Tag Archives: fracking
Published: Saturday, Jun. 7, 2014 – 12:00 am
Sacramento’s history as a rail town is long and rich. A potential new chapter, however, is creating concern: The city may soon become a crude-oil crossroads.
As part of a national shift in shipping practices, several oil companies are laying plans to haul hundreds of train cars a day of flammable crude through the region on the way to coastal and Valley refineries, passing through neighborhoods and downtowns, and crossing the region’s two major rivers. Saying they’ve been told little about the transport projects, area leaders are scrambling to gather information so they can advocate for local safety interests as several of the rail shipment proposals move forward.
“This is a real issue,” Sacramento Rep. Doris Matsui said this week after holding a recent conference call with fire officials. “Sacramento’s downtown and many neighborhoods sit next to the tracks. The feedback I received on that call is that our locals are not receiving the information they need to be ready for an incident.”
Several of the planned crude-oil trains will share tracks with Capitol Corridor passenger trains. Notably, Capitol Corridor chief David Kutrosky said last week he was not aware of the plans until informed by The Sacramento Bee.
Some of the trains are expected to carry Bakken crude, a North Dakota oil mined with fracking technology. Federal hazardous materials officials recently issued a warning that Bakken crude may be more flammable than traditional oil, citing derailments that resulted in fires, including a catastrophic explosion last year that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and leveled half of that city’s downtown.
Subsequent derailments in North Dakota and Virginia, though not fatal, caused fires and evacuations and showed disaster could strike again.
Kirk Trost, an attorney and executive with the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, a coalition of six counties and 22 Sacramento-area cities, said he will ask the SACOG board this month to issue a regional statement of concern about the potential rail projects. Trost and other local officials say they want to push oil and railroad companies to be more open about their plans and to work more closely with local leaders on safety issues.
“We’re not trying to stop the movement of crude through the region,” he said. “But if it comes, we want the safety interests of the region to be addressed.”
Those concerns are being echoed across the country as cities, many with downtown rail lines, react to the oil industry’s rapid evolution toward using trains to haul crude oil. The rail shipments spring from increased pumping of inexpensive crude in North Dakota and from tar sands in Canada, which have limited access to oil pipelines.
Federal officials are exploring the ramifications of having so much oil moving by train. TheNational Transportation Safety Board held April hearings highlighting the inadequacies of the nation’s current fleet of crude oil tank cars. The U.S. Department of Transportation says it plans to propose tougher standards for safer tank cars. Critics like Andres Soto of the activist Communities for a Better Environment group – who calls current crude tankers “rolling beer cans” – say the government isn’t doing enough.
California, with its coastal refineries and huge gasoline consumption, saw its rail shipments jump from 1 million barrels in 2012 to more than 6 million in 2013, according to the state Energy Commission. Those numbers still represent a small portion of crude oil shipments, but energy officials say they expect them to grow.
‘All flammable’
In response, the Governor’s Office has proposed more funding to deal with rail oil spills, and Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, is pushing legislation to require rail carriers to communicate information about the movement and characteristics of crude oil and other hazardous materials, and maintain a 24-hour, seven-day communications center.
Union Pacific railroad officials insist they’re taking action. They say the company has agreed to reduce crude oil train speeds in large cities such as Sacramento, and have spent millions of dollars on safety efforts, including expanded inspections and technology use, such as lasers and ultrasound, and real-time train tracking via track-side sensors.
“We take this very seriously,” UP spokesman Aaron Hunt said. Representatives of Union Pacific and BNSF, another major freight carrier in California, say they conduct ongoing training with local first responders on dealing with hazardous materials.
The railroads, however, are fighting to keep some train movement data from becoming public.
The Federal Department of Transportation issued an emergency order last month requiring railroads currently running trains with large amounts of Bakken oil to notify state emergency responders about train movements. That deadline is this weekend.
Railroads have said they want states to sign a nondisclosure agreement to keep the information confidential, shared only with emergency personnel. California state officials say they will not sign that agreement, but said Friday they do not know what level of information they may receive from the railroads, and are not sure how much information they would make public.
