Rail safety questioned as fuel shipments likely to go up

As more train cars carrying volatile fuel are likely to roll into Delaware over the next year, concerns are growing over how well the state's freight tracks are inspected for derailment-causing flaws.

Delaware is one of three states that are home to both a large oil refinery and also do not employ inspectors to oversee railroads, the News Journal has learned.

Instead, the job of regulating railroad safety is left to federal officials, whose resources are spread thin across the tens of thousands of miles of rail throughout the country. In 2016, those regulators conducted a handful of inspections on Delaware tracks.

While far fewer derailments occur today than a generation ago, freight trains are transporting more dangerous products than the foodstuffs that dominated rail shipments in previous decades, said Allen Zarembski, a railroad engineering professor at the University of Delaware.

One high-profile crash can cause catastrophic results for communities, the environment and impede the shipment of fuel. That happened in Mt. Carbon, West Virginia, in 2015, when a broken rail caused a string of oil cars to jump off of their tracks and explode.

Preventing that, Zarembski said, starts with probing rails for the leading culprit of derailments – microscopic fissures in track steel.

"The only reason you really should be concerned about it is you still do have the oil trains going into Delaware City," Zarembski said. "That is a potential risk area. That’s a real potential risk area."

While fewer oil trains traveled to the Delaware City refinery's $100 million train terminal during the past year as crude prices dropped, increased shipments of volatile ethanol are likely in the near future. The facility has capacity to unload 130,000 barrels of fuel each day. A typical oil car carries about 700 barrels of crude.

“I think the state of Delaware needs to look at what they need to do,” Zarembski said.

PBF Energy, owner of the Delaware City refinery, plans to open a depot for ethanol at its facility, increasing by fivefold the amount of the gasoline additive they bring into the area. While refinery officials have not publicly disclosed many details about the project, state documents indicate they plan to bring it into the facility by boat and by train, and will re-purpose part of the existing oil-train terminal.

It is a plan that has sparked challenges from environmentalists who argue it violates the Coastal Zone Act, the state's landmark environmental law. While PBF won an initial legal challenge after it was brought to a state environmental board, plaintiffs appealed to Delaware Superior Court.

The refinery's operations and the associated train shipments draw strong emotions on both sides. While they provide hundreds of jobs, they can harm the peaceful nature of neighborhoods near and beyond Delaware City, many said.

For Bear-area homeowner Omar Reid, noise and vibrations are the chief concern. And the possibility of a train crash lurks in the back of his mind.

One night, "I thought literally the damn thing derailed. It went ka-boom! And one of our crystals fell," said Reid, who lives in the Mallard Pointe subdivision.

Susan Devereaux, a New Castle resident whose backyard abuts freight tracks, said trains "squeal" as they pass and sometimes cause debris from the tracks to sail toward neighbors' homes.

“I would rather have a trail going down there,” she said.

Rail defects found

Nationally, the Federal Railroad Administration increased scrutiny of trains and tracks that transport volatile fuels after the devastating oil train derailment in West Virginia two years ago.

In official statements, they encouraged rail companies to more closely watch for track defects.

Federal law mandates that railroads inspect their own tracks. The Federal Railroad Administration reviews those inspections and also performs its own. Most states also employ inspectors who coordinate with the feds.

But by the end of 2016, many railroads had not answered calls for safer inspections, Matt Lehner, former communications director at the Federal Railroad Administration, told The News Journal earlier this year.

"Railroads tend to be all over the map when it comes to the quality that we’re looking for," said Lehner, an agency appointee who left his position with the departure of President Barack Obama. "We’ve made clear to them that this still is something that we need to see improvement on.”

Pressed whether a safety issue exists in Delaware, Lehner pointed to a 2016 Federal Railroad Administration report that showed federal inspectors found 41,398 defects on U.S. railways and trains owned by CSX Transportation and 33,233 on those owned by Norfolk Southern. Those two companies are Delaware's primary railway operators, and their tracks extend throughout the eastern third of the United States.

Roughly 40 percent of defects listed in the federal report were track-related flaws. The remainder were a result of broken train car couplings, faulty brakes, broken switches and others problems.

