(The following article by Gregory Richards was posted on the Virginian-Pilot website on October 15.)
NORFOLK, Va. — Moments after a Norfolk Southern train slammed into a parked locomotive in Graniteville, S.C., just after 2:39 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2005, the green haze filled the sleeping mill town.
The crash punctured a 90-ton tank car on the train, spewing a toxic chlorine fog into the air that sent 554 people to the hospital and killed eight residents and the train’s engineer.
The Norfolk Southern wreck was the latest in a string of deadly railroad accidents involving chemical releases. In June 2004, three people died when a Union Pacific train struck a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train near San Antonio, rupturing a chlorine tank car. I n January 2002, a Canadian Pacific train derailed in Minot, N.D., splitting five tank cars open and releasing poisonous anhydrous ammonia. One resident was killed and hundreds were injured.
Such accidents, while extremely rare, have prompted railroads, chemical manufacturers and federal regulators to seek tougher standards for tank cars carrying chlorine and anhydrous ammonia, the most common chemicals shipped by train that can be lethal if inhaled. Stronger tank cars, they say, would make chemical discharges less likely, both from accidents and feared terrorist attacks. But such cars would cost more to build and, the chemical industry warns, might be too heavy to move on certain stretches of track.
Any effort to improve tank car safety is welcome, said Patricia Abbate, executive director of Citizens for Rail Safety, a Woburn, Mass.-based railroad safety advocacy group.
“It will take some time to build these new tank cars, and it will take some money,” she said. “But if it improves safety in the long run, it’ll be worth it, absolutely, if we can get some peace of mind knowing that the hazardous materials… will be more safely transported through our communities.”
However, others say better solutions lie in routing chemical shipments around cities and by reducing the need for hazardous chemicals by substituting less-harmful ones or using technology. For example, instead of using chlorine to sanitize water, one of its primary uses, treatment plants could use ultraviolet light, which has proven to be more effective, said Rick Hind, a legislative director at the environmental group Greenpeace.
Railroads oppose rerouting cargo but endorse the idea of using less harmful chemicals and developing technologies to replace the hazardous chemicals they are required to haul. They cannot refuse to carry the chemicals because they are defined as common carriers by the Interstate Commerce Act, requiring them to move any cargo for a paying customer.
Norfolk Southern takes on an “enormous risk” every time it moves a toxic load, testified Wick Moorman, the Norfolk-based railroad’s chairman and chief executive, before a congressional subcommittee in June. It would not move hazardous cargo if doing so was not mandated, he said.
The railroad recorded a charge of $41 million last year to pay for expenses associated with the Graniteville wreck that weren’t covered by insurance.
“Norfolk Southern does not make enough money transporting these highly hazardous materials to justify the risks the federal government requires us to take,” Moorman said.
U.S. railroads move about 30 million carloads a year. About 1.8 million of those are classified by the federal government as hazardous materials, a definition that includes such diverse items as beer and chlorine, said Tom White, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads.
Only 100,000 carloads carry the most lethal materials, chemicals such as chlorine and the agricultural fertilizer anhydrous ammonia, which can be deadly if inhaled. According to the railroad association, 99.997 percent of hazardous train shipments arrived without incident in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available.
Carrying such shipments increases railroads’ insurance rates and exposes railroads to great liability should an accident occur. Railroads typically don’t even own the tank cars, which usually belong to either the chemical manufacturer or a leasing company. About 12,000 of the roughly 270,000 tank cars in service are used to haul anhydrous ammonia or chlorine.
Hoping to ease the risk, a committee organized by the railroad association, which included chemical and tank car manufacturers as well as federal regulators, finalized new standards last week for tank cars carrying chlorine and anhydrous ammonia.
“We think that this is the biggest single improvement in tank cars in probably 30 to 40 years,” said Robert Fronczak, assistant vice president of environment at the railroad association.
The standards call for thicker steel tanks and more durable fittings for connecting hoses used during loading and unloading.
