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Groups Sue Obama Administration Over Weak Tank Car Standards
SAN FRANCISCO— In the wake of a spate of fiery derailments and toxic spills involving trains hauling volatile crude oil, a coalition of conservation organizations and citizen groups are challenging the U.S. Department of Transportation’s weak safety standards for oil trains. Less than a week after the DOT released its final tank car safety rule on May 1, a train carrying crude oil exploded outside of Heimdal, N.D. Under the current standards, the tank cars involved in the accident would not be retired from crude oil shipping or retrofitted for another five to eight years.
Earthjustice has filed suit in the 9th Circuit challenging the rule on behalf of ForestEthics, Sierra Club, Waterkeeper Alliance, Washington Environmental Council, Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Spokane Riverkeeper and the Center for Biological Diversity.
“The Department of Transportation’s weak oil train standard just blew up in its face on the plains of North Dakota last week,” said Patti Goldman, an Earthjustice attorney. “Pleas from the public, reinforced by the National Transportation Safety Board, to stop hauling explosive crude in these tank cars have fallen on deaf ears, leaving people across the country vulnerable to catastrophic accidents.”
Rather than immediately banning the most dangerous tank cars — DOT-111s and CPC-1232s — that are now used every day to transport volatile Bakken and tar sands crude oil, the new standards call for a 10-year phaseout. Even then the standard will allow smaller trains — up to 35 loaded tank cars in a train — to continue to use the unsafe tank cars.
The new rule fails to protect people and communities in several major ways:
• The rule leaves hazardous cars carrying volatile crude oil on the tracks for up to 10 years.
• The rule has gutted public notification requirements, leaving communities and emergency responders in the dark about the oil trains and explosive crude oil rumbling through their towns and cities.
• New cars will require thicker shells to reduce punctures and leaks, but retrofit cars are subject to a less protective standard.
• The standard doesn’t impose adequate speed limits to ensure that oil trains run at safe speeds. Speed limits have been set for “high threat urban areas,” but very few cities have received that designation.
Click here for a close analysis of the hidden dangers buried in the federal tank car rule: http://earthjustice.org/documents/fact-sheet/analysis-of-7-hidden-dangers-in-the-new-federal-oil-tank-car-rule
“Explosive oil trains present real and imminent danger, and protecting the public and waterways requires an aggressive regulatory response,” said Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Instead, the Department of Transportation has finalized an inadequate rule that clearly was influenced by industry and will not prevent more explosions and fires in our communities. We hope our challenge will result in a rule that puts the safety of people and their waterways first.”
“We’re suing the administration because these rules won’t protect the 25 million Americans living in the oil train blast zone,” said Todd Paglia, ForestEthics executive director. “Let’s start with common sense — speed limits that are good for some cities are good for all communities, 10 years is too long to wait for improved tank cars, and emergency responders need to know where and when these dangerous trains are running by our homes and schools.”
Background
The National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly found that DOT-111 tank cars are prone to puncture on impact, spilling oil and often triggering destructive fires and explosions. The Safety Board has made official recommendations to stop shipping crude oil in these hazardous tank cars, but the federal regulators have not heeded these pleas. Recent derailments and explosions have made clear that newer tank cars, known as CPC-1232s, are not significantly safer, and the Safety Board has called for a ban on shipping hazardous fuels in these cars as well.
The recent surge in U.S. and Canadian oil production, much of it from Bakken shale and Alberta tar sands, led to a more than 4,000 percent increase in crude oil shipped by rail from 2008 to 2013, primarily in trains with 100 to 120 oil cars that can be more than 1.5 miles long. The result has been oil spills, destructive fires, and explosions when oil trains have derailed. More oil spilled in train accidents in 2013 than in the 38 years from 1975 to 2012 combined.
ForestEthics calculates that 25 million Americans live in the dangerous blast zone along the nation’s rail lines.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/crude-oil-transport-05-14-2015.html
Center for Biological Diversity
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/
“The Department of Transportation’s weak oil train standard just blew up in its face on the plains of North Dakota last week,” said Patti Goldman, an Earthjustice attorney. “Pleas from the public, reinforced by the National Transportation Safety Board, to stop hauling explosive crude in these tank cars have fallen on deaf ears, leaving people across the country vulnerable to catastrophic accidents.”
Rather than immediately banning the most dangerous tank cars — DOT-111s and CPC-1232s — that are now used every day to transport volatile Bakken and tar sands crude oil, the new standards call for a 10-year phaseout. Even then the standard will allow smaller trains — up to 35 loaded tank cars in a train — to continue to use the unsafe tank cars.
The new rule fails to protect people and communities in several major ways:
• The rule leaves hazardous cars carrying volatile crude oil on the tracks for up to 10 years.
• The rule has gutted public notification requirements, leaving communities and emergency responders in the dark about the oil trains and explosive crude oil rumbling through their towns and cities.
• New cars will require thicker shells to reduce punctures and leaks, but retrofit cars are subject to a less protective standard.
• The standard doesn’t impose adequate speed limits to ensure that oil trains run at safe speeds. Speed limits have been set for “high threat urban areas,” but very few cities have received that designation.
