Environmental contamination

Train carrying crude oil explodes, spills oil into Alabama wetlands

A 90-car train derailed and exploded in rural Alabama early Friday morning, spilling its crude oil cargo into the surrounding wetlands and igniting a fire so intense that officials said it will take 24 hours to burn out. No one was injured.

LA Times,

8 November, 2013

The train was crossing a timber trestle above a wetland near Aliceville late Thursday night when 20 railcars and two of three locomotives derailed. Earlier reports said fewer cars had derailed.

On Friday morning, about 10 train cars were burning, according to a statement from train owner Genesee & Wyoming.

Emergency responders decided to let the cars burn out. Though the bridge is also burning, the fire is contained, officials said.

Scott Hughes, spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, told the Los Angeles Times that the oil has been spilled into the wetlands area.

“Typically wetlands are a sanctuary for a variety of different types of aquatic species, so once we’re able to get in and assess environmental impacts, we’ll certainly look at any impacts to aquatic organisms and other types of wildlife,” Hughes told the Los Angeles Times.

There are extensive wetlands near Aliceville, according to the state’s Forestry Commission website.

Hughes said that it’s difficult to determine how much oil has been spilled, because responders can’t get close to the fire. Hughes said his agency checked the drinking water wells in the area, and said there will be no effect on the water.

“The area’s pretty rural, there’s not a whole lot around,” Alabama Emergency Management spokesperson Yasamie August told the Los Angeles Times.

One family was evacuated, but has already been returned home, she said

The Environmental Protection Agency has one person on scene who is overseeing the clean-up and monitoring of air quality to assess the impact of the crude oil spill, regional Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson James Pinkney told The Times.

The train was en route from Amory, Miss., to Walnut Hill, Fla., according to the Genesee statement.

The use of rail to move oil amid rapidly expanding U.S. production is coming under growing regulatory scrutiny after the horrific explosion of an oil train in Canada's Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed at least 42 residents in July, The Times reported in September. A train with 72 tank cars hauling crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken Shale fields rolled downhill into the city and ignited an inferno that destroyed half of downtown.

Don Hartley, a regional coordinator for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, told The Times that the train in Alabama likely originated in North Dakota.

The Times also reported that railroads are carrying 25 times more crude oil than they were five years ago. And though railroads have improved their safety in recent years, moving oil on tank cars is only about half as safe as in pipelines.

Spill at Cotter Mill lets loose up to 9,000 gallons of toxic water

Contamination restricted to Cotter property

Colorado Independent,

7 November, 2013

As much as 9,000 gallons of uranium-contaminated water from underground pipes spilled onto Cotter property south of Cañon City on Tuesday, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Officials say no members of the public have so far been exposed to the spill.

Cotter Corporation informed the health department of the leaking pipes on Tuesday in a “verbal report” delivered over the phone. No health department personnel have inspected the spill site, as yet, and no formal report has yet been filed. Cotter said it will let the contaminated ground dry before excavating and repairing the pipe.

From the beginning of its operations in 1958, Cotter’s uranium mill site near Cañon City has visited a plague of leaks, spills and contamination to the area. The company has wracked up a long series of fines. Uranium mining is a dirty business that frequently results in environmental degradation and risks to public safety. In the past, government oversight of the Cotter property has been lax, turning on self reporting by the company. Community groups have been frustrated by the what they characterize as the meager information Cotter releases on its operations.

“We’ve got a company looking to walk away from a problem without actually cleaning it up,” said Travis E. Stills, an energy and conservation lawyer who has been working with community groups in Cañon City since the mid-2000s. Stills represents Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste on several ongoing state open records suits that seek information that passed between Cotter, the state health department and the Environmental Protection Agency concerning the uranium mill and the Lincoln Park Superfund Site, but which health department withheld from public review.

Uranium is extraordinarily toxic. The health department reports that if the pipe did in fact leak 9,000 gallons, the concentration in the water of uranium would be 834 micrograms per liter and the concentration of molybdenum, also a toxic chemical, would be 2,018 micrograms per liter. For perspective, the EPA places the health safety level of uranium at 30 micrograms per liter.

“This is water that they’ve sucked out of the ground, and they’re pumping back to evaporate,” said the health department’s Edgar Ethington.

In fact, he said, the contamination is not new. The leak comes in a pipe used to pump contaminated water from the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) Dam pumpback to ponds on the Cotter property where the contamination will slowly return to solid form. He made the release sound simple.

“They got a hole in the pipe and it leaked back into the ground,” he said.

Warren Smith, community involvement manager in the Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division of the department, insisted there was no danger to public health.

“There is no public health risk here, because there is no exposure to the public,” Smith said. “Health risk depends on two factors: the release and exposure. If there’s no receptor to be exposed to it, where’s the risk?”

Smith said that the health department performs regular inspections of the Cotter site. The most recent was a September inspection. Because the pipe was buried, Smith said it would be a stretch to “characterize it as an [inspection] oversight.”

Smith said it would be a serious lapse if Cotter had failed to report the spill. Inspections don’t occur often enough for the state to have happened upon the spill any time soon.

“A lot of this is performance based,” Ethington said. “You expect a breakdown from time to time. You just have to make sure the breakdown does not result in a release that gets off-site.”

The Cotter site is not operational. Most of the buildings have been demolished. Yet spills are a regular occurence. The process of closing the mill has been in the works for years, as community groups, the EPA, and Cotter see-saw through negotiations on what the cleanup will look like. That’s why the trickling information from Cotter frustrates interested locals.

“We should be getting immediate, actionable, good information on the agency’s website so the community can understand what’s going on,” said Stills. “We keep hearing back from the CDPHE that there is no problem there, and we can just leave the place and go on, without cleaning up the ground water, and without doing a full cleanup of the site.”

Stills said the community group in Cañon is working “to get some real clean-up, that doesn’t allow General Atomic, which owns Cotter, to walk away and leave a contaminated neighborhood in its wake.”