(The following story by Judy Fahys appeared on The Salt Lake Tribune website on March 24, 2009.)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — A fight in Washington between Union Pacific Railroad and US Magnesium has put a harsh spotlight on the risks chlorine rail shipments pose for residents of Salt Lake City and millions of other Americans.
Last month Union Pacific asked the federal Surface Transportation Board for permission to reject some tankers carrying chlorine from the magnesium-maker’s plant on the western edge of the Great Salt Lake to customers as far as 2,000 miles away. The cargo travels through major cities, including Chicago, Houston and Kansas City.
Union Pacific says the risks are enormous for people in densely populated areas like Salt Lake City. But US Magnesium insists it’s built up an excellent safety record over the years for shipping chlorine.
Meanwhile, one environmental activist says the nation’s chlorine-shipping practices are reckless because they allow tankers full of the dangerous chemical to roll through population centers.
“The real problem is something that has worried the federal government since 9/11 and that is we’re bringing through our major cities cargoes that the federal government calls weapons of mass destruction,” said Fred Millar, a consultant for the environmental group Friends of the Earth.
An adviser in Washington, D.C., on its ordinance requiring the rerouting of dangerous tankers, Millar said that about 100,000 tankers carrying dangerous chlorine and ammonia travel U.S. railways every year.
Attorneys for the two companies did not respond to requests for comment. But papers they’ve filed at the Surface Transportation Board sketch out their quarrel.
The flap began Jan. 18, when US Magnesium requested updated shipping rates from the railroad, which has carried chlorine to customers from Florida to California.
A month later, Union Pacific filed its request with the three-member board to be let off the hook from its “common carrier” requirements to ship US Magnesium chlorine to four customers in Louisiana and Texas. Those customers could get their chlorine from sources within a few hundred miles, railroad lawyer Tonya W. Conley wrote.
“Obviously, if UP were concerned first and foremost with its private economic interests, it would encourage these long shipments,” the request said. “Other governmental agencies, however, have pressed us to find ways to reduce TIH [“toxic inhalation hazards” like chlorine]. As a responsible public citizen, we concluded that those considerations should prevail.”
The company safely ships hazardous materials daily and “the risk of an accident is low,” the railroad company’s petition said. But it does not want to subject millions of people in “High Threat Urban Areas,” like Salt Lake City, Kansas City and Fort Worth, “to remote, but deadly, risks.”
US Magnesium on Monday urged the board to reject the railroad company’s request.
The company harvests magnesium chloride from the Great Salt Lake, extracts the magnesium for use as a metal strengthener and sells the liquefied chlorine. There’s a limit to chlorine the company is permitted to release into the air or store on site.
After US Magnesium’s $50 million plant modernization, chlorine has become crucial to the company’s survival, said attorney Thomas W. Wilcox.
“In today’s world market for magnesium,” he wrote, “eliminating the sales of the co-product chlorine would render the Rowley [Utah] facility uneconomic, forcing the closure of the last remaining producer of magnesium in the United States.”
The Surface Transportation Board is accepting public comment on the proposal until March 31. The two companies have until April 20 to complete their arguments. There is no deadline for the board’s decision.