Click here for a close analysis of the hidden dangers buried in the federal tank car rule: http://earthjustice.org/documents/fact-sheet/analysis-of-7-hidden-dangers-in-the-new-federal-oil-tank-car-rule
“Explosive oil trains present real and imminent danger, and protecting the public and waterways requires an aggressive regulatory response,” said Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Instead, the Department of Transportation has finalized an inadequate rule that clearly was influenced by industry and will not prevent more explosions and fires in our communities. We hope our challenge will result in a rule that puts the safety of people and their waterways first.”
“We’re suing the administration because these rules won’t protect the 25 million Americans living in the oil train blast zone,” said Todd Paglia, ForestEthics executive director. “Let’s start with common sense — speed limits that are good for some cities are good for all communities, 10 years is too long to wait for improved tank cars, and emergency responders need to know where and when these dangerous trains are running by our homes and schools.”
Background
The National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly found that DOT-111 tank cars are prone to puncture on impact, spilling oil and often triggering destructive fires and explosions. The Safety Board has made official recommendations to stop shipping crude oil in these hazardous tank cars, but the federal regulators have not heeded these pleas. Recent derailments and explosions have made clear that newer tank cars, known as CPC-1232s, are not significantly safer, and the Safety Board has called for a ban on shipping hazardous fuels in these cars as well.
The recent surge in U.S. and Canadian oil production, much of it from Bakken shale and Alberta tar sands, led to a more than 4,000 percent increase in crude oil shipped by rail from 2008 to 2013, primarily in trains with 100 to 120 oil cars that can be more than 1.5 miles long. The result has been oil spills, destructive fires, and explosions when oil trains have derailed. More oil spilled in train accidents in 2013 than in the 38 years from 1975 to 2012 combined.
ForestEthics calculates that 25 million Americans live in the dangerous blast zone along the nation’s rail lines.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/crude-oil-transport-05-14-2015.html
Center for Biological Diversity
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/
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As a blacklisted CNR Yardforman-Conductor it befalls me to make sure to the public, within the scope of the Railways to realize the larger extent of the crimes being committed by the Ruling Circles of the world's Railways for their private gains.
For one thing the crying need is to Re-tool the entire Industrial Revolution to the energy renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power that Transforms to Electricity and is more power than all the fossil fuels combined. Why is this so? It is because the oxygen is being burned-out of the worlds atmosphere at a faster rate than Mother Earth can replace it.
So much so is this true that already 40% of the oxygen has been burned to carbon-dioxide by the first industrial revolution, and we can not live on the CO2 REPLACEMENT. If the present society continues to function it will because of fossil fuel dependence send the present world state of existence which is the 'fail safe' mode over to the last and final phase of existence, which is 'NO Return Mode' in that there will not be O2--oxygen enough to sustain our ecological organic balances of the web-of-life on our Planet. Safety Mode for the Earth exists when the oxygen is replaced in a plus de valance and there is ample oxygen for all the living web-of-life.
So to due this, every country must re-tool the industrial revolution to the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power that is more electrical power than all fossil fuels combined. This will save the planet and the livability of its precious web-of-life.
This will end droughts, increased storms such as hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, flooding, fires, huge temperature risings, etc. etc.
That is because ample oxygen does moderate the climate and protects the o-zone levels back to sustainability of the Planets life again.
You yet have a world to win!! End destruction of the air, land, and water by pollution from fossil fuel dependence, with water pipelines taken from the Oceans. Workers of the world unite! Only solar energy can fully save the planets livability again. It does so by turning on every day and every year the whole ecological, organic balances of the green and animal webs-of-life globally. Voila!
For one thing the crying need is to Re-tool the entire Industrial Revolution to the energy renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power that Transforms to Electricity and is more power than all the fossil fuels combined. Why is this so? It is because the oxygen is being burned-out of the worlds atmosphere at a faster rate than Mother Earth can replace it.
So much so is this true that already 40% of the oxygen has been burned to carbon-dioxide by the first industrial revolution, and we can not live on the CO2 REPLACEMENT. If the present society continues to function it will because of fossil fuel dependence send the present world state of existence which is the 'fail safe' mode over to the last and final phase of existence, which is 'NO Return Mode' in that there will not be O2--oxygen enough to sustain our ecological organic balances of the web-of-life on our Planet. Safety Mode for the Earth exists when the oxygen is replaced in a plus de valance and there is ample oxygen for all the living web-of-life.
So to due this, every country must re-tool the industrial revolution to the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power that is more electrical power than all fossil fuels combined. This will save the planet and the livability of its precious web-of-life.
This will end droughts, increased storms such as hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, flooding, fires, huge temperature risings, etc. etc.
That is because ample oxygen does moderate the climate and protects the o-zone levels back to sustainability of the Planets life again.
You yet have a world to win!! End destruction of the air, land, and water by pollution from fossil fuel dependence, with water pipelines taken from the Oceans. Workers of the world unite! Only solar energy can fully save the planets livability again. It does so by turning on every day and every year the whole ecological, organic balances of the green and animal webs-of-life globally. Voila!
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