(The following story by Erin Mills appeared on The East Oregonian website on June 7. Gary Quick is a member of BLET Division 362 in La Grande, Ore.)
HERMISTON, Ore. — The U.S. Department of Transportation announced recently that railroads must take a closer look at the routes they use to transport hazardous materials.
Beginning June 1, railroad companies must prepare a risk analysis that considers 27 risk factors, such as population density and trip length, to find the safest route.
But Gary Quick, the legislative representative for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) for Division 362 in La Grande, said the rules will probably not change how hazardous materials are transported around small-town Eastern Oregon.
The new rule is designed for large metropolitan areas on the east coast, Quick said. But the amount of hazardous materials such as chlorine and anhydrous ammonia that travel our railways might surprise the people that live in close proximity to the railroad tracks.
“We handle a tremendous amount of highly hazardous materials,” Quick said. “For instance, chlorine is so toxic that 10 parts per million can kill you. And we handle tanks of it.”
Quick, who is also a railway hazmat instructor and locomotive engineer, said his concern is that railway workers are often not fully trained to handle hazardous materials in the event of a leak.
And local fire departments are also not trained, he said. If there was a leak in Pendleton, Quick said, the closest hazmat response team would have to come from 32 miles away in Hermiston.
Although railroads do a good job of transporting hazardous materials, and new tank designs make leaks less likely, Quick said, accidents do happen.
In the small town of Graniteville, S.C., in 2005, a freight train carrying chlorine crashed into a parked train, releasing a toxic cloud that killed nine people and injured 200.
Of particular concern to Quick is non-odorized liquid petroleum gas, or propane. A law passed by the Bush administration, Quick said, shifted the point of odorization (and an accompanying tax) from producers to distributors. This change gave a tax break to energy producers, but it also resulted in the large-scale shipment of non-odorized propane.
“It’s colorless, odorless, tasteless, and highly flammable,” Quick said. “You could have rescue personnel walk right into a derailment and not know that a tank was breached.”
Quick said that the odorization rule change was a huge injustice to railway workers and the general public.
A great deal of non-odorized propane is shipped from Canada through Hinkle, Quick added.
“People don’t know what’s rolling through their towns,” he said.