WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

Seattle Times Editorial: Legislature needs to pass oil-train safety bill

Legislature needs to pass oil-train safety bill

Originally published April 17, 2015 at 5:00 pm Updated April 17, 2015 at 4:58 pm

The commendable progress lawmakers already have made suggests all sides really do want an oil-train-safety bill this year. They should not let end-of-session fatigue and emotion derail that momentum.

By Seattle Times editorial board

The Seattle Times

STATE legislators have now spent 3-½ months debating competing bills to improve oil-train safety. During that time, four more trains carrying crude have derailed and caught fire — one in West Virginia, one in Illinois, two in Ontario.

Washington lawmakers need to resolve their differences and agree on a bill now. Stalemate is not an option. Public safety is at stake.

About 19 oil trains enter Washington each week. More are expected. A majority traverse the heavily populated Interstate 5 corridor. Existing regulations are clearly inadequate.

State House and Senate negotiators are making some progress. For instance, they have agreed on language requiring oil terminals to provide the state with advance notice of crude shipments by rail — time, route, volume, type of oil.

To mollify Republican and railroad concerns that such information is proprietary and that making it public would pose security risks, Democrats and environmentalists have agreed to exempt the notices from disclosure under the state Public Records Act. State and local emergency-management officials and first responders would get them, but citizens would not.

That’s unfortunate. The railroads’ concerns are overblown. Lawmakers should reconsider that issue and still get a bill to the governor’s desk.

As talks continue, Senate negotiators should accept the House’s proposed requirement that railroads develop state oil-spill-response plans, as marine oil terminals already must. Federal standards for spill plans fall far short of what’s needed. Lawmakers shouldn’t bow to railroad arguments that the federal law pre-empts state regulation.

Senators also should drop their objections to increasing the four-cents-per-barrel tax that oil companies now pay to fund state oil-spill prevention and preparedness programs. The revenues the current tax generates have fallen short of fully funding the programs. And the House already has signaled its willingness to compromise by dropping its proposed tax increase from six cents to four.

These differences, and others that remain, are reconcilable. The commendable progress lawmakers already have made suggests all sides really do want an oil-train-safety law this year. They should not let end-of-session fatigue and emotion derail that momentum.

The need for action will only intensify. As recently as 2011, no crude oil entered Washington by rail.

By 2020, state officials project, oil-train traffic through the state could rise from 19 a week to more than 19 a day.

Editorial board members are editorial page editor Kate Riley, Frank A. Blethen, Ryan Blethen, Mark Higgins, Jonathan Martin, Thanh Tan, Blanca Torres, William K. Blethen (emeritus) and Robert C. Blethen (emeritus).