SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2015
With trains carrying explosive Bakken crude oil continuing
to derail in Pennsylvania, the United States and Canada, Gov. Tom Wolf, U.S.
Sen. Bob Casey and Lancaster County’s emergency management director are voicing
concerns.
“The potential for disaster is too great to ignore,” Wolf
wrote in a Feb. 27 letter to President Barack Obama in which he said oil train
safety is a top priority for his administration.
“These derailments have raised serious questions about the
need to address efforts to prevent future accidents,” said Casey in a letter to
the Office of Management and Budget, which has been reviewing for months a bill
passed by Congress to strengthen oil tank cars, review speed limits for oil
trains and increase the number of rail safety inspectors.
Those concerns from the state’s top elected officials come
as new studies show that at least 1.5 million Pennsylvanians live or go
to school in buildings within the evacuation zone of an oil train explosion or
fire.
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a problem
with these trains. They derail so
easily, even going at low speeds of 4 miles per hour, as it happened in Essex
Junction, VT two days ago. Lack of
maintenance, poor maintenance, no/minimal rail inspections, unsafe rail cars,
human errors, failing infrastructure, and so on. The same is going on in the US and
Canada. Profit comes first, and these
corporations refuse to perform infrastructure upgrades because they must make
their profits first, and issue their dividends and pay the bonuses prior to do
it what needs to be done to keep people safe and the environment clean.
As people may understand, or even know, these companies do
perform a risk analysis and determine the amount of money needed to upgrade the
infrastructure and the amount of money needed to respond and pay for
damages. Well, the cost to pay for
damages is far less than the cost to upgrade the infrastructure and this is why
it is not being done. We are talking
about many-many billions of dollars to upgrade the railroad system and to force
the oil companies to buy safety tank cars.
We do not see this happening; not until more people get roasted alive by
burning oil like it happened to the poor Canadians at Lac-Megantic. Well, we may very well see that happening here
as well the way these derailments and explosions and fires are happening. It is absolutely reckless to transport 100
tanks of oil, each tank containing 30,000 gallons of oil in a single
train. They need to be forced to cut
down the number of oil tanks and reduce the speed (although we dough it will
help) of the trains and perform the rail inspections by third-party inspectors. We simply do not trust the oil and rail
companies to be self-inspected.
Oil trains in Lancaster
Oil trains, often with more than 100 tanker cars, are rolling
through about 35 miles of Lancaster County along the Susquehanna River from
eight to 16 times a week.
“It’s a definite concern for responders here in Lancaster
County,” says Randy Gockley, director of the Lancaster County Emergency
Management Agency.
The agency has scrambled in recent months to train local
fire and ambulance crews and has written a 150-page Crude Oil Unit Train Plan
for all fire companies to follow in case of an accident. The plan focuses on
local communities at risk.
A derailment with the possibility of a fire, explosion or
spill of oil into the Susquehanna “would very quickly turn into an incident
that would require assistance from the region and not just the resources here
in Lancaster County,” Gockley says.
“Past experience in the United States and Canada has shown
that it can happen.”
Lancaster County emergency officials do not know when trains
pass through the county. Giving out the location of trains could be a terrorism
concern, federal officials have ruled.
An analysis of those in danger in case of an oil train fire
released last week by PublicSource showed three schools and a day-care center
in Marietta and Columbia within the evacuation zone of Norfolk Southern’s Port
Road rail line along the Susquehanna.
They are the Susquehanna Waldorf School in Marietta, Little
People Day Care in Columbia, and Park Elementary School and Our Lady of the
Angels Catholic School in Columbia.
Oil trains in Pennsylvania
About 1.5 million people in Pennsylvania live within the
evacuation zone for a train disaster, according to PublicSource, a
Pennsylvania-based investigative news organization.
Federal guidelines recommend an evacuation zone of a
half-mile on either side of railroad tracks.
In its own study, also last week, Philadelphia-based PennEnvironment
estimated 3.9 million Pennsylvanians live in evacuation zones. The higher
estimate is because PennEnvironment used rail lines in the state that do or
could carry crude oil.
