Letter to Editor, “The Chronicle” Lewis County

by Larry Kerschner

It seems like there are an awful lot of trains going off the tracks lately.  On December 14 of last year, a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe train derailed north of Centralia, spilling three rail cars, including one carrying methanol.  On January 13, 2014, a BNSF train derailed two cars just south of Auburn. During a two-week period during early May of this year there were three separate train derailments in Grays Harbor County.  On May 22, a Puget Sound and Pacific train derailed north of Centralia.  On August 4 three train cars, including a tanker car carrying methanol, derailed on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks north of downtown Centralia.  On July 2, a coal train traveling toward the Columbia River Gorge derailed near Pasco spilling coal from 31 cars.  On August 1, a Union Pacific train heading west from Spokane to Hinkle, Oregon derailed spilling 13 rail cars. On July 24, a train carrying Bakken crude derailed under Seattle’s Magnolia Bridge.  The train was pulling 100 tanker cars when five of the cars derailed.

On July 28, recognizing the concern of local citizens about the dangers of shipping Bakken crude through our neighborhoods, the Chehalis City Council, passed a resolution 4-2 calling on Governor Inslee to analyze whether the oil shipments are at all in the public interest.  The city government recognizing that it has no legal power to prevent this danger from coming through Lewis County understands that the resolution carries both moral and political weight.  I applaud this action by the Chehalis City Council and call on all other political entities in Lewis County to follow suit with similar resolutions. 

Related information that is not so well known among citizens of Lewis County is the fact that Warren Buffet, principal owner of BNSF, is negotiating with the unions who represent the train conductors and engineers of the explosive trains running through our county.  Over the past several years, the train owners have been trying to insert language into contracts with both unions that would enshrine their scheme to run these trains with a single employee.  Buffet is trying to lower the per barrel cost of transporting the highly explosive Bakken crude by expanding the length of his trains (up to 150 tankers) while at the same time reducing labor cost by replacing the current conductor and engineer with a single operator. 

Do you suppose the 47 people who died in the Bakken crude explosion at Lac Magentic a year ago would think this is a good idea?  Do you think the train companies and oil companies are thinking first of your safety or of their economic bottom line?

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