Posted on 09/15/2014 8:45:16 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
The environmental group Earthjustice, funded by George Soros and joined by the Sierra Club and ForestEthics, is suing the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in order to prevent crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken formation to be moved to California.
The suit is reportedly in reaction the Kern County Board of Supervisors’ approval last Tuesday of Alon USA Energy's plan to expand the rail terminal at its Bakersfield, CA refinery. The expansion of the terminal would create the state’s largest crude-by-rail facility and allow the terminal to import five times as much crude oil by train as it already does, Earthjustice is also claiming that the state’s railroad bridges, which help transport the crude oil and are owned by private companies, are unsafe. Earthjustice asserts that railroad cars called DOT-111s, which carry oil, are antiquated, and has asked the DOT to issue an emergency order to stop the DOT-111s from carrying the oil.
Although the DOT has plans to replace the DOT-111’s, a lawyer for Earthjustice, Patti Goldman, told public radio station KQED, “They would still allow these railcars to be shipping crude oil and hazardous materials for about four more years. And that’s just too long to expose the public to these types of risks.”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Tell California to drill for their own oil.
Now that’s certainly not Politically Correct, is it! :)
From the looks of this, Ebola is a possibility—maybe more than 2 billion fatalities within a year.
Vanity - Ebola model projects future case based on Daily Transmission Rate
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3204322/posts
Actually the govt lawyers are on the side of the watermelons. They are in cahoots!
They just don’t want any energy in any form. Idiots.
Why would we let the leftist Kalifornicators have any of the energy products they find so beneath them anyway?? Send it all to the people in the GOOD states.
OR is Union Pacific being squeezed?
CBR ping
The older DOT-111 tank design was criticized for decades and the design was changed (made stronger) Oct 2011. There was no plan until recently to force phase out of the existing railcars already built under the old design.
In November 2013, the Association of American Railroads again urged PHMSA increase federal tank car safety by requiring all tank cars used to transport flammable liquids be built to a higher standard, and all existing cars to be retrofitted to this higher standard or phased out of flammable service.
https://www.aar.org/safety/Documents/Railroad%20Tank%20Cars.pdf
Most of the oil tanker railcars are not owned by the railroads. They are owned by oil/refinery companies who hire the railroads to move the cars.
I appreciate, and thank you for your response thackney.
My point was the article made it appear by the wording the Government owned the tank cars. I was parsing words. The government does not, and too often those within government get what they want by running roughshod over free enterprise ultimately running up costs we all pay for.
It would seem to me the “The older DOT-111 tank design” wording of the article creates the illusion the DOT designed the tank cars, but I seriously doubt they did. Only approved the design for service for interstate use.
Again it’s parsing words, but words mean things, and misconceptions abound due manipulated, or unfortunate word usage. The government doesn’t own the tank cars, nor did they design them. The article leads us to believe in, and accept ours as an all powerful centralized government.
They set the design requirements of the tank cars. Builders had to meet those requirements to put them into service. Not so much as approving someone else's design as setting limits in place prior to the design being complete.
an all powerful centralized government.
Regulatory power in this area effectively is all-powerful. Meet their requirements or don't move the oil in the tankers. And if they change the requirements, make the change when they say it has to be done. If not, sometimes it is a fine, other times it is shut down.
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