(The following article by Bill Egbert was posted on the New York Daily News website on January 17.)
NEW YORK — Two million tons of hazardous materials pass through the New York area by rail annually – about half of it in freight cars that don’t meet federal safety standards, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) charged yesterday.
Schumer accused regulators of being “asleep at the switch.”
And he blasted them for allowing the outdated infrastructure blamed for the deadly Jan. 6 train crash and chemical spill in Graniteville, S.C. The smashup killed nine people and forced the evacuation of the 5,400-population town.
“Can you imagine if that happened in New York?” Schumer asked. “Five thousand people is a whole town in some places. But that’s four or five apartment buildings here.”
Schumer released a map showing the heavy population densities along New York’s 3,695 miles of freight rail tracks. He warned that nearly half the switches controlling traffic on the nation’s rail lines are the same type that caused the train to smash into a chlorine tanker in South Carolina.
And more than half of the nation’s 60,000 pressurized rail tankers do not meet federal safety standards, he said.
Schumer is pushing legislation that would add train inspectors, increase penalties, replace manual switches with computerized controls and set a 15-year age limit on rail cars that carry hazardous materials.
Under current law, the maximum fine levied by the Federal Railroad Administration is $11,000.
“For a company making $1 billion a year, $11,000 is just a cost of doing business,” said Schumer. “But if the rail car in South Carolina had proper safety measures, nine people would be alive today.”