Crude-by-railWashington State requires railroads to plan for the “largest foreseeable spill”

Washington State governor Jay Inslee (D) has signed a new state law last month which requires railroad companies to plan with the state for the worst possible conditions when shipping crude oil.

As theBellingham Herald reports, the law will require companies to plan for the “largest foreseeable spill in adverse weather conditions,” though the lack of further definition has led to protests from some corners.

Much of the impetus for the new bill came after BNSF told Washington emergency responders in April that the company considers the worst-case spill scenario to involve 150,000 gallons of crude oil from the Bakken region, which includes parts of North Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan, Canada. That amount of crude is carried by five tanker cars — but BNSF often consist of 100 or more rail tank cars.

“We’ve already seen worse than that though, haven’t we?” asked Roger Christensen, Bellingham’s interim emergency manager. “It seems like a low number … I hate to respond without knowing where they’re coming from. It doesn’t seem like a worst-case scenario to me.”

Additionally, most of the high-profile oil train accidents of the past few years, in places such as West Virginia, North Dakota, and Quebec, involved between 362,000 to 1.6 million gallons of crude oil. In the 5 July 2013 Lac-Megantic, Quebec accident , forty-seven people were killed by the blast.

“Until we have further regulatory clarity from the U.S. Department of Transportation on how the agency will require railroads to calculate ‘worst-case discharges’ to waterways, BNSF is considering using 150,000 gallons,” said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. “BNSF is open to discussing the justification of this quantity with Federal or State environmental agencies.”

The new Washington law is tasking the state Department of Ecologyto craft what the government there will consider the worst-case scenario, with contingency plans in place, though the planning stages could take a year or longer, according to the department’s preparedness section manager Linda Pilkey-Jarvis.

“Preparedness regulations are all about planning for a potential worst-case spill,” Pilkey-Jarvis said. “It [all starts] with defining a worst-case spill volume, then that drives the whole rest of your plan. In [Washington] state the Legislature has defined the standard of what a worst-case spill volume should be, and in general it’s a pretty high bar. Planning for that type of all-in worst case creates pushback from the industry, which ometimes says, ‘That could never happen.’”

Much of this planning is necessary, because presently many emergency responders are not prepared for the full extent of possibilities in the event of an accident.

“If it was one tank car on fire, we’d address it the same if it was five, we’d just probably not have the ability to deal with it,” said Whatcom County Fire District 7 Chief Gary Russel, “In a derailment out here, you’d be protecting the area while it eliminated its fuel source.”

Many are aggravated by the decisions on the parts of the railroad companies to keep the information secret, arguing that it is very dangerous.

“It’s un-American to withhold these documents from the public,” said Fred Millar, an independent rail consultant who has previously worked for environmental groups. “For the first 20 years or so, the railroads said to us, ‘No law forces us to give you this information, we consider it confidential.’ After 9/11, they said ‘We won’t give you the information because of terrorism, you know. Keeping it secret is a little like elephants tiptoeing through the tulips.”

The new state law will require a 7-day advanced notice from facilities that receive the oil, such as refineries, before the train comes through the state. The information is expected to be passed along to emergency responders who will aggregate the date to be released quarterly to the public.