“We want to keep as much information as public as possible. Anything of concern to the public we want to be available to the public,” said Brad Alexander of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “Since we haven’t received information yet, we don’t know if there is certain national infrastructure risks to (some of the information) being public.”
BNSF officials said on Friday they will submit information to the state. Union Pacific said it does not currently ship Bakken in the state.
Some information about potential future crude-oil rail movements is becoming public. Valero Refining Co. of Benicia in the East Bay plans to run 100 train cars a day carrying crude oil through Sacramento on the Union Pacific rail line starting early next year, according to Benicia city documents. Company officials have been silent on how much of it will be Bakken, simply saying it will be North American crude. Two 50-car crude oil trains will be assembled daily in the Rosevillerailyard, then run through Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis to the refinery.
Valero spokesman Chris Howe said his company is focused on safety, and that derailments causing crude oil spills are rare. “We think some of the concerns voiced about transport of particular crudes by rail are a little exaggerated,” Howe said. “There is nothing inherently more dangerous about one crude than another. They are all flammable, and need to be handled carefully.”
He pointed out that the rail transport of less expensive oil from North America will save money and reduce the chance of ocean spills by allowing Valero to cut back dramatically on imports from Africa, the Middle East and South America.
Farther south in California, the Phillips 66 oil company plans to run up to 80 train cars of crude oil daily to its Santa Maria refinery, mainly through Sacramento and the Bay Area. Phillips spokesman Dennis Nuss said rail shipments will keep its refinery competitive as California oil sources diminish. He said the crude will come from a variety of locales, but is not expected to be Bakken. He estimated the trains likely will start running in 2016.
Roseville to Benicia
Two facilities in Kern County – one run by Alon USA, the other by Plains All American Pipeline LP – also plan rail upgrades to allow deliveries of more than 100 tank crude cars a day. Alon did not respond to Bee requests for information, but, according to Kern County environmental documents, trains to the Alon facility will share tracks with the San Joaquin passenger rail service, which runs from Sacramento to Bakersfield. Plains All American Pipeline spokesman Brad Leone confirmed that his company is building a station to handle 104 crude cars daily, with plans to start shipping later this year, but said he did not know what rail lines would be used.
Sacramento already is home to one crude-by-rail transfer station. Sacramento-based InterState Oil has been transferring crude-oil shipments from train cars to trucks headed to Bay Area refineries at the former McClellan Air Force Base in north Sacramento since last September. The company started crude transfers before getting the necessary air-quality permit, local air quality officials said, and Sacramento-area fire officials said they were not initially told about the crude transfer operations.
Local leaders in Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis say their front-burner concern is Valero’s plan to run two crude oil trains a day through the area. The city of Benicia, the permitting authority for Valero’s plan to build a rail spur to handle more trains, is scheduled to release a draft environmental impact report on the project Tuesday. Trost of SACOG and Davis official Mike Webb said Sacramento area representatives will dig through that report to see how definitively it addresses potential impacts, including derailment and spill risks, on the “up-rail” cities and counties between Benicia and Roseville.
The Sacramento group already has compiled a list of steps it wants taken, and says it hopes to use the moment to make the case that railroads and oil companies must work more closely with cities as the stakes rise.
Trost said the local group will call for 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.
So far, the Davis City Council is the only entity in Sacramento that has formally spoken out about the shipments. It recently passed a resolution saying the city “opposes using existing Union Pacific rail lines to transport hazardous crude oil through the city and adjacent habitat areas.”
Davis officials point out that the existing Union Pacific line comes through downtown on a curve that must be taken at reduced speeds. Mike Webb, Davis director of community development and sustainability, said the city of Davis wants to push UP to employ computerized control of train speeds through town, rather than rely on a conductor to reduce speeds manually.
“The city is not opposed to using domestic oil, and the job creation that goes with that,” he said. “We want to be reasonable. Our primary concern is to ensure the highest degree of safety for our community. If trains carrying Bakken crude oil are coming through our community, we want it to be done in the safest way possible.”
astronomical increase in the number of railcars needed to facilitate America’s energy boom.
