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Re: Lac Megantic? $#it Happens?
Author: Dr Zarkoff
Date: 09-05-2014 - 10:30
>They probably don't have some of the authority they need to regulate these shipments, but until someone tells them no, that's the way it is.
They (the States) don't have the authority to regulate interstate commerce, period, and the Supreme Court reminds them of that periodically as needs be. I didn't see any mention of State regulation in the Sacbee article. What the new State law does mandate is more info from the carries about when and where the shipments are going and imposes fees to generate funds to pay for cleanups when/if derailments and spills occur. These are hardly "regulations".
>MMA and its criminally incompetent management caused folks to wake up to the dangers of transporting trains of fracking oil, and the genie is out of the bottle. When you kill a lot of innocent people and destroy so much property through such incompetence, you will have new regulations to try and prevent it again.
Lac Megantic wasn't some new phenomenon. Back the the 60s and 70s there were several derailaments like this involving propane cars and what we now call hazmat spills. I can recall news accounts of whole towns being evacuated for days until the flames were extinguished. In fact the whole hazmat process we have now is a result of these.
Besides, over the last 10 years the number of people killed in the US because of Lac Megantic-like derailments is exactly zero.
We also have to face up to the fact that the whole concept of "short-line spin-offs" is a race to the bottom. The original owners, the class 1s, could no longer economically justify keeping the lines, so investors bought them and cheapened the way they are operated, which they had to do in order to make a go of it: no experienced employees, no unions, lower pay rates, reduced crew sizes, cut backs on track maintenance, etc., essentially cutting corners everywhere they could. Most significantly, with no union protection, there is a lot of intimidation, mostly implicit, directed at the employees to cut corners. According to the Canadian transport safety board, Lac Megantic happened because in sufficient handbrakes were tied. It was a one man crew about to die on the [Canadian] Hours of Service.
Even the class 1s have been cutting corners.
You get what you pay for.
They (the States) don't have the authority to regulate interstate commerce, period, and the Supreme Court reminds them of that periodically as needs be. I didn't see any mention of State regulation in the Sacbee article. What the new State law does mandate is more info from the carries about when and where the shipments are going and imposes fees to generate funds to pay for cleanups when/if derailments and spills occur. These are hardly "regulations".
>MMA and its criminally incompetent management caused folks to wake up to the dangers of transporting trains of fracking oil, and the genie is out of the bottle. When you kill a lot of innocent people and destroy so much property through such incompetence, you will have new regulations to try and prevent it again.
Lac Megantic wasn't some new phenomenon. Back the the 60s and 70s there were several derailaments like this involving propane cars and what we now call hazmat spills. I can recall news accounts of whole towns being evacuated for days until the flames were extinguished. In fact the whole hazmat process we have now is a result of these.
Besides, over the last 10 years the number of people killed in the US because of Lac Megantic-like derailments is exactly zero.
We also have to face up to the fact that the whole concept of "short-line spin-offs" is a race to the bottom. The original owners, the class 1s, could no longer economically justify keeping the lines, so investors bought them and cheapened the way they are operated, which they had to do in order to make a go of it: no experienced employees, no unions, lower pay rates, reduced crew sizes, cut backs on track maintenance, etc., essentially cutting corners everywhere they could. Most significantly, with no union protection, there is a lot of intimidation, mostly implicit, directed at the employees to cut corners. According to the Canadian transport safety board, Lac Megantic happened because in sufficient handbrakes were tied. It was a one man crew about to die on the [Canadian] Hours of Service.
Even the class 1s have been cutting corners.
You get what you pay for.