With refineries in Philadelphia and Delaware, Pennsylvania’s
railroad network has become one of the most heavily used in the United States
for transport of Bakken crude oil, primarily originating in North Dakota.
Bakken crude is more flammable and explosive than
traditional crude oil.
About 60 to 70 oil trains pass through Pennsylvania weekly.
There have been four oil train derailments in Pittsburgh,
Philadelphia and Westmoreland County since January 2014. None resulted in
injuries, though one resulted in a spill of 10,000 gallons of crude oil.
Norfolk Southern responds
Norfolk Southern spokesman David Pidgeon said railroads are
required by federal law to haul hazardous materials, including crude oil.
“We are as concerned as the public about the safety of oil
trains,” Pidgeon said. “Any measures to address the train safety questions have
to be grounded in reality.” Translation: we prefer to pay damages for any disaster, rather than pay the multi-billions required to upgrade our operations.
He said Norfolk Southern has spoken with Governor Wolf,
state and federal legislators, as well as local emergency management officials
about the best way to improve safety.
“We strive to keep our communities and our natural resources
safe. For years we have been advocating for higher standards for tank cars,”
Pidgeon said.
Pidgeon noted that “the vast majority” of tank cars are
owned or leased by customers, not the railroad. Many times, the oil industry is not providing the correct description of what type of oil product is contained.
Accidents heighten concerns
Contributing to the new wave of concerns over possible crude
oil train accidents is the release last week of a U.S. Department of
Transportation study that predicts up to 15 derailments of trains carrying
crude oil or ethanol each year in the United States.
The most recent Bakken oil train accident in West Virginia
also has heightened concerns. On Feb. 16, a derailed CSX train caught fire and
exploded. A river was contaminated, tankers on fire burned for days, a house
was burned to the ground and hundreds were evacuated from homes. Several recent oil tank derailments have also occurred in Canada, causing massive explosions and fires. In addition to the oil train derailments, we also have the ethanol, liquified propane tanks and other hazardous material trains. For the public to feel safer, we need a third-party independent inspection service. We cannot continue having the wolf guarding the sheep.
Moreover, cars that ruptured and caught fire were of the
newer, supposedly safer models. Good luck with that, as the forces imposed upon a 30,000 gallon tank car are truly enormous. Their new and improved designs are a joke, as the oil companies are notorious cost cutters and they only buy the cheapest possible tank that will meet the fed regs. But the feds are behind the A-ball and they only respond to catastrophes. We have to have a Lac-Megantic in the states for things to change; but even then, the rail and oil lobbies are too powerful for passing much safer standards. And certainly not when the oil price is at $50 barrel.
A more recent derailment in Ontario on Feb. 14, in which 21
cars caught on fire, also were the upgraded tankers that the United States
deemed safer.
Just last Thursday, another oil train derailed in a rural
area outside Galena, Illinois. Twenty-one of the 105 cars came off the
tracks and two caught fire. Fire spread to another three and the fire was still
burning as of Friday.
Residents living within 1 mile of the BNSF Railway tracks
were evacuated.
The tankers that caught fire also were newer model tankers.
It was the third derailment of an oil train in the U.S. and
Canada in the last three weeks.
The worst oil train accident so far since Bakken crude
shipments ramped up a couple years ago was in 2013 when a derailment in the
Quebec town of Lac-Megantic resulted in an explosion and fires that killed 47
people and leveled half the town.
Critics have pointed out that all four accidents occurred
despite trains traveling within lower speed limits that had been imposed on oil
trains.
In its report, “Danger Around the Bend: The Threat of Oil
Trains in Pennsylvania,” PennEnvironment calls the rail lines and bridges that
many oil trains travel over “antiquated” and criticizes regulations that don’t
force railroads to reveal locations of oil trains to local communities. These regulators are heavily influenced by the oil and rail lobies; do not expect much to be done. The same happened to the pipelines: the feds have been behind the A-ball for many years and only recently woke up, but it is too late and so many massive spills have happened due to the deteriorated infrastructure.
Shipments of crude oil have increased 4,000 percent in the
United States since 2008, the start of the fracking oil boom.
Source: www.lancasteronline.com