7 January 2015 – During a holiday visit to Davis, California, I was thrilled to learn that the local City Council has passed a resolution opposing the transport of hazardous crude oil through their city.
In Addition to Davis, three other California cities – Berkeley, Richmond, and Oakland – have passed motions to halt the rail corporations in their goal to transport tar sands through their communities.
Davis climate action activists at Sept. 21, 2014, New York march
The strong stand of the City of Davis, overwhelmingly adopted by council members on Earth Day, April 22, 2014, states in part:
Be it resolved that the City Council of the City of Davis hereby opposes using existing Union Pacific rail lines to transport hazardous crude oil through the City of Davis and adjacent habitat areas.
Lynne Nittler, a leading local activist, told me that this victory came after alerting elected officials to a serious risk to the community of 50,000 residents.
“It started over a year ago when we first discovered that a 100-car train of Bakken crude oil would soon pass through Davis each day on its way to the Valero Refinery in Benicia,” she said. Lynne is a member of YolanoClimateAction.org, an umbrella organization that brings together people working on the climate crisis.
Residents soon learned of an additional daily train of 80 cars heading through Davis down the coast to San Luis Obispo’s Santa Maria refinery, hauling tar sands crude. Both rail projects were to release their Environmental Impact reports (EI) for public comment. The activists understood that they still had some leverage in the process, and they took action.
“At first, the city council was unresponsive, so we turned to the Davis Natural Resources Commission to make our concerns public and to highlight them in the City Council,” Lynne explained. News of several train derailments, including the Casselton, North Dakota, derailment of a grain train into crude oil tank cars, causing them to explode in December 2013. Residents voiced their apprehensions about the increase in oil train accidents and spills, the toxic tar sands, explosive Bakken crude, the inadequacy of the DOT 111A tank cars, and lack of track inspections, among other issues.
Davis City Council recognized the importance of these issues and assigned staff to compose a city response to both Environment Impact (EI) reports as well as to alert neighboring jurisdictions. They pressed SACOG (the Sacramento Area Council of Governments which represents joint government by 22 cities and 6 counties) to respond in writing to the EI reports.
“We conducted three letter-writing campaigns directed to the two EI reports, plus we urged folks to submit letters to the proposed federal Department of Transportation regulations for rail car safety, train speeds, and brakes,” Lynne explained. Residents also insisted on the public’s “right to know,” that is, the right to access to information to protect their community, though the railroad corporations claim “federal exemption” for all requests.
In addition, Yolano Climate Action hosted workshops on how to respond to a draft Environmental Impact Report. “We talked about other jurisdictions which are threatened by the trains carrying Bakken oil, that roll through their towns,” Lynne said. For example, in Lynchburg, Virginia, on April 30, 17 cars derailed and flames shot up eight stories high. Three tank cars leaked 25,000 gallons of oil into the James River, a source of drinking water.
“Davis is taking proactive steps to avert such an accident here,” Lynne said.
Hundreds of pages of solid, well-documented comments poured into Benicia and San Luis Obispo. Major environmental groups such as Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological diversity, Forest Ethics, and others addressed serious flaws in the EIR document. “California governmental agencies weighed in, too,” Lynne added “including the Office of Spill Prevention and Response under Governor Brown and even our Attorney General among many others.”
In addition, Oakland City Council has unanimously passed a resolution to bar city employees’ pension funds from investing in fossil fuel companies. In fact, the city’s funds do not at present make such investments. However, the Oakland move is intended to put pressure on the gigantic California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) which does invest in fossil fuels, and one of the country’s largest managers of public pensions, with $288 billion in retiree assets, to follow suit.
“We don’t know yet if our words are strong enough to stop the proposed tar sands oil trains, but we do know that we the people are finding our voices and we won’t stop speaking out,” Lynne says.
Possibilities for Toronto
The Toronto City Council has already asked Enbridge not to pump dangerous tar sands oil (diluted bitumen – DilBit) across the city. In the new year, East End Against Line 9 and other community groups are conducting a campaign appealing to Toronto City Council to pass a bylaw that can protect us from hazardous oil.
In addition to the Line 9 threat, the CP rail line crossing Toronto with rail tanker cars carrying Bakken oil also poses a danger to the communities. Toronto must prevent spills by stopping the transport of these toxic oils by rail or pipeline.
You can become part of our campaign: (1) Read our newest leaflet, Within Our Jurisdiction – Intra Vires (2) Indicate your interest to info@eastendnotar.org
First published Toronto East End Against Line 9