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Conservation group urges US DOT to protect national parks from oil train risks
The more these trains run through areas with no human population the better.
The AAR and American Petroleum Institute point out the unlikelihood of phasing out older DOT-111 tank cars within in two years, as proposed DOT rules call for, and ask for four years instead. NPCA’s proposal is worthwhile. We’ve already seen several examples of what oil spills and fires can do to nature. But between protecting both park areas and heavily populated areas, will realistic routing options still be available? Rail’s safety record is very good overall, but safer tank cars can’t come soon enough.
Are you as weary as of listening to these officials and journalists, wearing blinders,as tired as I am, that restrict their vision to North Dakota and Lac Megantic, who don’t see all the other thousands of hazmat cars safely moving around the continent.
Should we ask them, one and and all, if the “dangers of unsafe rail transport of high hazard materials,” exist to tell us about subsequent remotely similar happenings, or as Archie Bunker said “stifle.”
A proposed 50 car Baccan train to the Benicia Valero/neeExxon refinery (the Exxon Valdez’s destination, when it oiled Prince William Sound) has the Sacramento media roiled.
We’ll not tell 'em that in the '70’s, every other day a 78-car Utah crude train to the Richmond Standard/rebranded Chevron refinery came over the “mountain” and went down the Cal-P and the Sacto river to the Bay Area refinery without incident.
WELLL…maybe…I caught a goat that spotted the loads. After spotting a cut, we made a house cleaning move, pulled an empty, and got the next cut, a light rain is falling, and while we were away, a refinery crew, or maybe contractor’s crew went to work.
Did I say it was a dark and “rainy, not stormy,” night, and did I say they were arc-welders and did I say they strung their power cables across the track we were “shoving to spot?” the pooling rain on the concrete surface adjacent to the rails reflected the sparse lighting.
Midnight goats are tedious…but when the arcs were struck when the point car sliced the cables, made 6 cables out of two…
Tedium diminished…
Freaking car loads of oil…what next?. I
“the Exxon Valdez ran around in the Prince William Sound”
Keep the tracks safe from washouts and landslides to keep the trains running smoothly.
Anybody remember the Alabama crude oil train? I guess the beavers found someone to complain to. 
The Deepwater Horizon accident occurred in 2010, not 2005.
Are the NIMBYs going to prohibit gasoline tank trucks from driving into Harpers Ferry? How about a ban on idiots uisng cell phones and texting on the interstate - never know when they might side swipe or rear end a truck carrying hazardous!!
These are not your ordinary NIMBYs. These are dyed in the wool environmental whacko socialists. They will do anything to stop commerce and set our country back 150 years.
The National Parks Conservation Association is not a true conservation group, and are akin to groups like Sierra Club & Trout Unlimited. They consistently whine about the environment, while they themselves continue to pollute it…