Shift in Focus

Story and photos by Elliot Owen

Shift in Focus Triggered by Rise in Oil-by-Rail Imports, California’s Pollution Authority Expands Role to Protect Against Inland Water Disasters

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quarter century after its formation, the program that guards California’s coast and its marine ecosystem from catastrophic oil spills now faces a wider challenge: protecting the state’s inner habitats and waterways.

Until 2014, the mandate for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s pollution authority, the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, focused on marine oil spill prevention, preparedness, response and restoration. Though OSPR has responded to inland spills—usually at the request of the governor—the agency’s extensive experience handling marine incidents had always been mission-critical for the program.

Begun in 1991, OSPR was California’s answer to back-to-back environmental catastrophes.

The infamous 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, and the 1990 American Trader in Long Beach, inspired the California Legislature to enact the Lempert-Keene-Seastrand Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act. And today the program is expanding its specialized skills to respond to a California’s inland challenge.

Swift freshwater rivers, overgrown banks, towering canyon walls and minimal road access stand in stark contrast to the mostly wide-open ocean. An oil spill response team must be able to reach sometimes remote terrain inland—and

then be able to respond effectively.

While marine spills still occur along both Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the sites of environmental disasters have steadily moved inland.

Over the last several years, reported oil-related accidents have increased and one major source of that upsurge comes from freight trains and the tank cars that carry petroleum, chemicals and gases into California.

Historically, the trade in crude oil has moved between California and refineries in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. That appears to have changed as a new source has arrived. The bulk of the influx comes from a 200,000-square-mile area known as the Bakken shale formation, located under North Dakota, Montana and Canada.

Major accidents involving crude oil from the Bakken included a 2013 explosion that destroyed 63 tank cars in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The explosion killed 47 people.

Early last year a train carrying 3 million gallons of Bakken crude derailed and exploded with a massive fireball outside a West Virginia town.

The derailment, caused by a broken rail came disturbingly close to the banks of the Kanawa River.

Most recently, a 96-car freight train derailed in a small Oregon town on the bank of the Columbia River. The disaster spilled 42,000 gallons of oil into the soil, the town’s wastewater system and the river this past June.

Firefighters from Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta deploy a floating barrier against the current as part of oil spill preparedness training along the upper Sacramento River near Dunsmuir. OSPR senior environmental scientist Dale Stultz, left, discusses the components of the training with Kyle Watson, a salvage officer for Global Diving and Salvage, Inc. OSPR refers to this part of the upper Sacramento as ecologically sensitive and vulnerable to derailments, which explains the reasons behind trainings like this last June.

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As oil transport by rail increased, so did concern for California’s inland waters. Rail lines pass over more than 7,000 waterways in the state, putting swaths of ecologically valuable habitat at risk for contamination if a spill occurs.

The derailments in West Virginia and Oregon echo a nationwide trend. According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, more crude oil was spilled in rail incidents in 2013 than was spilled in the previous four decades combined.

California fits the pattern. According to a 2012 report by the Interagency Rail Safety Working Group, only 0.3 percent of the state’s oil arrived by rail. By 2013, that volume jumped 506 percent to about 1 percent of the state’s total imports. Between 2010 and 2013, total petroleum spills by rail in California—crude oil and other petroleum-based products like gasoline and diesel—jumped nearly 86 percent.

“Due to the lack of pipeline infrastructure, getting oil to the West Coast from the Bakken oil fields is accomplished by rail,” said Julie Yamamoto, OSPR Assistant Deputy Administrator.

“Rail is more expensive than other transport options but is flexible.”

As oil transport by rail increased, so did

concern for California’s inland waters. Rail lines pass over more than 7,000 waterways in the state, putting swaths of ecologically valuable habitat at risk for contamination if a spill occurs.

Recognizing the threat, in 2014 Governor Brown expanded OSPR’s responsibilities to include all waters at risk of oil spills from any source. With that order, OSPR’s mandate extended to include the prevention and response of oil spills on California’s inland waters.

OSPR is rising to meet the challenges specific to the inland environment. Triggered by the rise in oil by rail imports, a rollout of the agency’s inland expansion is currently in effect.