“Regulators likely will require repair and replacement of old tank cars, and replacement is more profitable. But analysts appear too conservative in their earnings estimates for next year: The consensus calls for an 8% decline in Trinity’s 2015 earnings, to $6.90 per share, from $7.48 in 2014.”
” One important reason is speed. A trip to the Gulf Coast from North Dakota’s Bakken shale fields, for instance, can take about 40 days by pipeline—but just a week by rail. And there are nearly three times as many miles of rail as there are pipelines crisscrossing America, according to a Texas Tribune report on railroads filling the pipeline transport gap“
The fiery derailment in Virginia recently of a train transporting oil was the latest in a series of alarming accidents involving oil transport in North America in the last year. In 2013, more oil spilled from U.S. trains than in the previous four decades combined — and that doesn’t include a Canadian spill that incinerated the downtown core of Lac-Megantic in Quebec last year, killing 47.
We can expect such serious accidents to continue if immediate changes are not made. Nationally, the transport of oil by rail is on a steep upward trajectory, largely due to fracking in North Dakota and to drilling in Canada’s Alberta tar sands. And much of the oil being transported is especially dangerous, containing high levels of extremely volatile and combustible vapors. In recent testimony before Congress, the rail industry made clear that many of the cars carrying this type of crude are not equipped to do so safely.
California is in the cross hairs of this dangerous situation. The state is projected to receive up to 150 million barrels of oil by rail by 2016, compared with just 2 million barrels in 2011, and much of that oil will be volatile crude from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Canada.
According to the California Energy Almanac, the state’s refineries unloaded 1.41 million barrels of oil imported by rail in the first quarter of this year, twice as much as in the same period during 2013. Already the third-largest oil refining state, California faces six potential new rail offloading terminals, as well as refinery expansion to accommodate the increase in North American oil production.
North Dakota’s Mineral Resources Department estimates that as much as 90% of that state’s crude is expected to move by rail this year, much of it to California’s refineries and ports in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and the Central Valley. The freight routes pass through populous parts of cities including Richmond, Oakland and Berkeley in the north and Los Angeles and Long Beach in the south.
The federal Department of Transportation has ordered railroads to alert state officials about large shipments of Bakken crude moving through their states. It also has urged railroads to use their strongest rail cars for carrying the volatile oil.
But more is needed. Many local governments and citizens feel powerless to prevent these trains from moving through their towns. While some cities, such as Berkeley and Richmond, have passed resolutions intended to protect residents from crude being transported by rail, the ability of states and cities to directly regulate rail transportation is limited by federal law, which trumps conflicting or overlapping state and local rail regulations. States and cities have no authority over routing or rail car design, for example.
The Department of Transportation is working on more stringent regulations for rail car design, but it should also consider other rules and policies, including rerouting oil trains to avoid population centers, sources of drinking water and fragile ecosystems.
California also has a role to play. The state should begin taxing all oil imports, delivered by any mode of transportation, and use the revenue to support emergency response equipment and training at the state and local levels, particularly in areas most affected by rail traffic. The state should establish a system to convey this new railroad shipment information to local emergency personnel.
The state should also call on the California Public Utilities Commission to identify areas of railroad track that qualify as “essentially local safety hazards,” a narrow exception to the preemption provisions of the Federal Rail Safety Act that allows for more stringent state regulation in areas with unique, high-risk characteristics.
The state should also clarify the responsibilities of multiple agencies involved in safety and environmental oversight, including the Public Utilities Commission, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, the California Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Spill Prevention and Response.
Local government and permitting agencies in the state should also consider denying land-use and other permits for refineries and offloading facilities if they find safety risks or improper environmental mitigation under statutes like the California Environmental Quality Act.
And community members should become involved, commenting in environmental review processes for proposed refinery and terminal expansions and supporting the ultimate remedy: reducing reliance on fossil fuels by promoting renewable energy, energy efficiency and smart growth.
