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oil-by-rail

Northwest Tribes Band Together To Stop Oil-by-Rail

By Ralph Schwartz for Yes Magazine - There’s no such thing as a good place for an oil-train derailment, but this year’s June 3 spill outside Mosier, Oregon, could have been worse if the 16 oil cars had derailed and caught fire even a few hundred feet in either direction. The derailment was just far enough away from populated areas, including a nearby school and mobile home park, that no injuries resulted, and the amount of oil that spilled into the river was limited. If it had happened another mile-and-a-half down the tracks, the damaged tank cars would have tumbled directly into the Columbia river during the peak of the spring Chinook salmon run.

Protesters Arrested For Blocking Railroad In Call For Oil-by-Rail Moratorium

By Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News - Twenty-one activists were arrested in Vancouver, Wash. on Saturday in a protest calling for a permanent moratorium on shipping oil by rail in Oregon and Washington, to protect people and the environment. Approximately 100 protesters took part in the event, blocking trains along the Columbia River gorge. The protest followed the derailment of an oil train in the gorge on June 3 that erupted in flames, spilled 42,000 gallons of crude oil and forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes.

Nationwide Resistance To Crude Oil ‘Bomb Trains’ Gaining Momentum

By Justin Mikulka for Desmog Blog - The speed and scale with which the oil and rail industries created the North American oil-by-rail infrastructure was impressive. And amazingly under the radar for the most part — until the trains started derailing and blowing up — leading to articles with titles like “The Invisible Bomb Trains.” In 2014, Terry Wechsler, an environmental attorney in northwest Washington, summed up why there hadn’t been opposition to the initial oil-by-rail terminals on the west coast, telling Reuters, “There was no opposition to the other three proposals only because we weren't aware they were in formal permitting.”

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