Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel.
Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.
By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)
WASHINGTON — A proposal to build the largest oil train terminal in the Pacific Northwest could result in a derailment every two years and an oil spill from a derailment once every 12, according to a draft analysis by a Washington state agency.
The document, released Tuesday, indicates that most fire departments along the oil trains’ rail route are not prepared for a spill or fire that could accompany a derailment. Out of the 12 departments that responded to the survey request, only one indicated its firefighters are trained and equipped for such an incident.
Further, only half the departments said they knew the locations of BNSF Railway’s specialized firefighting equipment closest to their jurisdiction. And while three-quarters of them reported having access to personal protective equipment, firefighting foam and foam applicators, only a quarter said they had access to oil spill containment booms.
The draft environmental impact statement from the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council said that BNSF would bring four oil trains a day to the Vancouver Energy facility at the Port of Vancouver, Wash., with the loaded trains mostly following the path of the Columbia River and the empty trains returning east via Tacoma, Auburn and Stampede Pass.
With those four daily trains, carrying 100 or more cars each of either light crude from North Dakota or diluted heavy crude from western Canada, the agency forecast “a derailment incident might occur once every two years with a loaded train, and once every 20 months with an empty train.”
The document noted, however, that not all derailments would result in a spill.
Tina Barbee, a spokeswoman for Vancouver Energy, said the company was reviewing the document and “will be able to address specific issues and respond to more detailed questions over the coming weeks.”
Courtney Wallace, a spokeswoman for BNSF, said the railroad had trained 800 firefighters in Washington state this year, and that included giving them the location of BNSF’s specialized firefighting resources.
She said BNSF has equipment and personnel staged in Everett, Seattle, Longview, Wishram, Pasco and Spokane.
“We will continue to work with first responders to ensure they have information about BNSF’s resources,” Wallace said.
©2015 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Photo: SounderBruce via Flickr
By Tony Barboza and Javier Panzar, Los Angeles Times (TNS)
LOS ANGELES — Three U.S. senators are raising concerns about a Texas-based company’s “insufficient” response to a pipeline failure last week that released thousands of gallons of crude into the ocean and fouled the Santa Barbara County coastline.
In a letter Thursday to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA), and Edward J. Markey (D-MA) questioned whether Plains All American Pipeline acted quickly enough in detecting and reporting the May 19 spill from its oil line near Refugio State Beach.
“We need answers about why this happened, why the response was insufficient and what can be done to prevent another tragic spill like this from happening in the future,” the senators wrote.
Plains Pipeline employees detected “anomalies” in the 11-mile pipeline at 11:30 a.m., and confirmed the failure on-site at 1:30 p.m. They reported the spill to the National Response Center just before 3 p.m., according to the letter.
“Based on this timeline, we are concerned that Plains Pipeline may not have detected this spill or reported it to federal officials as quickly as possible, and that these delays could have exacerbated the extent of the damage to the environment,” the senators wrote. They asked why it took two hours for Plains Pipeline to visually confirm the existence of a release of oil.
The letter also expressed concern that the ruptured pipeline lacked an automatic shutoff valve that could have detected a loss in pressure and decreased the amount of oil released.
Among other requests, the senators asked for detailed information on the company’s oil spill response plans, the timeline of its response and the line’s inspection history. They also want to know whether federal regulators have legal authority to require the company to install automatic or remote shutoff valves on the line as it is repaired.
At a news conference before the letter was released, Plains Pipeline officials apologized for the spill.
“We will not leave until the job is completed,” said Patrick Hodgins, senior director of safety and security with the company.
The lawmakers’ letter came as federal regulators announced that Plains Pipeline employees had removed the failed section of pipeline for testing following an excavation that took several days.
The section of pipe — about 50 feet in length, according to the company — will be taken to an independent metallurgical laboratory in Ohio.
The pipeline released up to 101,000 gallons of crude, with an estimated 21,000 gallons of oil flowing downhill from the spill site through a culvert, under U.S. 101 and into the Pacific.
The pipeline, known as Line 901, transports crude oil from Las Flores to Gaviota and then to refineries throughout Southern California. It remains shut down while federal pipeline regulators investigate the cause of the failure, both on-site and at the company’s control room in Texas.