The increase in oil transported by rail is a symptom of our ongoing dependence on oil; we need to make changes that both enhance short-term safety and pave the way for a clean energy future.
Jayni Foley Hein is executive director of the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law.
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
Latest Oil Train Derailment By Nick Cunningham for Oilprice.com
Another oil train has derailed, this time near Denver, Colorado. A 100-car Union Pacific train carrying crude oil from the Niobrara shale was involved in the May 9 accident, in which six cars derailed and some 6,500 gallons of oil were spilled. Investigators are looking into the cause of the accident, which occurred 45 miles north of Denver.
The incident happened just two days after the U.S. government issued what was seen as a weak emergency order on rail safety. On May 7, the Department of Transportation announced an emergency order requiring railroad companies to inform state emergency management officials when they plan to move large volumes of crude oil through a state. That would apply to trains carrying more than 1 million gallons of crude oil – the equivalent of about 35 train cars.
The order also recommends the use of more crash-resistant railcars, but makes their use voluntary; it says the department is ‘strongly urging … [the use of] tank car designs with the highest level of integrity available.”
The move by the Transportation Department was in response to a fiery derailment and explosion of a train carrying crude in downtown Lynchburg, VA on April 30, which spilled oil into the James River and caused the evacuation of hundreds of people.
The DOT-111 railcar design, which has been involved in several high-profile derailments and explosions, has been criticized for being too dangerous. But the flimsy, pill-shaped tankers are by far the preferred model used by the rail industry to transport crude. DOT-111s account for 80 percent of Canada’s oil-by-rail fleet, and 69 percent of America’s. In fact, of the 335,000 cars in the active fleet, 228,000 of them are the DOT-111s. Safer, reinforced rail car designs exist, but it will take time to replace the tens of thousands of “bomb trains” currently in operation.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told a Senate panel on May 7 that his agency had sent a draft proposal to the White House for rail-car standards and speed limit regulations, and is hopeful that a finalized slate of regulations can be issued before the end of 2014.
Senate Democrats were unimpressed by the department’s actions, even before the latest incident in Colorado. “If we know that we want to get rid of these [cars] that we don’t think are a safe transport vehicle, we should come up with a date certain,” Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) said during the hearing. “Making it voluntary isn’t enough.”
The Transportation Department has been criticized for moving too slow, even by oil industry proponents. The agency’s cautious pace is in stark contrast to the swift action taken by Canada last month; the country’s transport minister decided in April to completely phase out the DOT-111 tank cars over the next few years, and ordered the industry to remove 5,000 of the most dangerous oil tankers from the railways within 30 days.
Last week’s derailment in Colorado, coming before the ink was barely dry on the government’s voluntary guidelines, will put more pressure on U.S. officials to take stronger action.
Many observers expect to see an order yet this year for the mandatory phase out of the DOT-111 design in favor of reinforced train cars better equipped to move hazardous material like Bakken crude.
Speaking at last week’s Senate hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, “The fact that the DOT issued this emergency order today so quickly after our push shows that Secretary Foxx gets it, and I sincerely hope they follow it up with a federal rule that requires the phase-out or retrofitting of outdated DOT-111 tank cars.”
This article was originally published on Oilprice.com.
Emergency order requires railroads transporting crude to notify state
Emergency order requires railroads transporting crude to notify state emergency response commissions; safety advisory urges use of tank cars with highest integrity
WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued an Emergency Order requiring all railroads operating trains containing large amounts of Bakken crude oil to notify State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs) about the operation of these trains through their states.
Additionally, DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued a Safety Advisory strongly urging those shipping or offering Bakken crude oil to use tank car designs with the highest level of integrity available in their fleets. In addition, PHMSA and FRA advise offerors and carriers to the extent possible to avoid the use of older legacy DOT Specification 111 or CTC 111 tank cars for the shipment of Bakken crude oil.
“The safety of our nation’s railroad system, and the people who live along rail corridors is of paramount concern,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “All options are on the table when it comes to improving the safe transportation of crude oil, and today’s actions, the latest in a series that make up an expansive strategy, will ensure that communities are more informed and that companies are using the strongest possible tank cars.”
