(The following story by Spencer Hunt appeared on the Columbus Dispatch website on March 8, 2009.)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Deadly chlorine destined for northern Ohio, Michigan and Iowa routinely is sent through Cincinnati and Columbus so a railroad company can maximize profits, critics say.
The route, says the company that makes the gas, takes it as much as 300 miles out of the way.
The railroad company CSXT transports the gas from PPG’s Ohio River plant on a rail line southwest to Cincinnati before sending it north through Columbus, according to comments the gas manufacturer filed last year with federal rail officials.
PPG wants to use a shorter, northerly route offered by a different rail company but can’t because CSXT owns the lines outside the chlorine plant along the Ohio River near Natrium, W.Va.
PPG and environmentalists say CSXT needlessly puts thousands of people in Columbus and Cincinnati at risk by keeping the gas on its lines.
“This is the case of one railroad hanging on to a route that is ludicrously dangerous and ludicrously inefficient,” said Fred Millar, a rail-safety consultant who works with Friends of the Earth, a Washington-based advocacy group.
Although CSXT would not discuss its routes, the company and rail-industry officials said public safety is their top priority.
“Railroads know best which is the safest, most efficient way to ship extremely dangerous cargo,” said Patti Reilly, spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, based in Washington. “Shorter, more direct does not necessarily mean safer.”
Railroads safely transport 99.9 percent of about 1.7 million carloads of hazardous materials a year.
However, one ruptured chlorine tanker car can create a cold, dense toxic cloud that can stretch 4 miles wide and 15 miles long, Millar said.
In January 2005, chlorine released from a train derailment near Graniteville, S.C., killed nine people.
Though semi-trucks that carry hazardous materials are diverted around Columbus on I-270, trains are allowed to go straight through Downtown with no advance notice to city or county emergency-management officials.
CSXT train tracks extend through Columbus from a rail yard near Frank Road and Parsons Avenue on the city’s South Side. Lines run by or through the Brewery District, Franklinton, the Arena District and Ohio State University. Another CSXT line runs past the Ohio State Fairgrounds and parallels I-71 through Clintonville.
The Federal Railroad Administration reported 1,724 derailments nationwide last year, including 66 in Ohio and six in Franklin County.
The last hazardous spill here occurred in March 2007 on the Far East Side, when a tanker car spilled about a gallon of molten sulfur after it was derailed.
In February 2004, two train cars collided at Norfolk Southern’s Buckeye yard south of Hilliard. A tanker that contained 22,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid ruptured, prompting officials to shut down several roads and evacuate some houses and businesses. No one was hurt.
In 1998, a Conrail train that included at least one chlorine tanker derailed near Downtown. The chlorine didn’t leak, but a different car spilled about 20,000 gallons of liquid soap.
A law that Congress enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack was supposed to make rail companies look for safer routes. But Millar and PPG officials said rules that the Bush administration adopted in December to enforce that law actually help rail companies keep their old routes.
PPG, for example, wants CSXT to hand off the chlorine to the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway about 20 miles north of the Natrium plant. It argues that the railway is “less risky” because it goes through more rural areas.
In comments filed May 16 with the Federal Railroad Administration, PPG said the new rules allow CSXT to bypass Wheeling & Lake Erie.
Bill Callison, president of Wheeling & Lake Erie, said he does take some shipments of PPG chlorine. How much he ships is entirely up to CSXT.
PPG officials declined to comment, except to confirm that the company’s transportation issues haven’t changed since May.
Millar said his group is pushing the Obama administration and Congress to change the rules.
Mike Pannell, director of the Franklin County Emergency Management and Homeland Security agency, said that he will look into the situation, but he doubts there’s much his office can do.
“If it was up to me and I could say no hazardous materials would move through Franklin County, I would do that,” Pannell said.