Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumPacific Northwest Weighs Response to Risks Posed by Oil Trains.
MOSIER, Ore. The Chinook salmon that Randy Settler and other Yakama tribal fishermen are pulling from the Columbia River are large and plentiful this summer, part of one of the biggest spawning runs since the 1960s. It is a sign, they say, of the rivers revitalization, through pollution regulations and ambitious fish hatchery programs.
But barely four miles upstream from the fishermens nets, state workers are still cleaning up after a major oil train derailment in June. About 47,000 gallons of heavy Bakken crude bound from North Dakota spilled when 16 Union Pacific cars accordioned off the tracks. All of it, Oregon environmental officials said, might have gone into the river but for a stroke of luck that carried the oil instead into a water treatment plant a few hundred feet from the riverbank.
That juxtaposition the rebounding river coming a hairs breadth from disaster has resonated across the Pacific Northwest and brought about a day of reckoning. From ballot boxes to the governors desks in Oregon and Washington, a corner of the nation that seemed poised only a few years ago to become a new energy hub is now gripped by a debate over whether transporting volatile, hazardous crude oil by rail through cities and environmentally delicate areas can ever be made safe enough.
Communities around this state have awoken, said Oregons governor, Kate Brown, a Democrat. Washingtons governor, Jay Inslee, who is also a Democrat, said he thinks that all oil transit should be halted until more stringent track inspection rules can be put into place. Can it be transported into the Pacific Northwest safely? he said. That answer now is no. . .
But railroads have also resisted rules that might have mitigated the Mosier accident and other derailments around the country, said Sarah E. Feinberg, the administrator at the Federal Railroad Administration, specifically outfitting trains with modern braking systems, called electronically controlled pneumatic braking.
These trains are basically operating with a braking system from the Civil War era, and we have said to the railroads, You must upgrade, she said. And we get a tremendous amount of pushback from the industry: Its too expensive, its too complicated, its logistically complicated.
Tribal fishermen like Mr. Settler, 61, who has been piloting boats on the Columbia River since he was 9, said he fears that for the river, the worst is not over. State officials said recently that oil from the spill had seeped into the groundwater, which connects with the river. In any case, Mr. Settler said, it is clear to him that human failure and inadequate track maintenance, not bad luck, caused the crash.
They knew it was a high-risk area, Mr. Settler said on his boat on a recent morning off Mosiers shoreline. But it didnt stop the trains from coming.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/us/pacific-northwest-weighs-response-to-risks-posed-by-oil-trains.html?
scscholar
(2,902 posts)coal and oil out. It seems like it would be more profitable to not waste it. I've seen coal trains in the Seattle area dumping coal like it was worthless. If it was worthless, why would it make sense to transport it in the first place?
KT2000
(20,577 posts)being at risk from oil trains in Washington.