Reuters reported on Sunday, February 15, that seven rail cars were on fire in northern Ontario after a train carrying crude oil derailed late on Saturday night. The train, heading from Alberta to eastern Canada, derailed shortly before midnight about 80 km (50 miles) south of Timmins, Ontario, a CN spokesman said. Canada's largest rail operator said 29 of 100 cars were involved and seven were on fire.
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New science shows that thanks to methane leaks, gas won't work as a "bridge fuel."
Bill McKibben writes in Mother Jones about the science and politics of fracking and how Obama's "all of the above" approach to fueling the nation won't work without destroying the earth's climate. Brian Lewis talked to In These Times about his job as a Union Pacific Railroad conductor, from which he has just retired, and how much it has changed during his 36 years in the industry. He was long active in the United Transportation Union and also belongs to a cross-union reform group called Railroad Workers United (RWU). RWU has been fighting industry attempts to introduce single-employee train crews, which it believes are unsafe. RWU has also tried to warn regulators and the public about the dangers of longer and heavier trains, particularly those hauling hazardous materials like Bakken crude oil from North Dakota. Lewis talked to In These Times about how rail carriers have changed in the decades since Norworth’s long tour of duty and the challenges facing railroad workers today.
A recent report by David R. Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle and posted on SFGate details how "Oil companies in drought-ravaged California have, for years, pumped wastewater from their operations into aquifers that had been clean enough for people to drink ... with explicit permission from state regulators, who were supposed to protect the increasingly strained groundwater supplies from contamination."
David was on KQED-FM's "Forum" program today discussing the article and the facts. Meanwhile, a "March for Real Climate Leadership" is planned for this Saturday, starting at 11:30 at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th and Broadway, in Oakland. A U.S. federal court has ordered a halt in court proceedings until May in a case centering around oil-by-rail tankers pitting the Sierra Club and ForestEthics against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). As a result, potentially explosive DOT-111 oil tank cars, dubbed “bomb trains” by activists, can continue to roll through towns and cities across the U.S.
"The briefing schedule previously established by the court is vacated,” wrote Chris Goelz, a mediator for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. “This appeal is stayed until May 12, 2015, or pending publication in the Federal Register of the final tank car standards and phase out of DOT-111 tank cars, whichever occurs first.” Filing its initial petition for review on December 2, the Sierra Club/ForestEthics lawsuit had barely gotten off the ground before being delayed. That initial petition called for a judicial review of the DOT's denial of a July 15, 2014 Petition to Issue an Emergency Order Prohibiting the Shipment of Bakken Crude Oil in Unsafe Tank Cars written by EarthJustice on behalf of the two groups. On November 7, DOT denied Earthjustice's petition, leading the groups to file the lawsuit. The 116-year-old wooden trestle in Tuscaloosa, Ala., long a town landmark, is now anathema to many local residents. Similarly, the 116-year-old-steel trestle in Martinez (later some what updated), was never designed to carry anything like the tonnage of 100-tank-car trains. Yet for the last few years, that’s the burden both have had to bear.
In his wide-ranging article, “Trains Plus Crude Oil Equals Trouble Down the Track,” Curtis Tate sketches the origins of the crude oil and natural gas boom from the Bakken shale of North Dakota, one which hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has made possible. Through maps, photos, and focused discussions, he traces the growing network of routes followed by crude oil trains, focusing on recent train wrecks and exploring their causes. In several cases, the prevalence of notorious fragile DOT-111 tank cars has worsened the consequences—yet the new models also present hazards. by Carolyn Norr
I haven't met Greg Garland, CEO of Phillips 66. I don't know if he has kids, and if he does, I don't know what he tells them about the world. But I know he has a plan, one I'm not sure how to explain to my own children, to ship tar sands crude oil by rail through my town. As a mom, this is in no way OK with me. These oil trains spill poisons, leak toxins into the air, and contribute to the climate chaos my kids will be dealing with their entire lives. In June, the Oakland City Council took an admirable stand against oil trains coming through our city. But now Phillips 66 proposes an expansion of its facility 250 miles south of here, that would bring a mile-long toxic train every day past our homes and schools. It's up to the San Luis Obispo Board of Supervisors to decide whether to allow that. Questions are being raised about the safety of the century-old Alhambra railroad trestle in Martinez. Some local residents and officials are concerned because the bridge is carrying an increasing number of loads of a highly volatile cargo - Bakken crude oil.
As the train rumbles its way across the 115-year-old Alhambra trestle in Martinez, loud creaks and rattles can be heard. And unlike more modern bridges, dozens of its bolts and bridge supports are rusted. The trestle was originally built in 1899 and reinforced in 1929. The railroad replaced the rail deck in 2003, but the trestle’s support structures are 85 and to 115 years old. KCBS Radio has completed a three-part special investigation into the safety of rail transportation of Bakken crude. From Reuters - For the past 18 months, Americans from Albany to Oregon have voiced growing alarm over the rising number of oil-laden freight trains coursing through their cities, a trend they fear is endangering public safety.In at least a handful of places, the public is also helping fund it.
States and the federal government have handed out tens of millions in public dollars to rail companies and government agencies to expand crude oil rail transportation across the country, a Reuters analysis has found. The public assistance in states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma and Oregon comes as railroads are posting record profits, and as state and federal authorities press for safety overhauls that the oil and rail industries have opposed, following several explosive derailments. The Reuters analysis identified 10 federal and state grants either approved or pending approval, totaling $84.2 million, that helped boost the number of rail cars carrying crude oil across the nation. The funds are a fraction of total public funding for railroads each year, and look small compared to the $24 billion railroads themselves are spending annually on infrastructure. From The New York Times:
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Environmental passions, which run hot in the Northwest over everything from salmon to recycling, generally get couched in the negative: Don’t fish too much, don’t put those chemicals up the smokestack, don’t build in that sensitive area. But here in southern Washington, some environmental groups are quietly pushing a builder to move even faster with a $1.3 billion real estate project along the Columbia River that includes office buildings, shops and towers with 3,300 apartments. The reason is oil. Two miles west of the 32-acre project, called the Waterfront, one of the biggest proposed oil terminals in the country is going through an environmental review, with plans to transfer North Dakota crude from rail cars to barges. Up to four trains, carrying 360,000 barrels of oil, would pass every day through this city’s downtown, only a few hundred feet from the Waterfront’s towers, westbound from the Bakken shale oil fields. |
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