On anniversary of Lynchburg derailment, Warner, Kaine back fee for oil trains
A year after a train carrying millions of gallons of crude oil derailed in downtown Lynchburg, U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine co-sponsored legislation today that would apply a fee to every old-model rail car transporting highly volatile crude from the Bakken shale fields in North Dakota.
The proposed annual fee of $175 per rail car would raise money that would be used to pay the clean-up costs of rail accidents involving Class 3 flammable liquids, provide training grants for local emergency responders, relocate rail tracks for shipments of large volumes of flammable liquids, hire additional railroad inspectors, and give tax credits to companies that upgrade older model tanker cars to new safety standards.
"It’s critical that we get outdated and risky tank cars off the tracks, ensure that rail cars are as safe as possible for the surrounding communities, and provide local first responders with the resources they need in the event of an accident,” Warner said in a joint announcement with Kaine.
The Virginia Democrats said they will co-sponsor legislation being introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon.
"This bill speeds up the phaseout of the oldest, least-armored oil tank cars by levying a fee on each car that will go toward paying for oil spill cleanup costs and training first responders in communities along major rail corridors,” Kaine said.
The senators announced their support for the legislation on the first anniversary of the derailment of a CSX train carrying 107 cars filled with Bakken crude oil as it passed through downtown Lynchburg on its way to a transfer terminal in Yorktown.
No one was injured in the mid-afternoon derailment, which sent three cars into the James River, one of them erupting in flames. Four crude oil trains derailed in February in the U.S. and Canada, one of them in Mount Carbon, W.Va., on its way to the Yorktown terminal operated by Plains Marketing Inc.
The Lynchburg derailment remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is expected to release its findings soon.
The fee would apply to the oldest model tanker cars, DOT-111, but not the type of cars involved in the Lynchburg derailment or two of the accidents involving crude oil trains in February.
The tanker cars in those accidents were designed to the CPC-1232 standards adopted voluntarily by the rail industry in 2011. The other two derailments in February involved the DOT-111 cars considered most vulnerable to catastrophic failures.
The National Transportation Safety Board recently called both models inadequate to prevent explosions of crude-laden tankers involved that are exposed to high heat in a train derailment in which some cars rupture and catch fire. The board said 28 tanker cars in the four incidents exploded because they lacked pressure relief valves and other measures to prevent thermal failure.
The legislation would raise money to provide tax credits for companies that upgrade the CPC-1232 cars in the next three years to the new standards that the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed last year.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Canada’s Minister of Transport Lisa Raitt have scheduled a news conference on Thursday to announce what they call the next generation of rail tank cars for transporting flammable liquids in North America.
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