Scheduled to take effect Jan. 1 for new tank cars, the standards will reduce the chance that a chemical is released during an accident by 65 percent, Fronczak said. Existing cars would have to be retrofitted over 11 years by adding a layer of steel to the tank’s exterior.
The changes would add about $30,000 to the price of a $100,000 tank car, Fronczak said. The cars can operate as long as 50 years.
Some say that’s not enough.
“The proposed increases in safety standards are inadequate, driven more by public relations than they are by motivation to solve a problem, and they do almost nothing in the near term and they do nothing against potential terrorist attacks,” Greenpeace’s Hind said.
Hind suggested another alternative, also mentioned in a 2005 report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ audit and investigative arm. To reduce the likelihood of large releases, toxic chemicals might be shipped in one-ton canisters, rather than the 90-ton tank cars.
Facilities using large quantities of chemicals prefer to receive them in bulk via tank car, said Ben Zingman, spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, which represents most of the nation’s chemical producers. He said the smaller containers might work for some companies, though.
“What it depends on more than anything else is what the customer is doing with it and what the customer wants,” he said.
Even with the standards prepared by the Association of American Railroads ready to take effect, there is no consensus among the railroads, chemical manufacturers and regulators over how to reduce the risk of transporting chemicals via railroad.
The Federal Railroad Administration, which enforces railroad safety rules, and two chemical industry trade groups, the Chlorine Institute and the Fertilizer Institute, argue new standards shouldn’t be imposed until a Transportation Department laboratory completes a study on the dynamic forces that act upon tank cars in accidents. Expected to be released this winter, the study’s results could yield even safer tank cars tailored for the loads they experience in accidents, the administration and the institutes believe.
“We believe everyone should have the benefit of those research findings before advancing,” said Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the railroad administration.
But the railroad association believes it already has enough data on tank car accidents to move ahead.
“You can always wait for new information to come out and then do nothing in the meantime,” said Fronczak, explaining that it would probably take several years for the study results to be evaluated.
If there is better information in that study, he said it could aid future improvements.
Yet another effort – involving Union Pacific, the nation’s largest railroad; Dow Chemical, one of the country’s largest chemical producers; and Union Tank Car, a tank car manufacturer – has begun to design a safer, more secure tank car on the belief that the railroad association’s new standards don’t go far enough.
Union Pacific spokesman James E. Barnes wouldn’t share any details about the changes being contemplated but said the first prototype is scheduled to be completed in 2008.
The Federal Railroad Administration also believes the tank car improvements should extend beyond cars carrying just chlorine and ammonia.
Limiting the enhancement to just two types of chemicals represents a “micro-based approach to safety,” wrote William S. Schoonover, staff director of the administration’s hazardous materials division, to the railroad association in September. Other chemicals, such as hydrocyanic acid, carry greater risks even if they are shipped less frequently, he wrote.
The railroad association intends to improve tank cars carrying more than just chlorine and ammonia, but the association started with those because they represent 82 percent of the chemicals moved by train that are lethal if inhaled, White said.
Some believe that it will take more than stronger tank cars to reduce accidental chemical releases from trains.
Implementing new tank car standards on a sizeable portion of the rail car fleet will take years. In its investigation of the Graniteville crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said changing how trains operate is the quickest and easiest way of protecting the public.
The safety board suggested positioning tank cars toward the rear of trains – to lessen the chance of the tank car being hit by other rail cars – and reducing speeds through populated areas.
Had those measures been employed in Graniteville, the board wrote, they “may have been sufficient to prevent the puncture of the tank car and the release of the chlorine.”
After all, the safety board found that in the Graniteville crash, the tank car that was punctured was one of the strongest tank cars in service.
“Let’s not assume that the tank car is the silver bullet that fixes this,” Fertilizer Institute spokeswoman Kathy Mathers said. “Let’s take a holistic approach to safety.”
The railroad association thinks slowing down trains would worsen already congested rail lines, however. And Fronczak said the studies he’s seen have shown that tank cars’ positions during accidents doesn’t matter.
“A better package will always perform better,” Fronczak said.