Focus turns to cleanup, environmental assessment in Whatcom train derailment
After Tuesday’s derailment of a train carrying crude oil in Custer, the focus has turned to cleanup and assessment of potential environmental impacts and damage — a risk environmental organizations and activists say is high when transporting oil by rail or pipeline.
Seven cars of a BNSF Railway freight train derailed at 11:46 a.m. Dec. 22 just south of the intersection of Portal Way and Main Street.
Five of the seven cars initially caught fire, and later Tuesday, only two remained burning. Both were extinguished as of 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 23, Courtney Wallace, a BNSF spokesperson, said.
Wallace said the northbound train headed for the Phillips 66 Refinery west of Ferndale was hauling more than 100 tank cars of crude oil from the Bakken Formation in North Dakota.
Justin Piper, BNSF’s director of hazardous response, said at a Wednesday press conference that locomotives were at both ends of the train, and the train’s two crew members disconnected the derailed portions and engines pulled the undamaged cars away from the fire, which sent up a thick cloud of toxic smoke.
Piper said three tank cars that ruptured were of the newer and unpressurized DOT-117 style, designed to minimize the effects of fire.
Bakken crude is highly volatile and has been linked to several disastrous fires. Tank cars such as the DOT-117 style can carry up to 30,500 gallons of crude oil, according to the manufacturer, Greenbrier Co.
Every year, around 20 billion gallons of oil moves through Washington state by vessel, rail and pipeline, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology.
Due to Tuesday’s derailment and the potential environmental impacts associated with it, nearby residents of up to a half-mile were evacuated until late Tuesday. Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said there were no injuries and no damage to nearby structures from the derailment.
Local, state and federal agencies are investigating the cause of and potential environmental impacts from the derailment.
U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, said he was concerned about the derailment in a statement issued Tuesday. Larsen is a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. His 2nd District seat covers south Bellingham and counties south of Whatcom.
“I worked closely with the Obama administration to create strong rules to make the transport of oil by rail safer. Clearly, there may be more work to do,” Larsen said in his statement. “I will continue to monitor the situation and await the findings of the NTSB’s (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation.”
As of Wednesday morning, Dec. 23, it was still unclear how much crude oil spilled, according to Ty Keltner, communications manager for the spills program with the state Department of Ecology. Wallace and Keltner said vacuum trucks were being used Wednesday morning to remove the oil. Once that process is complete, a determination can be made about how much oil was spilled, they said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, officials still didn’t know how much oil had spilled, but officials said it appears to have been contained at the fire scene.
Keltner, with ecology, said groundwater contamination issues are the biggest concern with this incident. He said officials were on scene Wednesday looking at whether there were groundwater impacts, and would be performing testing later in the day. The testing will determine the footprint of the spill, or how far it reached, he said.
Keltner said the mobile air monitors that measured the plume of black smoke that rose into the air after the derailment and cars caught fire were showing no concentrations that were of concern.
Officials said at Wednesday’s press conference that there appears to be no widespread contamination, which includes both air and water pollutants. They were also still investigating the cause of the derailment.
No safe way to move oil
Groundwater contamination is of great concern with this spill, said Matt Krogh, the U.S. Oil and Gas Program Director who is based out of Bellingham at Stand.earth, a West coast-based environmental organization.
“I think one of the things people need to be cognizant of is that there is no safe way to move crude oil, whether by pipeline or rail,” Krogh said in an interview with The Bellingham Herald. “Railroads connect population centers, pipelines are designed to connect production. Both are dangerous and problematic in their own way.”
Krogh said it’s hard to tell from Tuesday’s derailment whether the crude oil spilled was near a high-risk aquifer in the area, or a moderate risk area. He said it will be important to keep an eye on the groundwater after cleanup and continue testing for contamination.
Krogh said Bakken crude, which was being transported in Tuesday’s derailed cars, is high in benzine and other powerful carcinogens. He said high levels of benzene in groundwater can still be a problem years after a spill. He said it will be important to monitor the drinking water and groundwater for Custer residents.
Krogh said when oil is fracked, such as the type of oil coming from the Bakken Formation, it is volatile. While there are standards North Dakota has put in place to reduce the volatility of the crude oil, it’s still too high, Krogh said.
