(The following story by David Singleton appeared on the Times Tribune website on July 15.)
SCRANTON, Pa. — Like most children, Bill and Mary Beth Booth’s kids love trains, reveling in the steel-on-steel excitement of the locomotives and cars that rumble through Glenburn Township within sight of their front door.
Like most children, Bill and Mary Beth Booth’s kids love trains, reveling in the steel-on-steel excitement of the locomotives and cars that rumble through Glenburn Township within sight of their front door.
But Mr. Booth recognizes the flipside. As much as his children — 5 years, 3 years and 17 months old — enjoy watching the freights that pass on the other side of Waterford Road, their home is less than 150 yards from what he basically regards as an industrial site fraught with potential calamity.
“It’s a huge concern,” said Mr. Booth, 44, a former township supervisor. “When you think about what those cars are carrying and what they might be carrying, you have to be concerned.”
A federal rule that took effect July 1 requires railroads around the country to explore alternative routes for the shipment of hazardous materials. The stated intent is to shift the most dangerous substances to the “safest and most secure” paths and thus reduce the risk in the event of an accident or terrorist attack.
While the Federal Railroad Administration rule covers certain explosive and radioactive materials, it is aimed mostly at “toxic inhalation hazards,” gases or liquids such as chlorine or anhydrous ammonia that can be deadly if released.
But the process may provide little comfort for the Booths and others who live along the area’s primary freight corridor — the Canadian Pacific Railway-owned line that slices north and south through the heart of Lackawanna County and is used by both CPR and Norfolk Southern Railway.
In many parts of the country, few alternatives exist for diverting hazardous materials from populated areas.
“There are very limited options, and sometimes those options are really inappropriate,” said Tom White, spokesman for the American Association of Railroads.
Neither Canadian Pacific nor Norfolk Southern would release information about the frequency or the volume of hazardous materials they haul through Northeastern Pennsylvania. CPR spokesman Mike LoVecchio said the numbers fluctuate based on “the ebb and flow of business.”
“It’s not something we would routinely release in any case,” he said, citing both security and competitive reasons.
Two incidents in the past nine months have raised the level of concern:
• Ammonia-like fumes sickened nearly three-dozen people, including 32 youth cheerleaders, at a football field in North Scranton on Oct. 8. The leading suspect was anhydrous ammonia from a passing Norfolk Southern train, although federal investigators found no evidence of a leak. The source of the fumes is still unknown.
• Nine cars of a Norfolk Southern train derailed June 23 near the Glenburn Township Municipal Building, across the street from the Booth home. There were no injuries or leaks, but among the derailed cars were three tankers containing residual amounts of anhydrous ammonia. Another carried sulfuric acid.
Lackawanna County Emergency Management Agency officials don’t receive volume figures from the railroads, but the agency is aware a “fairly decent amount” of hazardous material moves through the county by train on a regular basis, said Kevin Howard, operations and training officer.
“We have been told by individuals with the railroads … it is conceivable that on any given day you are going to have one of those items if not more than one on every train,” Mr. Howard said.
Rail industry officials say that may be an excessive generalization.
Of the 33 million carloads that American railroads transport each year, about 1.7 million, or roughly 5 percent, carry materials that are classified as hazardous. However, very few of those substances — everything from whiskey to paint to contaminated soil — would be considered life-threatening, Mr. White said.
The target of the federal rule is the 100,000 rail cars that carry high-hazard materials. Two chemicals — chlorine, which is used for water purification, and anhydrous ammonia, which is used in the production of fertilizer — represent about 80 percent of what the railroads must track, FRA spokesman Steve Kulm said.
Through December, railroads will collect data on the hazardous materials they transport and the routes they use, Mr. Kulm said. They then have until Sept. 1, 2009, to complete a risk and route assessment, taking into account 27 factors ranging from track type to availability of practicable alternative routes to “proximity to iconic targets.”
Mr. Kulm said the biggest misconception is that the process will reroute hazardous materials shipments around major cities and population centers.
“It may be that the safest and most secure route may be through a city,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure these shipments are safe wherever they travel.”
Last month’s derailment in Glenburn left Mr. Booth’s neighborhood on edge. He said he and neighbors often can readily identify most of the cargo that rolls past their homes — new automobiles, lumber, coal, scrap metal — but then there are the tankers.
“You assume most of it is completely harmless,” Mr. Booth, “but who knows?”