(The following story by Mary Beth Sheridan appeared on the Washington Post website on April 17.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Transportation Department issued a rule yesterday that orders railroads to extensively analyze security risks in choosing the routes on which they ship hazardous chemicals.
Railroads will be required to do a safety and security risk analysis of primary routes and any practical alternatives they might use, the department said. By September 2009, they must route trains with dangerous chemicals based on the studies. Those that do not use the safest routes could be fined up to $10,000 a day and ordered to reroute trains.
Congress had ordered the department to come up with the rule to comply with the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
The movement of trains carrying hazardous cargo such as chlorine through Washington has stirred controversy because of concerns about a terrorist threat. The D.C. government passed a law barring the shipment of dangerous cargo through the city in 2005. CSX Transportation and the Bush administration fought the ban in federal court, where the case is still tied up. The ban never took effect.
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said the rule better ensures that such rail shipments “will reach their final destinations safely and without incident.”
In their analyses, railroads will be required to consider 27 risk factors such as trip length, population density, and volume and types of hazardous materials being moved, Peters said. They also must consider information provided by communities.
Environmental activists said they were disappointed the measure didn’t require railroads to go around cities such as Washington. The rule will be “allowing the railroads to actually select their own routes, leaving D.C. and other cities vulnerable to terrorist attack,” said Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace.
CSX Transportation, based in Jacksonville, Fla., owns and operates the lines in the District and Maryland. The company decided in 2005 to stop carrying its most hazardous materials on the line that passes the Mall and the Capitol. It still carries such cargo on a line that travels through Northeast Washington near Union Station and Catholic University, although the volume has decreased in recent years, according to D.C. officials.
Interim D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles said he had not seen the new rule and could not predict its effect on the city’s legal case.
But, he said, “practically speaking, as a result of discussions we’ve had with CSX, they have for some time halted the north-south” movement of rail cars with hazardous materials. The company has “been very sensitive” about the shipments on the second line, in Northeast, he said.
Bob Sullivan, a spokesman for CSX, said the steps it took in 2005 to reduce the amount of hazardous material it moved through Washington would “remain in effect, pending the outcome of the federal litigation” with the District.
As for the new regulation, “we are prepared to do what the rule asks, and go forward from there,” he said, declining to offer specifics.