The News Journal sent a Freedom of Information request to the agency for a state-by-state breakdown of the violations. Responding data appears inconclusive as federal officials only conducted 13 observations on Norfolk Southern tracks in Delaware, finding two defects. Neither resulted in a violation.

FRA inspectors found 16 defects on CSX tracks in Delaware after conducting 34 observations. Again, none of those resulted in a violation.

Zarembski said federal regulators auditing track safety don't focus their limited resources on Delaware, except along its Northeast Corridor passenger rails. They go to where the traffic is, he said, and fewer freight cars roll along Delaware tracks than in inland states, such as Ohio or Indiana.

A November report from an organization of state rail inspectors stated the FRA "is resource constrained and estimates that it is only able to inspect about 0.2 percent of railroad operations each year."

A total of 1,067 trains or track defects found by regulators on all CSX equipment resulted in FRA officials recommending a violation, a 48 percent increase from the previous year. Those defects amounted to the most per mile of any large railroad operator.

While CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle in January said he was not familiar with the FRA report, he stated, “we have a very thorough inspection regime.”

Norfolk Southern rail defects of any kind across its entire U.S. network resulted in 524 recommended violations, a 23 percent increase from the previous year.

David Pigeon, spokesman at Norfolk Southern, defends the rail industry's track record, noting freight train crashes have dropped nearly 80 percent since 1980.

"Every year, Norfolk Southern invests $900 million to $1 billion in track infrastructure,” he said.

According to a company document, Norfolk Southern invested $881 million on maintenance, repairs and replacements to its infrastructure in 2015.

Both companies face immense pressure from investors to cut costs as the freight industry evolves away from a dependence on coal shipments.

High stakes

A month after CSX crews noticed defects in a West Virginia track in early 2015, a vertical split in the rail caused 27 eastbound, fully-loaded, crude oil cars to jump off of their tracks, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

A fireball ignited after the bulbous cars’ steel skins were punctured, leading to the evacuation of hundreds of residents for days as a fire burned the volatile crude from North Dakota’s at-that-time flourishing Bakken region.

Those are the stakes for railroad engineers and their federal counterparts.

Zarembski, a 30-year railroad veteran, in December won a $1.4 million federal grant for his University of Delaware team to use big data gathered by railroads over the years to more efficiently find stretches of rail that need to be replaced before significant defects emerge. The results could then be provided to rail companies.

While government regulators "need to keep the railroads honest," he said, track safety is primarily the responsibility of railroads, he said.

Railroads employ both human and ultrasonic inspectors on tracks. But even those methods can fail.

Prior to the West Virginia derailment, CSX-contracted inspectors twice found evidence of a defect along the rail that eventually caused oil-train cars to jump off of the tracks.

Yet, the company did not replace the defective rail, according to U.S. DOT report.

When asked about the incident in January, Doolittle emphasized safety is the top priority at CSX.

STORY: Oil price slump slows Delaware City rail traffic

STORY: Delaware officials avoiding Coastal Zone showdown

There were 908 train derailments throughout the country during the first nine months of 2016, down from 2015 when there were 1,139, during the same period. A total of 209 involved trains carrying hazardous materials.

Derailments range from minor incidents, such as when wheels from four freight cars bounced off of CSX tracks in Wilmington in 2015, to catastrophic events such as the crash in West Virginia, which led to the evacuation of hundreds of area residents as a fire burned for days.

The deadliest oil train crash, according to recent records, occurred in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic in 2013 when a runaway oil train derailed and exploded, killing 47 people.

Because the stakes are so high, Zarembski and environmentalists have questioned whether Delaware should join its neighbors as a track safety regulator.

“I definitely think they need to do a serious study looking at what level of safety oversight the state should use to complement the federal, and to provide oversight to" railroads, Zarembski said.

Jonathan Starkey, a spokesman for Gov. John Carney said in an email, the governor "will review any concerns about rail inspections and ask members of his administration to respond appropriately."

Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said state inspectors would add a layer of protection for people who live near tracks. Another potential role for state officials, she said, could be as lobbyists to the federal government to ensure strict rail oversight.

"This is not corn and soybeans," she said, referring to products that once dominated rail freight shipping. "A lack of adequate rail safety inspectors increases the risk of a catastrophic rail accident."

