The Oregonian / OregonLive is reporting that Oregon’s two Democratic senators are teaming to introduce legislation that would ensure federal rail investigators would have the power to respond to major derailments by halting new oil shipments until full investigations are completed.
The Democratic senators also are seeking $2 million to help pay for new investigators, while requiring the federal Department of Transportation to investigate every major derailment and set standards for the volatility of crude oil being carried on U.S. rail lines.
This legislation comes after a derailment in the Columbia River Gorge of a train loaded with 94 cars of Bakken crude oil. In the June 3 derailment four cars caught fire, and burned for 14 hours, while closing Interstate 84 and forcing the evacuation of at least 100 nearby residents.
"We need to treat these accidents the way we treat a situation when a commercial jet goes down in the United States," Merkley said during a conference call with reporters. "When that happens, we learn every possible thing during a third-party investigation about why the crash occurred and then put moratoriums in place until everything is fixed."
The decision immediately after the accident not to investigate the derailment by the National Transportation Safety Board was stunning, but they were even further taken aback when they were informed that any follow up work looking at the accident's cause would be undertaken by Union Pacific, which operated the train that derailed.
"What this whole process really resembles," Wyden said, "is Colonel Sanders guarding the chicken coop."
This legislation adds to a bill that Senator Wyden introduced in April 2015, intended to accelerate the transition away from outdated tank cars which lack protective shields and are prone to ripping open in derailments.
That original legislative proposal, which now has 12 sponsors in addition to Wyden and Merkley, imposes a fee starting at $175 per car on any shipment carried in old tankers – known as DOT-111s – which are widely used to move oil extracted in North Dakota to coastal refineries. The fee would eventually climb to $1,400 per car by 2019.
Up to 18 million gallons of crude, now travel through the Columbia Gorge per week.
The NTSB cited a lack of staffing in its decision not to investigate the June derailment, and added that it did not send a team to Mosier because the incident involved no injuries or deaths and because initial findings provided by Union Pacific Railroad, first responders and the Federal Railroad Administration "indicated that the circumstances of this incident did not pose any new significant safety issues."
Similar legislation has been introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Oregon Democratic Representative Suzanne Bonamici.
This seems like the type of situation in which outside investigators might be helpful, does it not?