Washington state has been trying to get Bakken crude stabilized before it is moved through the state to lower the risk of explosion or fire during a derailment, but has been fought in court by the oil and rail industries, he said. Krogh said while there have been some improvements made to the tank cars that transport the oil, the improvements don’t go far enough. He said the focus needs to be on finding and utilizing renewable resources.
He said that if Tuesday’s derailment had happened in a more populous area, it could have been a catastrophe.
“Tank cars are not safe and never will be,” Krogh said. “Our goal needs to be to reduce our consumption of oil. It’s not safe by pipeline or by rail, and there are clear solutions around transportation.”
A stark reminder
Moving crude oil by rail by unit train, which are long trains carrying the same types of cargo, became a widespread mode of transporting oil in Washington state starting around 2011 and 2012, according to the state department of ecology and Eddy Ury, climate and energy policy manager with RE Sources, a Bellingham-based environmental nonprofit.
By 2013, rail terminals were permitted in the state and started receiving shipments of crude oil from North Dakota and Canada, Ury said in an interview with The Bellingham Herald Wednesday.
From July 1 through Sept. 30 of 2020, more than 14.1 million barrels of crude oil were transported by rail in Washington, according to state Department of Ecology quarterly reports. North Dakota was the origin for more than 87% of the crude oil transported by rail during those three months, the ecology data shows.
The weekly volume of crude oil transported by rail for July through September was more than 1 million barrels, with an average of 1,583 rail cars per week moving crude oil, the data states.
Ury said that between 2013 and 2016, there were 11 major incidents where oil trains derailed and several exploded. After that, some improvements were put in place that reduced the number of incidents going forward, but Ury said they’re still a risk and the environmental damage and impacts from derailments can be great.
“What it comes down to if you move oil through this method of transportation, there’s just a probability that incidents like this will occur. Derailments happen. Not all will result in fires or explosions, but a number of them do. Oil, and in particular crude oil as well as other refined fossil fuel products, are really a problem. They’re not something that’s just extinguished easily,” Ury said. “We are fortunate in a number of ways with this incident, with this location and the conditions of it where responders were able to get there quickly and contain it.”
Ury said it’s not known yet how much oil may have made its way beneath the snow cover and ice from Monday’s rain and snowstorm, and could have gone beyond the immediate area before responders showed up, or what the impacts to Custer’s water supply may be.
“We’re glad it wasn’t worse, we’re fortunate it wasn’t worse and that there were no direct injuries or greater harm caused. But the environmental damages are significant, even in the best-case scenario,” Ury said.
While it was helpful that specialized fire crews from two refineries showed up Tuesday to assist with extinguishing the blaze from the derailment, the type of flame suppressants used by those crews creates separate toxic contamination that needs to be cleaned up, Ury said.
Officials handling the cleanup will have to check for evidence of petroleum-based products in the waterways, including nearby California Creek, a salmon-bearing stream, said Eleanor Hines, North Sound Baykeeper and lead scientist at RE Sources, in an interview with The Herald.
Hines said there have been studies that show even small levels of crude oil can have impacts on salmon and herring early on in their lives and have long-lasting impacts on their survival. As for the fire suppressant chemicals used, she said they include long-lasting chemicals that don’t break down easily, so monitoring for them will be important.
Hines said even in the best-case scenario with a crude oil train derailment, there will still be some level of environmental impact. She said oil train derailments are an environmental concern, as well as a human health concern, as there are often communities near train tracks that could be impacted.
“Ecology makes it sound like things are pretty contained, however, we’re still concerned. No matter how well contained it is, something has probably leaked out, it’s just a question of how much,” Hines said. “We look forward to seeing more information gathered and seeing some long-term monitoring that there aren’t long-lasting impacts.”
Ury said while great work has happened to limit and restrict the levels of crude oil transportation, more needs to be done. He said as long as oil is moving frequently, it’s a risk that incidents like Tuesday’s derailment could happen, and that they could be worse. He said RE Sources and other organizations will continue to work for policies that prevent derailments, oil spills and subsequent explosions and fires from happening in order to prevent future harm.
“This incident is a stark reminder of the continuing risks that our communities face from the very frequent shipments of crude oil by rail concentrated through our area, exposing thousands of local residents and many more along the rail route to a life-threatening derailment with fire and explosion,” Ury said. “We can look at other incidents where lives were lost and enormous amounts of property damage occurred from an oil train derailment and explosions. We are just fortunate we did not see that yesterday.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 12:28 PM.