“We’re hoping that inland responses don’t look any different than the marine side,” said Yvonne Addassi, OSPR’s Chief of Prepared-

ness. “We’re planning to bring the diligence and successes we’ve had in the marine environment into a statewide oil spill response program that addresses all waters of the state—marine and nonmarine.”

Training Matters he training was tedious but necessary, an exercise in the first line of defense should an oil spill befall the trout-rich waters of the upper Sacramento River. The dozen participants from local and state agencies know you can’t put a price on preparedness, which is why they practiced deploying containment boom across a 50-foot-wide stretch of river in Dunsmuir on a cool day last June.

Firefighters from Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta departments held the floating barrier against the strong current using anchors hammered into opposing riverbanks. One firefighter, knee-deep in swirling water, wore personal protective equipment (PPE), utilizing the same

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When deployed during a real oil spill incident, containment boom will be used to block oil product from floating downstream. During an exercise last summer, OSPR personnel worked with response teams from nearby fire departments, as well as Siskiyou County environmental health staff, to practice stretching the boom across a fast moving current and then anchoring the ends on opposite banks.

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CDFW file photo

Caption will go here

A Western Pacific train crosses the big bridge at the Keddie Wye, the Union Pacific Railroad forked junction in Plumas County. Railroad tanker cars like this one carry petroleum, chemicals and gases. Most train cargo is transported by diesel-electric locomotives that pull as many as 100 railcars. Heavy freight operations may require up to four locomotives.

precaution a real-life oil spill would require.

“Chemicals that float on water, your oils, are less dense than water,” said Dale Stultz, OSPR senior environmental scientist. “If they float on water, we can capture and contain them with things like boom, which has a skirt and sticks up above the waterline. With boom, we can deflect, contain, or divert oil to a specific location where it can be removed by appropriate collection tools.”

The training equipment—boom, anchors, shovels, ropes, PPE—is housed in a spill response equipment trailer maintained by the Dunsmuir Fire Department. The trailer, secured by Siskiyou County Environmental Health, is one of many made available through an OSPR grant program that provides local agencies with response equipment to use during an oil spill.

“They took control of the trailer that day,” Stultz said. “The firefighters stepped right up; set boom, learned how to care for it. That’s the hands-on stuff that’s so important.”

The training area is two and a half miles downstream from a railroad crossing called the Cantara Loop, a bridge notoriously known as the site of a train derailment that spilled 19,000 gallons of herbicide into the water below 25 years ago this July. In 2013, another train derailed at the same location. Fortunately, the cars were empty; the river unscathed.

Ecologically sensitive and vulnerable to derailments, the upper Sacramento River near Dunsmuir is characterized by OSPR as a high-

hazard area, which underlines why trainings like the one in June are crucial.

New industry standards SPR’s expansion success will come with the agency’s newfound regulatory authority over industry entities processing or transporting oil near California’s inland waters. Production facilities and pipeline and rail companies are now required to submit certificates of financial responsibility and contingency plans to OSPR for approval. Both regulatory processes have been used for oil-carrying vessels and production facilities operating in California’s marine environment since OSPR’s creation.

Acting as insurance policies, certificates of financial responsibility show that companies dealing with oil around inland waters are capable of financing spill response and habitat restoration if an oil release occurred in those waters.

“Obviously,” Addassi said, “nobody is terribly interested or benefitted in having companies go belly-up after a spill, leaving the government and ultimately taxpayers paying for something that should’ve been part of the cost of doing business.

Certificates of responsibility tell us a lot about a company’s liquidity.”

In addition to showing financial soundness, a company must file contingency plans that show where it could likely to have a release, and how to best protect human and natural resources threatened by those potential releases.

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“Contingency planning is huge,” Addassi said. “It means we have the ability to evaluate and drill a company’s response posture. These are the same folks we’d be working with in a command post during a spill. It’s our first opportunity to determine whether or not they’ve done the thinking and planning necessary to carry out a successful spill response.”

