But he
did not address other questions posed by this reporter. One of the most
pressing is the widespread use of DOT.111 rail cars, whose lack of
reinforcement in their shells has caused them to be deadly.
Draft regulations proposed by the Department of Transportation on
DOT.111s allow a three year phase-out. Public interest groups including
Earthjustice, ForestEthics, and Oil Change International, are among many
groups demanding an immediate ban on the explosion-prone rail cars. The
groups have also called upon the Obama administration to impose speed
limits, require state of the art braking systems for crude-by-rail
trains, and prohibit shifting DOT-111 tank cars to tar sands crude
transport. Rail corridors and refineries in California, New York,
Pennsylvania and Virginia are also receiving Bakken crude.
West Coast refineries have ramped up crude-by-rail volume in recent
years to partially offset declines in production from California and Alaska.
Tesoro, which currently has capacity to unload 50,000 barrels per day at
its refinery in Anacortes, Washington, has proposed a 360,000 barrels
per day facility at the Port of Vancouver.
Lisa Copeland, a spokesperson for the Washington Department, welcomed
public input at the hearing but said the department did not have
regulating authority to say "No" to more oil trains. "It's a federal
issue, and that's part of the whole crux of the study. We have a great
response record of prevention preparedness and response on the marine
side. Now we have to look at the inland side."
Friends of the Earth Northwest consultant Fred Felleman disputes whether
the state has been able to keep up with the changing risks associated
with crude being shipped down the Columbia to terminals, tar sands
barged to various ports on the coast, or increasing congestion at
anchorages associated with the movement of oil all along the coasts of
Washington, British Columbia, Oregon and California. In his testimony,
he said volume shipped on the water may be down, but tanker and barge
traffic are up due to increased use of unregulated barges and tugs,
which the Congressional Research Service calls "Rule breakers.” What's
more, says Felleman, "State refineries are already operating at twice
their built capacity. Yet the draft oil train study continues to parrot
the oil industry's baseless assertion that they have no intention of
increasing capacity at this time." This flies in the face of history, he
notes. Every five years, industry has asked for and been granted more
permits to build increased capacity. "So we could be in a situation
where not only are we supplying oil by land and sea for our own domestic
consumption, but for export." The oil industry's number one priority, he
says, has been to lift the domestic export ban in order to ship crude
overseas. With a Republican-controlled Senate and Congress, that may
very well be possible.
States have had some success in blocking permits for expanded refinery
capacity and crude trans-loading operations based on inadequate public
and environmental review. Earthjustice appealed a permit granted to
Shell by a regional clean air agency to expand capacity in Anacortes,
WA. On October 22nd,the Sacramento air district reversed course after
rubber-stamping a permit allowing Inter-State Oil Company to transfer
Bakken crude oil from rail to truck without public or environmental
review. Meanwhile, in response to inadequate federal proposals for
regulating transport of volatile crude oil by rail, the Center for
Biological Diversity, Adirondack Mountain Club and Friends of the
Columbia Gorge have called for an immediate ban on puncture-prone tank
cars involved in several explosive accidents.
Washington State's preliminary oil train report is scheduled to be
delivered to Governor Inslee in December.
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