Wyden, Merkley To Hold Oil Train Roundtable

Oregon congressmen Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are holding a roundtable discussion about oil trains Monday in Eugene.

The senators are still unsatisfied with the level of communication between communities and railroads hauling crude oil through the state, and the goal of the roundtable is to find a solution.

The roundtable will put local fire chiefs and elected officials in the same room with railroads and Tim Butters, the deputy administrator of the Pipelines Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, an arm of the federal Department of Transportation.

Railroad shipments have been shrouded in secrecy since they showed up without the public, first responders or state regulators knowing.

Railroads have fought numerous times to keep the information secret, citing national security protections the feds have said don't apply. The secrecy has riled environmental groups and anti-oil train advocates, who have tried everything from campaigns for mass public records requests to counting trains.

In May, an emergency order from the DOT forced railroads to disclose oil train routes to state emergency responders, sparking a months-long debate over whether the information should be public.

Wyden and Merkley have been saying the emergency order falls short since it was issued. It applies only to Bakken crude from North Dakota, the kind that's been involved in the explosions that made oil trains a headline in the first place. The senators want it to cover all types of crude, like that from Utah or Canada, which travels through Oregon and could be particularly difficult to cleanup if it spills.

The senators have written letters to the DOT and the National Transportation Safety Board trying to expand the emergency order. The DOT issued proposed regulations on oil trains recently, which most notably laid out a plan for phasing out older and flawed DOT-111 tanker cars, but did not include the expanded information sharing.

— Tony Schick