(The following article by Sarah Bouchard was published by The Hill on October 28.)
WASHINGTON — Hazardous chemicals transported by train near the Capitol and other federal buildings have some lawmakers worried about the potential for a terrorist threat.
“We need to put ourselves in the mindset of a terrorist,” said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), the ranking member on the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. “I think that one of the things they might look at is the rail lines that run adjacent or less than a mile from many national treasures and critical installations.”
Trains run under the Capitol, a few blocks south of House office buildings and near the Departments of Transportation and Energy. The tracks are close enough to reach the White House with an airborne chemical, and the trains regularly transport substances such as chlorine gas, molten sulfur and hydrogen chloride.
Patrick G. Ryan
There have been 346 train accidents involving hazardous materials in the Washington area since 1990.
“I think you have to look at whether we should be carrying such large volumes of hazardous material” near critical government buildings, said Moran, who voiced his concerns to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in a letter Sept. 11. Ridge has not yet responded.
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), chairman of the subcommittee; Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee; Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), ranking member on the Administration panel; and Rep. Chris Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, said they share Moran?s safety concerns.
CSX Transportation ? the Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad that moves hazardous chemicals through the Washington area ? transports about 480,000 loads of such materials each year on its 23,000 route miles east of the Mississippi River.
Since 1990, there have been 346 accidents in the Washington area involving hazardous chemicals carried on trains ? including hydrochloric acid, phosphoric acid, sulfuric acid, fuel oil, combustible liquids and flammable liquids, Department of Transportation statistics show. Those incidents have caused two major injuries and 21 minor ones.
“We?re darn proud of the time and effort we put into safe transportation of hazardous materials,” said Skip Elliott, CSX?s general manager of environmental and hazardous-material systems, whose team also oversees security planning.
CSX has developed a comprehensive security plan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Elliott said. In addition, the carbon-steel rail cars feature about 5 inches of insulation. Emergency responders receive about 1,000 hours of training for each year.
The Association of American Railroads (AAR) ? a trade organization that represents North America?s major freight railroads and Amtrak ? brought together 150 experts after Sept. 11 who developed a template security system on which individual railroads base their plans.
Some elements of the plan include a new position of executive director of security at the AAR, a comparison of employee records to FBI terrorist lists, increased tracking and inspection of certain hazardous-material movements, heightened security of railroad physical assets and additional cybersecurity procedures.
“We are by far the safest way to move this material,” Elliott said.
AAR has also implemented a four-tier alert system, similar to but independent of the Homeland Security Department?s color-coded system. The railroad industry now operates on a level-two alert, which indicates heightened security awareness.
Railroads went to level four, meaning a confirmed threat against the railroad industry or an actual attack in the United States, when military action began in Afghanistan and “almost to level three” when the war in Iraq started, Elliott said.
Because AAR intelligence comes from Transportation Department security personnel, the FBI, the National Security Council, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security, “our security plan and us moving to higher security alert level is not done arbitrarily,” Elliott said.
Nonetheless, Moran suggested taking another look at security measures to determine if they are sufficient. Further, he proposed rerouting the hazardous materials around the District, only transporting them through the area on weekends or not running them through Washington during large events, such as presidential inaugurations.
“I don?t want to run around saying the sky is going to fall,” Moran said. “I just think we have some responsibility to alert the homeland-security people.
“I don?t want to come up with the answers; I?m just raising an issue,” he added.
CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said his organization is in continuous conversation with lawmakers about security.
“To a certain degree, we are already doing what [Moran] is suggesting,” Sullivan said. “We have already considered events. We are attached at the hip to the national security apparatus.”
Although CSX has looked at rerouting hazardous materials, Elliott said that approach would just bring them through “someone else?s back yard.” But Sullivan added, “We?re not saying unilaterally yes to anything or unilaterally no to anything.”
Kingston?s chief of staff, Bill Johnson, said moving hazardous chemicals by rail near the Capitol “is a big deal” and “a lot of people don?t think about it.” However, he said, “It?s not been something we?ve been into before.”
But Kingston recently introduced legislation that would facilitate regional cooperation for the transportation of such material. Because “we see this where we live, not just here from the Capitol,” Johnson said, the Regional Comprehensive Emergency Preparedness, Response and Coordination Act of 2003 would create regional councils within the Department of Homeland Security.
Kingston said that “we?re putting in a lot of money at the top” and plenty of money is in the pipeline, but there are bottlenecks at the planning and coordination level, Johnson said. Planning on a multicounty level would allow the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland to better coordinate security for moving hazardous materials by trains, he said.
Cox said that rail is a large focus of the homeland-security effort infrastructure, adding that there are “significant vulnerabilities” in rail transport of hazardous materials.
“Regional cooperation is a key to success in defending against terrorism,” he said.