(The following article by James Pilcher was posted on the Cincinnati Enquirer website on September 4.)
CINCINNATI, Ohio — Here are the numbers of accidental releases of hazardous material from rail cars that did not involve a derailment, collision or other accident, between 1995 and 2004. This week’s chemical release was not caused by an accident, either.
Nearly 2 million train cars filled with toxic chemicals – many even more dangerous than the one that caused the evacuation in Cincinnati’s East End last week – cross through cities nationwide, with hundreds passing through Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky daily.
Yet, no one knows where all the cars are at any given point – including the federal agency charged with regulating the railroad industry.
As the Federal Railroad Administration defends its record, experts say the styrene leak here a week ago is another example of what can go wrong and that the agency’s record as a watchdog of the $40-billion industry is mixed.
The reason? With more than 400 inspectors, experts say the agency is too small to deal with the scope of the nation’s railroads, which handle more than 30 million carloads of freight across more than 225,000 miles of track a year nationally.
That includes more than 100 trains a day through the Queensgate rail yard, one of the Midwest’s busiest.
“When I was there, we once calculated that given the size of the industry, we monitored only about two-tenths of one percent of all the industry activity,” said George Gavalla, who served as Federal Railway Administration’s associate administrator for safety until last year. “It is a very huge task and a very small inspection force to do it.
“And when it comes to something like what happened in Cincinnati, they rely on the industry to take care of and police the issue, and the only time they become aware of it is when things go bang,” said Gavalla, who is now a private railroad safety consultant.
Administration officials say the number of accidents and incidents involving hazardous material leaks is declining, while the number of inspectors, inspections and fines is rising.
“When something goes wrong, we want to know why so we can take corrective action to prevent a similar event from happening again in the future,” said FRA administrator Joseph H. Boardman.
But how the industry as a whole is regulated remains a big question to local officials in wake of the styrene leak that prompted the evacuation of 814 properties for three days.
Representative-elect Jean Schmidt, R-Miami Township, has called for answers from the FRA, and Cincinnati city council members will discuss the leak at a meeting Tuesday.
“There are huge issues that are raised by this, not only for Cincinnati but for every city in America,” Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken said. “What kinds of materials are shipped and how they are handled and what kind of oversight is in place? I still don’t know the answers to that, and I hope that incident forces us all to address this going forward.”
Many cars, many chemicals
For this region, the issue goes far beyond one train car.
The Queensgate rail yard, owned by CSX, handles 100 or more trains a day, with each train clocking in at 100 cars or more.
Chemicals such as chlorine, propane, molten sulfur and other petrochemicals, including styrene, come through. Styrene is used to make plastic and rubber products.
Officials said they believe last week’s leak was caused because a chemical stabilizer, called an inhibitor, was allowed to expire. That caused the styrene to become unstable, heat up and forced open an emergency valve – allowing the car to vent, which is what it the car is supposed to do.
At issue is how long the car sat on the tracks.
Luken said it sat there for at least five months. The chemical stabilizer only remains active for four months.
Luken and other officials remain frustrated that no one has given them information about exactly how or why the rail car, owned by Westlake Chemical Corp., was allowed to sit on the sidetracks, or who was responsible for its oversight.
The incident demonstrates that getting even the most basic information about specific shipments can be difficult because of the way that the billion-dollar industry and its oversight are structured.
Unlike the airline industry, which uses publicly owned facilities such as runways and airports, the railroads own all aspects of their operation. That includes everything from the locomotives and cars to the actual tracks and switches; railroads even operate their own police departments for their property.
Those companies are responsible for tracking shipments and keeping proper paperwork, especially for hazmat cars. They are not required to report anything unless asked for it – which Boardman said would be pursued in the local case using “the full extent of our regulatory authority.”
“We are going to get to the bottom of this incident, thoroughly investigate any and all violations … and punish those who are responsible,” Boardman said.
Railroads also are required to inspect themselves, with federal inspectors – and at times state regulators working on behalf of the federal agency – conducting surprise spot reviews of paperwork and equipment.
Railroad enforcement
The Federal Railroad Administration, based in Washington, D.C., said beefed up inspections and enforcement have led to a decline in incidents such as the one in East End.
Administration spokesman Steve Kulm also points to recent criminal investigations, a tough compliance agreement with rail giant Union Pacific Railroad, and a new national plan to improve safety.
Nationally, the agency has seen the number of inspectors rise 12 percent in the last five years, with the total number of about 415 including 14 in Ohio, two of whom are based in Cincinnati.
In addition, 30 states have cooperative programs with the agency, and conduct inspections on behalf of the federal administration. That includes Ohio, which has 14 inspectors of its own reporting to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, two of whom are based locally.
Kulm said total fines collected have more than doubled between fiscal year 2000 and 2004, totaling $10.6 million in that final year alone. He added that total inspections by federal inspectors rose 24 percent from 2000 to 2004. In that final year, nearly 50,000 were conducted, with each covering several trains at a time.
“And safety is improving along with that,” Kulm said, pointing to the 36 percent drop in releases not related to a collision, derailment or other accident between 1995 and 2004.
As for the last week’s incident in East End, Kulm said having an unaccounted hazmat car float around the system for months is “extremely rare,” although there were no statistics on such incidents immediately available.
Some have said the car sat unattended for more than five months in the rail yard owned by Indiana & Ohio Railroad. But a state inspector said last week he did not see the car filled with styrene when he inspected the yard less than a week before the leak.
“We really want to get to the bottom of it so it never happens again,” Kulm said.
Civil punishments range from fines of $275 to $32,500 per infraction, while the agency also can pursue criminal charges if it can prove that companies or individuals willfully tried to avoid regulations.
In whose interest?
Gavalla said many inspections are nothing more than audits of the railroad’s initial work. But he added that individual inspectors have a difficult job and may not write up every infraction.
Another expert – longtime rail regulatory attorney Fritz Kahn of Washington, D.C. – said the system has historically been “spotty.”
Kahn said the agency does not have the personnel or the interest in performing a more effective job in trying to track down stray cars.
“It’s well known that traditionally the FRA … tends less to be less concerned about the public generally than about the companies themselves.”