Local impact

Long lines of oil cars pulled by a rumbling diesel engine have kept Bear-area resident Reid's family awake at night for years. It was worse in 2013 and 2014 when North Dakota oil production peaked, sending tens of thousands of barrels each day to Delaware.

That production has slowed, but trains still pass, he said – and still at night.

"It's about 1 or 2 in the morning, and I’m feeling the vibrations in my house as the trains rumble back and forth. And you can hear it stop, “eeeaaah, bang, boom. And then the engine would be left on all night,” he said.

While crude oil train shipments dropped in 2016, they could increase again if the commodity price ticks upward, making North Dakota crude competitive once again for the Delaware City Refinery.

A 2013 Norfolk Southern report said the company's largest oil-shipping customer was the Delaware City Refinery.

More trains would likely cause Reid and neighbors in Mallard Pointe to call elected officials and complain, he said. Ten years ago, when he moved into the house near the U.S. 13/40 split, he was told the tracks along his backyard were "dead,” he said.

Reid believes state officials should warn residents when and where the trains will pass, he said.

Kimberly Chandler, spokeswoman at the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, said this month that public disclosure of train routes and frequencies would impair the department’s ability to obtain the information in the future.

“CSX and Norfolk Southern are industry competitors and certain routing information regarding the transportation of Bakken crude oil in Delaware...is considered by the (U.S. Department of Transportation) and the railroad companies as highly sensitive," she said in an email.

But former-FRA Administrator Sarah Feinberg stated  in 2015, “we strongly support transparency and public notification to the fullest extent possible."

Fewer railroad workers?

CSX and Norfolk Southern corporations today are facing mounting pressures from investors to cut costs. Mostly, they do that by reducing their workforce.

While discussing their most recent annual report, Norfolk Southern officials said they would not increase the workforce even as operations grow.

When asked if that means fewer track inspectors, Pigeon, the Norfolk Southern spokesman, said, “You have to balance where the demand is with rail transportation without sacrificing that high expectation for safety,” he said.

CSX will continue "headcount reductions," its executives told analysts after their most recent annual report was released in January. The company can accommodate a smaller workforce with longer trains, and more automated rail inspections, Chief Operating Officer Cindy Sanborn said.

Last month, during the company's first-quarter earnings call, Sanborn said CSX saved $123 million during the first three months of their fiscal year.

"Significant resource productivity drove this. Continued train length opportunities and reduction in crew starts, and also we saw some other support costs, particularly in engineering and mechanical labor cost also affecting us positively in the quarter," she said.

But fewer employees likely means less safe trains, said Rick Inclima, director of safety at the Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees.

"It’s often the bean counters who are making these decisions to bolster stock prices, satisfy investors," he said.

Federal rule-makers also are too quick to acquiesce to railroads, Inclima added, allowing companies to use one inspector to look for defects on two sets of tracks at a time

“You really can’t do two things at a time…there really should be one set of eyes per track," he said. "If I’m looking at the track I’m on, I can’t simultaneously look at the track next to me.”

Looking forward

Much about crude and ethanol-by-rail shipments are uncertain. Construction of pipelines in the Midwest, which President Donald Trump supports, could eventually keep oil train traffic to the East Coast from ever reaching peaks seen three years ago.

Lehner argues even a low number of trains in Delaware could pose a hazard without proper oversight.

“There are people who live along railroad tracks,” he said. “They are counting on us to make sure that train makes it from its origin to its destination without an incident.”

While the state of Delaware does not regulate tracks, state workers survey terrain along tracks in order to form emergency response plans in case a catastrophic derailment occurs, said Jamie Bethard, emergency manager at the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

“We’re looking to see if there’s a derailment here, what can occur? What resources are at play? Are we close to houses? Are we close to trees? Are we close to marshes? Are we close to water?”

Between three and five crude oil trains pass along tracks in Delaware each week, he said.

He could not say specifically which blocks of homes were at the highest risk of a derailment, but noted in “Old New Castle, the railroad tracks are going right through the middle of the town.”

“Is it going to be a bad day when it happens? Yeah, it’s going to be a bad day, but I think we’re much better prepared to respond than we have been,” he said.

Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2329. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6.