Effective immediately, the Emergency Order (Docket Number DOT-OST-2014-0067), requires that each railroad operating trains containing more than 1,000,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil, or approximately 35 tank cars, in a particular state to provide the SERC notification regarding the expected movement of such trains through the counties in that state.
The notification must include estimated volumes of Bakken crude oil being transported, frequencies of anticipated train traffic and the route through which Bakken crude oil will be transported. The Emergency Order also requires the railroads provide contact information for at least one responsible party at the host railroads to the SERCs. The Emergency Order advises railroads to assist the SERCs as necessary to share the information with the appropriate emergency responders in affected communities.
FRA and PHMSA also issued a joint Safety Advisory, Number 2014-01, to the rail industry strongly recommending the use of tank cars with the highest level of integrity in their fleet when transporting Bakken crude oil.
The Department of Transportation continues to pursue a comprehensive, all-of-the-above approach in minimizing risk and ensuring the safe transport of crude oil. FRA and PHMSA have undertaken more than a dozen actions to enhance the safe transport of crude oil over the last ten months. This comprehensive approach includes immediate and long-term steps such as: launching “Operation Classification” in the Bakken region to verify that crude oil is being properly classified; issuing safety advisories, alerts, emergency orders and regulatory updates; conducting special inspections; moving forward with a rulemaking to enhance tank car standards; and reaching agreement with railroad companies on a series of immediate voluntary actions they can take by reducing speeds, increasing inspections, using new brake technology and investing in first responder training.
Click here to view the Emergency Order.
Click here to view the Safety Advisory.
The mission of the Federal Railroad Administration is to enable the safe, reliable and efficient movement of people and goods for a strong America, now and in the future. To learn more about the FRA visitwww.fra.dot.gov
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration develops and enforces regulations for the safe, reliable, and environmentally sound operation of the nation’s 2.5 million mile pipeline transportation system and the nearly 1 million daily shipments of hazardous materials by land, sea, and air. Please visit http://phmsa.dot.gov for more information.
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DOT 40-14
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Visibility was 10 miles and the morning sun had pushed the temperature close to 90 as Danny Joe Hall guided his mile-long Union Pacific freight train east through the grasslands of the Oklahoma Panhandle.
Near the farming town of Goodwell, federal investigators said, the 56-year-old engineer sped through a series of yellow and red signals warning him to slow down and stop for a Los Angeles-bound train moving slowly onto a side track.
The 83-mph collision killed Hall and two crewmen. Dozens of freight cars derailed, and the resulting inferno sent towers of black smoke over the plains, prompting the evacuation of a nearby trailer park.
As it turned out, Hall was colorblind.
The National Transportation Safety Board‘s subsequent probe of the June 2012 wreck faulted the engineer’s deteriorating eyesight and inadequate medical screening that failed to fully evaluate his vision problems.
But the Goodwell crash underscored a far larger concern: Railroads are the only mode of U.S. commercial transportation without national requirements for thorough, regular health screenings to identify worker ailments and medications that could compromise public safety.
Crash investigations have linked train accidents to railway workers’ health problems. The Goodwell crash and a rear-end collision in Iowa in 2011 that killed an engineer and conductor are among those that authorities believe could have been prevented with more rigorous medical testing of train crews.
Federal investigators are examining whether an engineer’s severe case of undiagnosed sleep apnea — a condition that can cause fatigue — contributed to last year’s derailment of a New York commuter train that killed four passengers and injured 59. Union and legal representatives of the engineer have said he either nodded off or went into a daze before heading into a 30-mph curve at 82 mph.
The NTSB found that the engineer’s doctors never evaluated him for the condition, and medical guidelines provided to employees by the Metro-North Railroad did not mention sleep disorders.
“The problems are not getting fixed, and more significant risks could occur as the population of railroad workers ages,” said Mark Rosekind, an NTSB board member.
In contrast, airline pilots, truckers, bus drivers and maritime professionals must undergo medical examinations with stricter requirements annually or every few years. In those industries, more frequent evaluations are required for workers over 40 or who have chronic medical conditions that can worsen.
