On 24 June, a train ferrying hazardous materials derailed into the Yellowstone River in Montana after the bridge it was traveling over collapsed. A number of cars carrying molten sulfur and asphalt were damaged and leaked their contents into the river. According to initial reports, the molten sulfur and asphalt solidified on contact with the water and sank to the bottom of the river, so wildlife scientists suggest that there was limited spread of these two pollutants.
However, considering the lies that East Palestine Ohio residents were told about the quality of their water after a derailment-related chemical spill earlier this year, it is not unreasonable to doubt reports about water quality in the Yellowstone River.
The train in Montana was also carrying sodium hydrosulfate, a corrosive substance, but fortunately these cars were not the ones that fell into the water and suffered no apparent damage.
The nearby city of Billings, Montana (population ~110,000) shut off its water system soon after the derailment occurred to give time for any pollutants from the accident to drift downstream. The city of Laurel, Montana, also downstream from the derailment, shut off its water supply on 24 June but soon opened its treatment plants again.
Montana Rail Link, the company that owns the train, will be responsible for all cleanup costs. The derailment also cut two fiberoptic cables, creating a Verizon service outage in Western Montana. Cleanup efforts are now underway at the site of the accident.
The EPA is coordinating with federal and state fish and wildlife agencies to assess the true impact that the derailment has had on local flora and fauna.
This latest derailment of toxic chemicals is only one in a long line of similar stories this year. The one that garnered the most attention was the one that occurred in February in East Palestine, Ohio, where fifty cars of a train derailed. The train cars contained, among other things, vinyl chloride, a substance that raises the risk of developing several types of cancers. The derailment caused an enormous fire that required the evacuation of a three-square mile area surrounding the crash.
In early June, a train containing toxic chemicals derailed near the Minnesota-Canada border, and around the same time, 23 train cars derailed in a destructive accident in Arizona.
One cause of these derailments can be the lax train safety inspections carried out by railroads due to cost-cutting measures. According to Politico, staff of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported recently, “Railroad workers and their unions say freight railroads have increasingly promoted cursory inspections by locomotive crews, instead of the vastly more complete inspections done by highly trained workers known as ‘carmen.’”
In addition, during the Trump administration, a regulation meant to require better braking systems on US trains was killed. I’m sure that the $6 million donated to Republican campaigns during that election cycle had nothing to do with that decision. Electronic braking systems can stop a train much more quickly than traditional braking systems, and can help prevent catastrophic derailments like the kind that just happened in East Palestine. Why haven’t staff of Biden’s NTSB proposed a reinstatement of this regulation? The East Palestine disaster happened four months ago, yet there has been no talk about reviving this protective braking measure.
Given the collapse of the bridge, the derailment in the Yellowstone River is also a symptom of the US’ crumbling infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives US infrastructure a grade of C-minus, which is better than the D-plus of last decade, but still abysmal.
According to NPR, “One particular concern [of the ASCE] is the condition of the nation’s bridges. According to the Infrastructure Report Card, 42% of the 617,000 bridges in the U.S. are more than 50 years old, and more than 46,000 of them are rated as structurally deficient. That doesn’t mean that they’re in danger of collapsing but indicates that they are in poor condition. The number of bridges that slipped from good condition to fair over the last four years increased as well.”
A lack of action on the fronts of train safety and infrastructure integrity is a recipe for more major disasters in the long term.
Green Humanist 