Some in the railroad and oil industries may believe the recent legislative and regulatory attention paid them is unwarranted. But the news keeps getting in the way of their point:
Federal investigators reported late last week that 16 cars in a 100-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe train carrying Bakken crude from North Dakota to an Anacortes refinery in January were found to have faulty valves that leaked a combined 25 gallons of oil before the leaks were detected, Spokane’s Spokesman-Review newspaper reported late last week. The Federal Railroad Administration tested valves on the cars, newer CPC-1232 tank cars, and attributed the leak to a design flaw. It has ordered owners of the cars with the affected values, about 6,000 of them, to take the cars out of service until the valves can be replaced.
Two crude oil train derailments were reported in March. A 94-car Canadian Railway train derailed March 7 outside an Ontario town, causing a fire that destroyed a bridge. Three days later, 21 cars of a 105-car BNSF train carrying Bakken crude from North Dakota derailed three miles outside Galena, Illinois.
As the amount of crude oil transported by rail has increased 50-fold between 2010 and this year, so to has the frequency of derailments and leaks from the trains. Thankfully, so has the attention of state and federal regulators, state legislators and members of Congress.
Washington’s Legislature did pass legislation that will require rail companies to show they can pay to clean up oil spills and extended to oil-by-rail a fee now collected only on oil delivered by marine tankers. The legislation also requires railroads to provide weekly notice to first responders along the rail route of the type and volume of oil being shipped, information that is to be made public on a quarterly basis.
And the U.S. Department of Transportation announced new rules on Friday that make official a new standard that will require older tank cars, referred to as DOT-111s, to be replaced or retrofitted by 2020. To their credit, refineries in Anacortes and Cherry Point in Whatcom County last year voluntarily switched from the older cars to the CPC-1232s.
At least one railroad association objects to a requirement to outfit all railcars by 2021 with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes which would slow all cars simultaneously, rather than sequentially, saying the DOT hadn’t made its case for safety. But common sense would seem to back the DOT on the brakes, as they are more likely to reduce the chances of a pileup and the number of punctured cars in an accident and increase the likelihood that trains could be stopped more quickly for an obstacle.
Members of Washington’s congressional delegation, including Reps. Rick Larsen and Suzan DelBene and Sen. Maria Cantwell, have said more needs to be done and more quickly. We agree. The DOT’s new regulations don’t require the notification rules nationwide that our Legislature has ordered here, for example. Cantwell has called for rules that would require the volatile gases in Bakken crude to be removed before being transported across the country. Oregon Sen. Roy Wyden has proposed charging a fee for the use of older railcars to train emergency responders and relocate tracks. Newer cars would get a tax break in return.
These regulations won’t come without costs, costs that will eventually be paid by the consumer. But those costs are minuscule when compared to the potential losses in a derailment that causes an ecological disaster in the Columbia River or the Salish Sea or an explosion that results in injuries or deaths in one of our communities.
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