Severe allergies, heart disease, poor vision, sleep disorders and diabetes — as well as use of medicines with serious side effects — are among the health issues that can disqualify workers if the conditions can’t be adequately controlled.
Since 1988, the NTSB has pushed unsuccessfully for similar standards for more than 100,000 locomotive engineers, conductors and other railway workers. But the Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees the industry, has balked at imposing mandatory, comprehensive medical requirements.
Working with unions and carriers, the FRA has opted for non-mandatory education programs for rail workers, formal advisory notices and other strategies to reduce risks associated with health problems.
“The FRA is committed to ensuring that train operators are fit for duty,” said agency spokesman Kevin F. Thompson. The administration “continues to work with labor and industry to comprehensively address standardized medical practices.”
Currently, engineers and conductors are required to pass vision and hearing tests every three years. In a statement, Union Pacific, which employed the engineer faulted by the NTSB in the Goodwell crash, said it complies fully with current federal standards. Train crews also undergo random testing for alcohol and illegal drug use.
Railroads typically require physical exams when someone is offered a job, as well as after an extended medical leave or when an employee’s health is questioned at work. In addition, railroad medical departments offer wellness programs.
Some rail carriers, either on their own or after NTSB crash investigations, have voluntarily adopted measures that exceed federal standards, including obtaining medical histories of employees and educating workers about sleep disorders and medications. Amtrak, for example, requires annual medical examinations for engineers.
The FRA’s Thompson said current regulations and voluntary industry screening programs have contributed to a steady decline in railroad accidents. The last two years have been among the safest for the industry, and Thompson noted that no fatal train wrecks linked to the health problems of train operators occurred between 2002 and 2010.
However, NTSB officials, safety experts and former FRA officials say there is ample evidence that current practices, which put much of the onus to disclose serious medical problems on workers, need to be strengthened.
Dozens of crashes ranging from deadly collisions to less serious mishaps have been linked to sleep disorders, mental illness, poor vision and medications that can cause drowsiness, FRA and NTSB records show. Accidents have likewise been tied to a host of other maladies such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
In 2001, a Canadian National Railway train ran a stop signal outside Clarkston, Mich., and rammed into an Illinois Central Railway train, killing its crew. NTSB investigators concluded that the Canadian railway engineer and conductor were fatigued because of sleep apnea. Doctors had told both men they had the condition, but neither obtained adequate treatment, the investigators concluded.
Three years ago, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal train whose two crew members had fallen asleep rear-ended a BNSF track maintenance train outside Red Oak, Iowa. The coal train’s crewmen were killed. Both were found to have serious medical problems, including obesity, high blood pressure, depression and diabetes, for which they were taking medications that officials say may cause drowsiness.
The full extent to which medical problems contribute to accidents is difficult to determine. Federal crash reports don’t always state an underlying cause; and NTSB investigators, who examine the medical conditions and histories of train crews after accidents, typically probe only the most serious incidents.
Because of data-gathering shortcomings “medical impairments are probably responsible for more accidents than the reports reflect,” said Bruce Fine, a former FRA associate administrator for safety.
NTSB investigations alone have linked medical problems to 13 serious train accidents since 1984. FRA data show that over the last three decades, some physical condition of a worker was a factor in at least 86 accidents that killed nine people and injured 61.
Almost three-quarters of those accidents involved employee fatigue, although the records do not indicate if sleep disorders or potentially sedating medications contributed to the fatigue.
One FRA analysis found that of 36 on-duty deaths of railway workers in 2003, 20 were a result of medical problems, primarily heart attacks. All of the workers involved were older than 47, raising fears among regulators about the potential safety risks of aging train crews. Most of the rail labor force is now over 45.
Despite such concerns, reform has been slow. After the 2001 Canadian railway crash was linked to sleep disorders, the FRA ramped up education programs, issued safety advisories and launched a study concluding that industrywide medical standards were needed and probably could have prevented past accidents.
