Ohio lawmakers recommend sweeping changes to rail safety in wake of derailment
In the weeks following the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine on February 3rd, many residents, local officials, and politicians alike found themselves searching for what could be done, both to help East Palestine recover and to prevent a similar disaster from happening again.
On February 23rd, the Ohio General Assembly created the Select Committee on Rail Safety, which sought to answer those calls for action.
That committee, made up of seven republicans and three democrats from across the state, including here in the valley, has been hearing testimony from health, rail, response, and recovery officials for over 6 months, and just Wednesday afternoon, released their report detailing what they believe must be done to help disaster-stricken communities recover, prevent future rail disasters, and respond to disasters in the future.
Among the recommendations are crew size minimums and infrastructure improvements that have already faced backlash from the railroad industry, among other proposals like emergency communications systems, long-term testing infrastructure, and research aimed at preventing and limiting damage from future derailments.
The first recommendation made by the committee is for lawmakers to pass the bipartisan Railway Safety Act of 2023, proposed initially by Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown and J.D. Vance in the wake of the East Palestine Derailment.
With the Senate back in session and the House returned from recess, the process looks set to resume soon. However, it is currently unclear just how much success the legislation will have in the US congress.
Pushback from Vance's republican colleagues means that the legislation, which is being lobbied against by Norfolk Southern and other railroad companies and organizations, faces a battle in the Senate as it seeks to attract at least 3 more GOP Senators to prevent a filibuster.
In many ways, the report paints a picture of a Norfolk Southern which, on one hand, says it is committed to progress in rail safety and the recovery of East Palestine, but on the other hand, continues to fund lobbying efforts against bipartisan safety legislation.
While continuing to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into cleanup efforts, Norfolk Southern has also resumed its lobbying efforts, spending nearly $2 million on Capitol Hill while lawmakers worked on the Railway Safety Act in committee.
While federal law means we don't know just how Norfolk Southern spent that money, we do know that by the time the RSA made it through the committee, the bill had been significantly marked up and amended from its original form.
At the end of the committee process, the legislation had stretched from 18 pages to 80, a point of contention with some republican lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) who say they worry the legislation gives too much power to the executive branch.
Another focal point of contention are proposals, from both Ohio state regulators and in the RSA, which would require two-person train crews for most rail operations.
A line in the Ohio budget which required the 2-person crew size minimum is the target of an ongoing lawsuit between the Association of American Railroads and the State of Ohio. In the lawsuit, the AAR argues primarily that the crew size law is preempted by federal law which prohibits those kinds of staffing minimums.
The AAR also argues in the lawsuit that there is no proven safety benefit to multi-person train crews, citing studies that were funded themselves by the railroad industry, which is motivated to keep single-person crews to cut costs under a service model known as precision scheduled railroading.
Precision scheduled railroading, or PSR for short, has been pushed by the rail industry for over a decade, and largely involved smaller crews, longer trains, denser schedules, and longer routes as ways to cut costs in the railroading process.
However, as critics have been quick to point out, such practices have also come at the cost of safety as workers face increasingly difficult working conditions and record-high turnover rates.
PSR, some argue, are the direct cause of derailments like the one that happened in East Palestine earlier this year, as well as the Lac-Mégantic catastrophe in 2013, the primary justification being that multi-person crews would have been better equipped to inspect railcars and spot the issues that led up to the derailments in both cases.
The Federal Railroad Administration saw one-person crews as a large enough safety concern that they had proposed federal rulemaking which would require two-person crews in most cases over six months before the derailment in East Palestine.
The other recommendations in the Ohio Rail Safety Committee's report mostly surround prevention and response efforts, including emergency preparedness training, communication protocols, fire prevention methods, and funding for more rail infrastructure designed to prevent incidents.
Poor communication has long been a target of emergency personnel responding to the incident in East Palestine, as first responders waited in long lines on clogged roads to get the ground zero, where responders on scene had no clear understanding of what they were dealing with.
An AP report on the communication issues published back in June says that it took more than 45 minutes for Norfolk Southern to disclose to firefighters what chemicals were on the train.
Then, to add fuel to the fire, officials from OxyVinyls, who had produced and shipped the Vinyl Chloride on the train that derailed in East Palestine, told officials on the scene information which contradicted what they write on their own material safety data sheets, according to claims made in a Norfolk Southern lawsuit against the company back in July.
The Committee hopes that creating a clear chain of command and open communication structure, as well as disaster protocols and preparedness will allow first responders to better assist in the hours following a similar catastrophe in the future.
Among these recommendations is a system which will provide emergency response agencies in any given locality a rolling manifest of all hazardous materials which are traveling through their jurisdiction via rail, in hopes that they will know the potential dangers of any derailment or rail incident without having to pick up a phone and before they even get to the scene.
Last but not least, the report also recommends those infrastructural changes which could better allow railroads to assess risks while trains are on the rails.
A widely viewed video shows one car on the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine roll past a camera with a flaming wheel, one which was sensed by Norfolk Southern's railside bearing temperature sensors, but as of the most recent reading before the derailment, was still within a temperature range that Norfolk Southern considered safe.
The Committee says that lower distances between sensors and a comprehensive study on the effectiveness of these sensors could allow more informed decisions by railroad companies if they're faced with similar situations in the future.
With cleanup still underway in East Palestine and the health effects of the disaster still unclear, the Committee's recommendations are merely the beginning of what is sure to be a whole new regulatory chapter in the East Palestine story.