Poorly Regulated, High-Speed 'Bomb Trains' Are One Crash Away from Devastating Towns in NYC Suburbs

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/bomb-trains-snake-through-new-yorks-hudson-valley


Aftermath of the explosion in Lac Megantic, Quebec.

In the northern suburbs of New York City, endless strings of black tanker cars have become commonplace sightings at railroad crossings. They move along briskly with red hazmat placards reading “1267” — indicating crude oil — affixed to them. And while the rail and oil industries assure the public that these “virtual pipelines” are not much of a hazard, they're behemoths of kinetic energy flush with vast amounts of potential, explosive energy. An impact with a tanker car can spark a catastrophic detonation, annihilating whatever is nearby.

One such explosion occurred last summer in Lac Megantic, Quebec, a tiny lakeside village of less than 6,000 people. On July 6, a 74-car train carrying Bakken formation crude oil ran away and derailed, resulting in a massive explosion of multiple tanker cars. The blast radius was more than a half mile in diameter. Forty-seven people were killed, and 30 buildings — about half the village's downtown — were leveled.

The Lac Megantic train was destined for the same New Brunswick refinery that is sometimes the destination of the oil that travels through the Hudson Valley counties of Rockland, Orange, Ulster, and Greene. Other trains in those Hudson Valley communities go to refineries along the U.S. East Coast.

In addition to explosions, there have been several significant spills across the U.S. in the past six years. Together, these events have spilled more than 3 million gallons of oil, polluting wetlands, aquifers and residential areas, and the spills are not always cleaned up adequately, if at all. What's even more unsettling is that the volume of crude oil moving through the country by rail increases unabated, raising the odds of more tragedies in the future.