A survey done by the Waterkeeper Alliance, Riverkeeper and ForestEthics has turned up pretty distressing news about one incredibly dangerous aspect of our crumbling infrastructure—our country’s oil train bridges.
Over the past 10 years, the federal government estimates that 24 train accidents were caused by misalignment or failure of railroad bridges. The nation’s 100,000 rail bridges cross nearly every major waterway, traverse highly populated areas, and present a recipe for catastrophe beyond the scale of anything we have seen – even if just one oil train derails, spills, and explodes.
Fair enough. You may remember this oil train derailment that turned into a fireball from a few months back. You may remember this prediction by the Department of Transportation of only 10 derailments coming this year—conservative at best. What the WaterKeeper survey set out to do was to get citizens to inspect bridges for telltale signs of decay (i.e. missing spikes, loose bolts, missing or crumbling concrete) and what they’ve found was depressing.
Citizen inspectors identified deficiencies, defined as cracks or pieces missing, significant rusting, and/or deterioration or rotting of the foundation in 46 percent of the bridges inspected (114 of 250 bridges inspected).
Crumbling rail bridge infrastructure was common and easily visible. The most commonly identified deficiencies were: • Missing and crumbling concrete • Erosion of pilings • Exposed rebar • Loose and broken wooden/creosote beams • Severe rusting and/or holes in structural steel • Loose, and missing bolts • Uneven tracks • Crossties in poor condition • Missing spikes • Failing retaining walls
Al Jazeera America was able to get a spokesman from the railroads to address these claims.
Ed Greenberg, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, who was unable to review the still unreleased report, said rail bridges in use today are capable of safely supporting oil trains, which can be more than a mile in length pulling more than 100 tankers loaded with 3 million gallons of crude oil.
“Railroad bridges are among the safest segments of the nation’s infrastructure,” he said. “Some bridges are painted. Others are not. Some are more weathered than others. But outward appearance does not indicate a bridge’s safety. Inspectors scrutinize a bridge to assess its structural integrity, which is a thoughtful and thorough engineering process, with no relationship to whether the bridge is aesthetically pleasing.”
Here’s the thing, Ed. I want to believe you. I really do. I know that the citizens inspecting these bridges are not engineers, and what do they know. They just look at things like this image on the right and totally freak out. Or maybe they look at our country’s recent history in regulating not only the oil industry, but anything to do with our infrastructure and safety.
The facts are that the Federal Railroad Administration is so neutered it completely relies on railroads to inspect the lines they lease. As we have all seen, when a private industry polices itself—everything works out great for everybody and balloons fall from the sky and we all cry with happiness. Like this example:
In January 2014, John Wathen, the “keeper” of Hurricane Creek in Alabama, posted a video of an oil train crossing a 116-year-old wooden bridge in Tuscaloosa. Some of the trestles supporting the oil train, 40 feet above public parks on either side of the Black Warrior River, were resting on posts that were rotted or had makeshift repairs of corrugated pipe and concrete.
The railroad and the FRA insisted the bridge was safe, but a year after Wathen posted his video and began calling attention to the condition of the bridge, the railroad that leases and operates it announced it would do $2.5 million in repairs. It replaced many but not all the rotted pilings. Whether the bridge is safe is unclear because there are no federal engineering standards for rail bridges and even industry standards are silent about the number of defective pilings a rail bridge may have and still be safe.
[my emphasis]
Also, railroad companies don’t need to release any of there inspection findings until of course the oil-fireball hits the fan. My guess is that during the next bit of legislation, our Republican Congress will try to add in barnacles disallowing people to photograph railroad bridges.