(The following appeared on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review website on June 30.)
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will begin enforcing a new rule Tuesday that seeks to minimize the chances of terrorists attacking freight trains carrying hazardous chemicals that can be fatal if inhaled.
It requires the freight rail industry to collect data and analyze the risks associated with carrying hazardous materials. The industry will use the data to figure out the safest route to carry substances such as chlorine when traveling through crowded areas. Rail operators must finish data collection by March next year and the risk assessments by the following September.
The rule is part of landmark freight rail legislation that came after a Tribune-Review investigation found federal agencies had made little effort in strengthening security over potentially catastrophic rail shipments of toxic and explosive chemicals that, if ruptured by a terrorist, could kill, injure or displace thousands of people.
The Trib’s probe into lax rail security from New Jersey to Seattle was introduced as evidence in congressional hearings.
Some critics argue that the rule gives industry most of the control over where and how to route chemical-carrying trains. It potentially thwarts state and local authorities from passing laws aimed at preventing trains carrying hazardous materials from entering their borders.
“You don’t want to have a patchwork of laws or regulations that you almost couldn’t comply with,” said Tom White, spokesman for the Association of America Railroads. “If every community wants to ban it, (chemical-carrying trains) simply couldn’t move. There’s no way we can avoid every populated area in moving these things.”
But Fred Millar of the Friends of the Earth environmental group argued government shouldn’t allow railroads to decide which routes are most secure. Federal officials should instead force railroads to go around crowded areas or find other routes to move dangerous chemicals, he said.
“One chlorine tank car can put a lethal cloud 15 miles long over your city,” Millar said.
Rail accidents have been dropping over the years.
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, there were 15,160 accidents large and small involving freight trains in 1998. Last year, there were 11,827. The number of people killed in those accidents fell from 888 to 724.
White said dangerous cargo is transported in 100,000 cars, a fraction of the 33 million carloads of materials the rail industry carries yearly.
Chlorine and anhydrous ammonia account for 80 percent of the “toxic-by-inhalation” cargo that railroads carry nationwide each year, White said. Chlorine is used to purify water and has applications in the pharmaceutical and other industries. Anhydrous ammonia is used to make fertilizers.
A 2005 chlorine gas leak caused by a freight rail accident in Graniteville, S.C., led to nine deaths and the evacuation of 5,400 people. That was the last serious accident involving hazardous chemicals.
In New Jersey, a densely populated, industrialized state, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Homeland Security says the state hasn’t been waiting for federal officials to act and doesn’t feel constricted by the new rules.
Roger Shatzkin, spokesman for the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, said federal and state officials have conducted joint inspections of freight-rail tracks, and New Jersey has spent $2 million in federal homeland security grant money to improve rail-yard fencing and surveillance.
State officials and CSX Corp., the largest freight railroad operating in the Garden State, have an agreement that allows New Jersey to tap into the CSX computer system to track rail cars, Shatzkin said.
“We’re not ceding this to federal authority at all. We’ve been working with them for a while,” he said.