Railroad moves tanker cars## RODEO: Residents say train containers designed to hold liquefied petroleum haven’t gone far enough##### By Erik N. Nelson###### MEDIANEWS STAFF
Rodeo resident Ron Green got a pleasant surprise when he came home from a trip Friday to find that a dozen railroad tank cars designated for highly explosive liquefied petroleum gas were no longer across the street from his home and the Head Start preschool next door.
It was also good news for nearby ConocoPhillips refinery, which, with no small amount of prodding from the county agency that operates the preschool, had asked the Union Pacific Railroad to move the cars.
The good news stopped at the doorstep of Cynthia Leimbach, however, who can look out of her apartment window and still see the hulking black cylinders sitting on the tracks.
ConocoPhillips should announce it is shutting down the refinery and moving the operation 1000 miles away. See who pipes up when all of those jobs, the money those employees spend in town, the taxes paid by the employees and the refinery all disappear. Maybe without the refinery the county won’t need the day care center, either. That would solve everything, right?
NOTE: This story is confusing. I know the Bradenton area, and cannot think of where UP would be serving customers – in Florida? I was fooled because it is written from a local angle with no dateline – but out of Contra Costa County California! Why, then, is the Bradenton, Florida, Herald picking up this story (especially since it was written with a local angle, and lacks a dateline)?
No dateline or clue to its origin in California… Why would Florida readers need to know about this? Sooo many questions…
This is an issue to reserve judgement on until more facts are presented. Of course empty cars are still dangerous. I once investigated a case where a gasoline trailer had been steam cleaned and was taken to a shop to have a leak in the nose welded.
It hadn’t been cleaned properly and the welder blew himself through a brick wall when he began work.
As to the Fla-Calif. issue, maybe the Bradenton newspaper has a similar problem. Our local paper publishes railroad crossing wrecks from all over the country because they feel every grade crossing in the Bi-state area, (MO & ILL) should have gates and flashers.
Nice one, PZ. I pulled this from a search of Google News. I hadn’t really noticed, but you are correct. This was originally posted in the Contra Costa Times (when?). Topix.net picked it up. The Bradenton Herald pulled it from there. Why they didn’t attribute the Contra Costa Times in the dateline, I have no idea. I did notice that they have it in the Nation section, not their Local section. The fact that this was out of Rodeo, CA, blew right by me. I just naturally assumed it was Rodeo, FL. [D)]
Situations like this have popped up here in Florida.
An industry or rail line is in or has been in place since the early 20th century. Developers come in, get needed permits, subdivisions, business parks, or daycares are built. A year or two later that long established industry is yelled at by the new community to make changes, or move out.
Railroads are commanded to **“**quiet train horns”, slow down train speeds, dress up the mainline, and contribute in building the “Quiet Zone”. Of course if anyone trespasses and gets slammed by a trio of SD75s hauling an intermodal, their loved ones will sue because, after all, the railroad created the dangerous situation with those monstrous, hulking trains…"
Common sense seems to have evaporated long ago with many members of the “Hippie” generation that are today’s community leaders. Was it the heroin, weed, LSD, or keg parties that were burning up the brain cells during the college years? [%-)]
Well, I have done so much news copy editing in my career that the lack of a dateline jumped right out at me – as well as the “homey” local angle that built the storyline by incorporating residents’ opinions.
As an aside, the story isn’t very well written, either. The author assumes that the woman who heads up Head Start in the neighborhood is speaking for the county … which she is not or cannot.
The cars are back. Here is excerpt from UTU website.
County safety authorities have said the cars pose a danger even if they are empty. Horiuchi acknowledged that “there may be some residue in there, but the risk is minimal.”
A greater risk faced by the school is from gasoline truck tankers that passed by the school three times recently as a Union Pacific worker stopped in Rodeo to take stock of the preschool-tanker issue, Horiuchi said.
“That risk, compared to the risk of empty tank cars 1,400 feet from the school, you’ve got to put this into perspective,” Horiuchi said.
He added that the trouble started when local authorities decided to put the school next to the railroad tracks in what had been an industrial area. Had he known the county was going to put the preschool there, he would have warned against it.