Cities worry about toxic substances in freight cars
is now Governor O’Malley’s homeland security adviser. Goodwin said the infrastructure is already in place through the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, a twenty-four-hour FBI watch center which investigates potential terrorist and criminal events that could lead to a large-scale catastrophe. New York, New Jersey and Kentucky are currently participating in the pilot program, said Bob Sullivan, a spokesman for CSX. Lauland said the railroads are worried that sensitive information about hazardous materials could fall into the wrong hands, but he said that is not a reasonable excuse. “My belief is that all of these problems are eminently solvable and need to be solved for public safety,” he said.
The results of a hazardous spill were on display in 2005 when a freight train struck a car on the tracks in Graniteville, South Carolina, causing a rupture in a tanker carrying liquid chlorine. The release caused a poisonous chlorine cloud; nine people were killed and 250 fell ill. “And that was nowhere near as bad as it could have been,” said Paul Orum of the Washington, D.C.-based Working Group on Community Right-to-Know, noting the rural location of Graniteville. “In a densely populated area such as Baltimore, one can envision a much worse result.”
Peggy Nasir, vice president of communications for the Association of American Railroads, said 99.97 percent of all hazardous material cars arrive at their destinations safely. Also, 99.1 percent of accidents result in no release of chemicals, she said. “We have a very good safety record, but we believe the best way to eliminate the risk entirely is to look toward using different types of chemicals that aren’t as hazardous or different types of technologies,” Nasir said.
Since 2001 a number of facilities that use chlorine, such as water treatment plants, have switched to safer chemicals which are not delivered by rail. In Baltimore, the Back River Wastewater Treatment Facility switched from chlorine gas to liquid bleach in 2004. The Ashburton Filtration Plant made the same change. There is no federal law requiring plants to use safer alternatives when they are available, and many plants still use chlorine gas. Baltimore thus finds itself in a situation in which its own water facilities no longer use chlorine, but the city is still exposed to chlorine transported through the city to plants elsewhere. Some cities have tried to force railroads to reroute trains carrying toxic chemicals, with mixed success. CSX now voluntarily reroutes such trains off a rail line that goes within a few blocks of the Capitol in Washington. “But I don’t know if they consider what is good enough for Washington, D.C., to be good enough for Baltimore as well,” Orum said. Several rerouting cases are now in court.
Orum said 3/10ths of 1 percent of all rail shipments contain the most hazardous substances, which include chlorine gas, anhydrous sulfur dioxide, hydrochloric acid, and anhydrous ammonia. That category does not include flammable materials such as propane. Orum said notification is important, so first responders know what they’re dealing with and how to approach it. But some substances are so toxic that there would be little a fire department could do. “In a worst-case release of an extremely hazardous toxic gas — in which a dense ground-hugging plume of toxic gas travels slowly many miles downwind — there practically would be no effective emergency response,” he said. “That leads one to certain conclusions, such as that wherever it’s feasible to use safe alternatives, it’s a good idea to get those [toxic] shipments off the rails.”
The House of Representatives passed a bill last month that would require railroads to provide information to local jurisdictions on hazardous materials traveling through tunnels. The Senate version has cleared a transportation committee and is waiting for a full vote.