The 2005 FRA report noted that at one of the nation’s largest railroads only 1% of workers had enrolled in a voluntary training course on sleep disorders.
Progress on new regulations, however, ran head-on into union and management concerns about the potential effects on rail operations and on the privacy of workers’ health records.
“Does a railroad really need to know if I take Lipitor or other prescriptions?” said James A. Stem Jr., the national legislative director for the United Transportation Union.
William C. Keppen, a Maryland-based transportation safety consultant, said one solution could be the use of independent medical examiners to determine if rail employees are fit to work but who withhold specific findings from employers, a system used for pilots.
By 2012, the attempt to draft comprehensive requirements collapsed. Medical professionals, union officials and industry representatives couldn’t agree on how to proceed, according to FRA officials and NTSB records. FRA officials also said the proposals would be too expensive for carriers, although a cost-benefit analysis was not performed.
“It was not a trivial amount of money for the railroads,” said Grady C. Cothen Jr., who headed the FRA’s regulatory program before retiring in 2010. But industrywide regulations “could have worked with FRA oversight.”
Shortly after the effort stalled, the Goodwell crash occurred and the NTSB renewed its recommendations for comprehensive medical requirements.
FRA officials promised to reconsider vision and hearing standards, revisit the issue of sleep disorders and explore other voluntary measures. In February, the NTSB called that approach “unacceptable.”
Many are concerned with safety risks caused by hauling crude oil by rail, but the other risks posed by railroads aren’t a public concern
rail service has deteriorated drastically
WASHINGTON — Grain producers, manufacturers and coal shippers told federal regulators Thursday that rail service has deteriorated drastically in the nation’s midsection in recent months, leaving crops in piles on the ground and fuel stocks low at electric power plants as resources go undelivered.
Railroad representatives told the federal Surface Transportation Board that a brutal winter, combined with a record grain harvest, was to blame for the delays, but the industry’s critics charge that their shipments are taking a back seat to crude oil.
Railroads moved virtually no crude oil just a few years ago, but a surge in production in North Dakota’s Bakken region has strained rail capacity in the Midwest.
It’s putting the squeeze on farmers who rely on rail to turn their crops into cash and delaying passengers on Amtrak’s Empire Builder between Chicago and the Northwest, several witnesses testified.
“The extreme delays to Amtrak and other users of the network are a symptom of a fragile network that is strained and struggling to react,” Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo told the board, which mediates disputes between railroads and their customers.
Bob Wisness, the president of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association, said the rail snarls had put his state’s farmers in jeopardy. Millions of bushels of wheat, barley and corn are “unmarketable” because of rail deliveries that are weeks and months late.
“We have had big crops before,” he testified, “but we have never had service this poor from the railroads.”
Bob Kahn, the general manager of the Texas Municipal Power Agency, testified that the service problems began almost a year ago. The state depends on coal deliveries by rail to generate a third of its electricity, and lately railroads have not kept up, Kahn said.
Despite reassurances from BNSF, the railroad that supplies the coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, Kahn said, some Texas plants only have a 10-day supply and could run out by the summer, when electricity demand reaches its peak in the state.
“They keep saying, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to run out of coal,’ ” he testified. “We don’t see it getting any better.”
While railroad officials acknowledged the problems and the shippers’ frustrations, they said they weren’t shoving other commodities aside for crude oil.
“I make more money hauling grain than I do hauling crude,” said Keith Creel, the president and operating chief at Canadian Pacific Railway.
Much of the shippers’ ire was directed at BNSF. The railroad, based in Fort Worth, Texas, has become the nation’s largest hauler of crude oil in trains, mostly from North Dakota.
BNSF said that it alone had absorbed half the growth in U.S. rail volumes last year. Traffic spiked late last year amid a record grain harvest, the railroad said, and the onset of one of the worst winters in memory.
The railroad said it was hiring thousands of new workers, ordering new locomotives and expanding track capacity.
“We’re not 100 percent there yet, and it’s something we continue to work on week by week,” testified Stevan Bobb, the executive vice president and marketing chief for BNSF.
martinhomec 