WV focused on rail safety, but secrecy (on oil) remains
Charleston Gazette-Daily
Five months ago, when a 111-car CSX freight train carrying about 3.1 million gallons of crude oil derailed, exploded and caught fire in Mount Carbon, Lt. Col. Larry Boggs and his team were among the first emergency response officials on the scene.
Boggs runs the West Virginia National Guard’s 35th Civil Support Team, a 22-member group based in St. Albans that specializes in chemical, biological, nuclear and explosive incidents. ...
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The FRA, a 900-person agency, is responsible for regulating the safety of America’s freight and passenger rails. ...
... "West Virginia is one of those places where so many people live along railroad tracks and live in small communities near rail, and it is so important to keep those people as safe as they can possibly be.”
Since the derailment, Feinberg said, her agency has finalized a rule requiring modern pneumatic braking systems on trains and has begun to require the phase out of older tank cars.
Also, on Wednesday, the FRA sent a reminder to railroad companies that transport crude oil that they must continue to notify state emergency responders of the details of oil trains traveling through states.
Only one state that CSX ships oil through had received updated information from the company within the last year, according to McClatchy.
In 2014, the FRA required CSX and other rail companies to tell states where oil trains are traveling, how often they’re coming through and how much crude oil they are carrying.
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“There is an interest for the public to have that information, to have access to it, to know what’s coming through their communities,” Feinberg said Friday, adding that, although railroads must send the data to states, it is up to state officials to determine if it will be passed on to the public.
In West Virginia, the data on where, how often and how much crude oil is rolling through the state remains hidden from the public.
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http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article/20150724/GZ01/150729688
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