The spill has closed several miles of beaches on the Gaviota Coast while nearly 1,000 cleanup workers try to remove oil from the rocks, sand and the ocean surface.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Coast Guard ordered Plains Pipeline to clean up the area under requirements of the federal Clean Water Act.
The senators, in their letter Thursday, also criticized the cleanup efforts, writing that authorities may not have “fully utilized” trained responders from local agencies and delayed training for volunteers.
“We are concerned that insufficient preparation may have slowed down the response effort,” the senators wrote.
(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Photo: A large glob of oil on the beach at Arroyo Quemado on Friday, May 22, 2015, after the oil spill off Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County, Calif. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
By Javier Panzar, Emily Alpert Reyes, and Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times (TNS)
REFUGIO STATE BEACH, Calif.– A section of oil pipeline that ruptured and spilled thousands of gallons of crude along the Santa Barbara County coast could be dug up by the end of the holiday weekend, authorities said, giving them the first opportunity to determine what caused the break.
More than 650 workers and 17 boats worked Saturday to clean up the black sheen, so far collecting 9,492 gallons of oily water mixture and 1,250 cubic yards of oily soil.
The rupture occurred on the inland side of U.S. 101 on Tuesday, spilling up to 105,000 gallons onto the coastal bluffs. An estimated 21,000 gallons ran down a culvert under the freeway and into the ocean at Refugio State Beach.
Cleaning crews must remove all the oil in the pipeline before they can pull it out to see whether corrosion, pressure or a series of failures led to the spill. They removed 15,540 gallons on Saturday, said Rick McMichael, director of pipeline operations for Plains All American Pipeline. He said that a “significant amount” was left and that cleanup crews were adding a second “tap” to speed up the process.
The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has ordered the pipeline operator to ship the ruptured pipe for metallurgical testing that will establish the condition of the pipe when it failed.
Federal records show Plains has accumulated 175 safety and maintenance infractions since 2006. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sued the company in 2010 over a series of 10 oil spills in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The oil from this rupture has spread to seven miles of coast, from Arroyo Hondo Creek to the west to El Capitan State Park on the east. Oil-stained birds and marine mammals were starting to show up farther away, as far south as Ventura and as far north as Point Conception.
A sea lion rescued from the spill area died overnight after being taken to Sea World for rehabilitation. An elephant seal and another sea lion recovered from the area are still alive. Five birds and two marine mammals have been found dead, and 10 live birds are being cleaned at a facility near Los Angeles, said Dr. Michael Ziccardi with the Oiled Wildlife care network.
At a news conference in Santa Barbara, company officials defended their operations, saying the pipeline met industry standards.
“Safety is a core value,” said Patrick Hodgins, senior director of safety and security for Plains. “And we do not put dollars in front of safety.”
Dozens of protesters nearby chanted, “End oil now!”
“Our most immediate demand is that dispersants be taken off the table as an option,” said Rebecca Claassen, an organizer with the activist group Food and Water Watch. Chemical dispersants help oil break into small droplets that disperse throughout the water column, keeping some of it from washing ashore in big slicks. But environmentalists have raised concerns about the health effects of the dispersants and the effects on aquatic life.
U.S. Coast Guard officials said no chemical dispersants have been used in the cleanup, although they have not ruled out using them in the future.
State parks officials said Refugio and El Capitan state parks would remain closed through June 4.
With national news crews staking out the area, campers and beachgoers seemed to be scared away from other parts of one of California’s most tranquil stretches of coast.
At Gaviota State Park, a few miles west of the oil plume, attendance was way down. Niel and Jamie Dommeyer came down with their three children to camp, expecting the usual hundred or so people on the beach. Saturday there were not even a few dozen.
“We’ve had the beach all to ourselves the last couple of days,” Niel said. “It has been real quiet.”
On Coal Oil Point, 12 miles southwest of the spill, volunteers tallied up the number of whales and calves that passed. Whenever they spied one with their binoculars from the vista point, they called the officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to warn them.
“They’ll try to steer the whales away from the oil,” said Michael Smith, project coordinator of Gray Whales Count.
He said the group was doing its 11th annual survey and had seen an impressive surge in the number of whales spotted — more than 1,400 so far.
Smith, a research biologist, was worried about the bottlenose dolphins seen frolicking below, along with harbor seals and sea lions.
“It’s all going to be impacted by it — and in many cases tragically,” he said.
(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Photo: General Physics Laboratory via Flickr
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