Prior to new legislation, a 6.5 cent fee was leveed on every barrel of oil entering California by tanker. Now that fee is applied to barrels entering the state via pipeline and rail, too. The additional funding covers implementation and enforcement of new industry regulations and additional OSPR staff. The legislation also provides that the Oil Spill Response Trust Fund can be used for inland oil spills, not just marine ones.

“The response trust fund is separate from our operating budget,” Addassi said. “It’s a reserve pot used exclusively for oil spill response, allowing us to immediately roll out resources on a spill event and seek reimbursement by responsible parties later.”

Inland Wildlife he Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN), an oiled wildlife response organization funded

by OSPR and overseen by the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center, is also putting new funding provided by the bill to use.

Established in 1994, OWCN is comprised of 35 member organizations—aquaria, universities, scientific organizations and rehabilitation groups—throughout the state. If the potential for oiled wildlife exists, or is already a reality, OWCN gets the call from OSPR. “They’re our frontline in terms of recovering and rehabbing oiled wildlife,” Yamamoto said. “With OSPR’s expansion to inland areas of California, OWCN is working on how to respond to various species that we have not historically cared for in marine spills.”

Allocated an additional $500,000 per year to expand wildlife rescue capabilities inland, the network is currently fielding new member organizations, bringing in more rehabilitation experts, identifying at-risk inland species, and developing cleaning and rehabilitation protocols for those animals.

And, OWCN Director Michael Ziccardi adds, preparing for a new spectrum of animals comes with unique challenges.

“On the marine side, we’ve got birds, marine mammals, sea turtles,” Ziccardi said. “On the inland side, it can be anything from small rodents to black bears. Among the first protocols we’re

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developing are for aquatic mammals: beaver, river otter, muskrat, heavily furred animals in waterways. We’re also developing protocols for reptiles and amphibians — an area we’ve not previously dealt with. We’re gathering the best science possible to step up our protocols.”

Challenging Terrain rguably the largest challenge to the inland environment, though, is accessibility. Inland oil spill responses, especially those involving rivers, lack the range of tactical options due to difficult terrain. Little to no road access, overgrown riverbanks and high canyon walls can significantly inhibit response efforts.

“On the marine side,” Stultz said, “our responses are driven by areas we’ve identified as sites or species we want to protect from oil contamination. Inland, it’s all about where we can get access to the river.”

Further complicating inland response, Stultz said, is flow. The speed a river is moving can determine the feasibility of deploying containment boom at a specific location. Fast flow not only means more miles of river harmed quicker, but fewer response options as well.

At this stage in OSPR’s inland rollout, the transport of oil by rail through challenging and sensitive areas—Feather River Canyon, the upper Sacramento River, Donner Pass, Walker River—is garnering attention. The result has been a series of comprehensive readiness strategies called geographic response plans (GRPs), which involve local and state agencies in preparedness efforts like the training completed by Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta fire departments. Knowing how to be an efficient first responder during the early stages of a spill can significantly decrease an event’s length and impact.

“It’s always better to plan and exercise for, and never have to use it,” Addassi said, “than not plan and exercise, have to use it, and not know how to make things happen.”

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Continued Rollout n 2015, California imported 1.8 million barrels of oil by rail, down from 5.7 million in 2014. Though the decrease is drastic, Yamamoto warns it’s only the latest in market shifts caused by a drop in oil prices, not a change in transport culture.

“California’s demand for oil is constant,” she said, “about 600 million barrels per year. What changes is how it gets here. Right now, it’s not profitable to bring in oil from the Midwest. Once prices rebound, transportation will shift again. The cheapest route will always prevail.”

Anticipating the market rebound, OSPR remains unfazed by the drop in oil by rail, which is why the agency is charging full speed ahead on inland prevention and response. While permanent industry regulations are slated for finalization sometime in 2017, OWCN’s expansion and the development of GRPs remains an evolving process.

“We’ve had a marine oil spill program for 25 years and it certainly didn’t happen overnight,” Yamamoto said. “Inland response will progress as we respond to more inland spills.”

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Elliot Owens is a freelance writer who lives in the Bay Area.

Her stories have appeared before in Outdoor California.

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