(The following article by Bartholomew Sullivan was posted on the Memphis Commercial Appeal website on February 6.)
WASHINGTON — Certain poisonous chemicals, explosives and toxic gases and liquids would be prohibited from traveling by rail inside the city of Memphis without a permit under an ordinance City Council member Carol Chumney plans to introduce today.
The ordinance, in the works since last July, would prohibit chemicals that are explosive or are toxic when inhaled from entering the city except in an emergency. Railroad companies that maintain there are no practical alternative routes to going through Memphis would be required to obtain permits that would restrict the time of day when the hazardous materials could enter the city.
Last July, The Commercial Appeal identified train cars carrying 2-Dimethylaminoethyl acrylate, acetone cyanohydrin, nickel carbonyl, and several other toxic inhalation hazard cargoes over a two-day period in or near residential areas of Memphis. All are listed as potentially lethal if inhaled.
Congressional efforts to re-route hazardous cargoes are expected to move before the House and Senate Homeland Security committees on an expedited basis early this year. Similar efforts were stymied in the last Congress. Municipal efforts to regulate hazardous cargoes have been challenged in federal courts because freight railroad companies conduct interstate commerce, which is generally not subject to local restrictions.
The Transportation Security Administration, with jurisdiction over rail safety, has proposed a rule that would track rail cars carrying hazardous materials. The period for public comment on it ends later this month.
Chumney said she understands the law is in flux and that her ordinance is likely to be challenged.
“I don’t know that we can sit back and do nothing if Congress is not going to take effective action,” said Chumney, who said she has informed the offices of both Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., of her ordinance.
“We have a responsibility to protect our community, and we need to really push and do what we can do here to either get Congress to do something or, hopefully, the court decision will come out in our favor,” Chumney said.
Nationally, municipal attempts to regulate hazardous chemicals on railcars in highly populated areas have met with limited success. The District of Columbia is in federal district court now after the railroads sought to stay enforcement of an ordinance seeking to reroute potentially hazardous trains traveling near cherished national monuments.
Fred Millar, a consultant to the D.C. city council, said knowing where hazardous-chemical cars are doesn’t solve the problem. He said he expects to see federal rail security legislation on President Bush’s desk by March 11, the third anniversary of the Madrid transit bombing that killed 192 people. Millar said Memphis’ ordinance will have the effect of encouraging Congress to see that local constituencies around the country are trying to protect themselves even though “the fairest way to deal with this is to have a national, uniformly fair re-routing regulation.”
Individual freight railroad company spokesmen contacted Monday deferred comment to the Association of American Railroads, which didn’t return a call seeking comment. Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s spokesman, Joe Faust, directed the newspaper to the AAR Web site. There, the railroad association takes the position that re-routing is potentially more dangerous because it causes the chemicals to travel longer and farther.
The AAR also notes on its Web site that, since Sept. 11, 2001, the industry has worked with the Department of Homeland Security to develop a security plan and that it is committed to transporting hazardous materials “with maximum attention to safety and security.”