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Tell the Dept. of Transportation: Protect California communities from dangerous oil trains
Elijah Zarlin-- CREDO Action
The Department of Transportation must stop these dangerous oil train tanker cars.
Oil companies want to dramatically increase oil train traffic to refineries in California - using tanker cars that the Department of Transportation has known for decades are unsafe.
Submit a public comment before the November 5th deadline, urging the Department of Transportation to take action.
<http://act.credoaction.com/go/2424?t=1&akid=9322.2348285.kdVKub>
This summer, in the middle of the night, the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic was suddenly thrust into a nightmare. A train carrying North Dakota crude oil derailed, and then exploded, destroying half the downtown and claiming 47 lives.
With oil companies planning to massively increase the number of oil trains transporting Alberta tar sands crude to California refineries,1 dangerous oil trains are a serious and growing threat to communities in our state, and across the U.S.
Astonishingly, federal regulators have known since 1991 that the most common railway tanker car – known as the DOT-111 – is prone to rupture and explode during derailments. Yet regulators have largely sat on their hands.
In the wake of the Lac-Megantic tragedy, the Department of Transportation is now accepting public comments on oil train safety. Our current system is anything but safe – and it's time for the DOT to take the dangerous DOT-111 train cars off the rails.
Submit a comment to the Department of Transportation: Protect our communities from dangerous oil trains.
<http://act.credoaction.com/go/2420?t=2&akid=9322.2348285.kdVKub>
Lac-Megantic wasn’t the first oil tanker train explosion, or even the most recent. In fact, earlier this month there was an explosion in Alberta, Canada after 13 DOT-111 tanker cars carrying liquefied petroleum and crude oil derailed. In 2009, 13 tanker cars ruptured and caught fire after a derailment in Cherry Valley, Illinois, killing one person and injuring nine, including two firefighters.
The DOT-111 has been called “the Ford Pinto” of the railways, because, like the car that was pulled from the roads in the early 70’s, DOT-111’s have a “high incidence of tank failures during accidents.”
With oil companies looking to expand on the already-booming oil production in the Alberta tar sands and the Bakken formation in North Dakota, they are relying on these unsafe rail cars to bring their oil to refineries and coastal shipping ports. But we can’t let them continue to endanger communities with rail tanker cars that are known to have serious safety problems.
Removing these dangerous tankers from our railroads – and ensuring that the replacements are built to higher standards - is only one way that the Department of Transportation can take action to improve rail safety. The agency should also enforce speed limits on trains, reschedule trains from running through communities at peak times, and alert communities when these trains will be moving through.
Tell the Department of Transportation: Protect our communities from the dangerous DOT-111 tanker train car.
Submit a comment now. <http://act.credoaction.com/go/2420?t=3&akid=9322.2348285.kdVKub>
Thanks for taking a stand against dangerous oil trains.
Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets <http://act.credoaction.com/go/109?t=4&akid=9322.2348285.kdVKub>