WASHOUGAL — If there’s one certainty about where Washougal councilors stand on a proposed oil terminal in Vancouver, it’s that everyone’s uneasy about increasing oil train traffic through the city.
Safety was the first concern on everyone’s mind at a Monday night workshop as the council began discussing what message to send the state on a plan to build the largest oil-by-rail terminal in the Northwest at the Port of Vancouver. The council took up a proposed resolution written by city staff firmly opposing the plan, but by the end of the discussion it was clear no consensus was in sight.
The terminal, proposed by the Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies, would handle as much as 360,000 barrels of crude oil per day on average, and the tanker cars would weave right through Washougal before arriving in Vancouver. As it stands, the resolution encourages state and federal lawmakers to draft new safety regulations for transporting oil by rail, and it urges Gov. Jay Inslee and the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council to reject the plan.
The document also mentions a long list of oil train disasters from around the country in recent years. Councilor Joyce Lindsay said it was overkill.
“I think it’s too long and sensational,” Lindsay said. “I would just like to see it tighter, and I think it’s redundant.”
In the coming weeks, the councilors will continue the discussion, eventually shaping their final statement. Some said they hope to consult a BNSF Railway safety specialist to answer some of their bigger questions.
Suggestions
Councilor Brent Boger said the city should take a tough stance against ramping up oil train traffic through Washougal, noting the destruction resulting from rail car accidents in other parts of the country.
“I look at what the impact of this is on the city, and I don’t like these things moving through here,” Boger said.
The councilors invited Capt. Kevin Bergstrom of the Camas-Washougal Fire Department to share his thoughts on oil train safety after recently attending a training course on oil spills in Colorado. Councilor Joyce Lindsay asked if Bergstrom felt Washougal had the resources to respond to a destructive oil train accident.
“When a train car derails, this is an incident that takes a lot more than the local resource can provide,” Bergstrom said.
Councilor Dave Shoemaker suggested mandating low speed limits for trains traveling through Washougal, and ramping up track maintenance efforts to ensure safety. But trying to stop the project altogether is out of the question, he said.
“I don’t think we should tell the railroad, ‘You can’t come through here,’ ” Shoemaker said. “The goal is safety, and we leave it up to the experts to come up with a way to achieve that. The goal is not to shut down the project.”
