Tate writes: "State and federal officials are investigating an oil spill from a railroad tank car at Washington state's largest refinery last November, but key agencies were kept in the dark about it for at least a month."
Empty railroad tank cars en route to a storage yard in Delaware. The cars will return to North Dakota's Bakken region to be loaded with crude oil for another trip to the refinery at Delaware City. (photo: Curtis Tate/MCT)
Washington State Officials Kept in the Dark About Oil Spill for Over a Month
29 January 15
tate and federal officials are investigating an oil spill from a railroad tank car at Washington state�s largest refinery last November, but key agencies were kept in the dark about it for at least a month.
The delayed notification of the spill highlights gaps in communication and enforcement as more crude oil shipments travel by rail.
According to reports reviewed by McClatchy, when the tank car arrived on Nov. 5 at the BP Cherry Point refinery, Federal Railroad Administration inspectors discovered oil stains on its sides and wheels. A closer inspection revealed an open valve and a missing plug. The car was also 1,611 gallons short, enough to fill the gas tanks of 100 Subaru Foresters .
Neither the railroad, nor the third-party company that unloaded the oil at the terminal, however, could determine where the missing oil had spilled, making it likely that it had leaked somewhere along the train�s 1,200-mile path between the loading terminal in Dore, N.D., and the refinery, near Ferndale, Wash.
The oil train route to Northwest refineries passes through national parks, along rivers and through the region�s population centers.
An oil release of that size from a marine tanker, a refinery or a storage facility would automatically trigger a well-establish set of notification requirements that would result in the information about the incident flowing promptly to local, state and federal agencies.
There are state and federal hotlines for reporting an oil spill, yet the November incident was not initially reported to any local or state officials. The Washington state Utilities and Transportation Commission found out on Dec. 3 when it received a copy of the report BNSF Railway submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation�s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Railroads have 30 days to file such reports.
Courtney Wallace, a spokeswoman for BNSF, said that the train �was not in transit, not on our property and not in our custody� when the spill was detected and that the company submitted the required reports to state and federal regulators. She also said that no one reported evidence of spilled oil along BNSF track, which follows the Columbia River and parts of Puget Sound and passes through at least five of the state�s 10 most populous cities.
Scott Dean, a spokesman for BP, said the company �took this issue very seriously� and notified BNSF and Savage Services, which unloads the tank cars at the refinery. He added that federal regulators confirmed that the company had fulfilled its responsibilities.
The information never reached the Washington state Department of Ecology, which responds to inland oil spills; the U.S. Coast Guard, which responds to oil spills along navigable waterways; or the Whatcom County Unified Emergency Coordination Center. All three first learned of the incident last week from McClatchy.
The report BNSF filed to federal regulators indicates that no local emergency services were notified at the time of the incident.
State law requires railroads to report any hazardous materials release to the state emergency operations center within 30 minutes of learning of the incident. The center�s 24-hour duty officer shares spill information with all levels of government. Karina Shagren, a spokeswoman for the state Emergency Management Division, said the department has no record of anyone calling to report an oil spill from a rail car at the refinery in November.
State and local officials could have known about the spill sooner if it had been reported to the U.S. Coast Guard�s National Response Center hotline. The center shares information about reported spills to state and local agencies.
Federal and state regulators are investigating.
�If we discover that the shipper or the railroad ran afoul of federal safety regulations,� said Kevin Thompson, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration,� we will take appropriate enforcement actions.�
Kathy Hunter, rail safety manager at the state Utilities and Transportation Commission, said the commission is assisting with the federal investigation.
The Department of Ecology also has launched an investigation.
�There may have been a gap in reporting protocol,� said David Byers, spill response manager for the department. �We�re investigating to determine if there was one.�
The rail industry and its regulators have been working to improve communication with state and local emergency response officials following a series of high-profile oil train derailments and spills in the past few years. Still, the November oil spill shows the kinds of hidden risks that continue to emerge in communities where the oil is transported by rail.
It also has shown enforcement gaps, especially at the state level. Washington state has four inspectors on its payroll who are certified by the Federal Railroad Administration, one each for track, signals, operations and hazardous materials.
The state, however, does not have an inspector for locomotives and equipment. A state inspector would report any oil spill immediately to other state agencies. Had a state inspector been present at the Cherry Point refinery when the oil-stained car arrived in November instead of just federal ones, the state would have been notified sooner.
Jason Lewis, transportation policy adviser with the Utilities and Transportation Commission, said the commission has requested funding to add a fifth inspector.
�Right now, the resources are very thin at the state level,� he said.
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Now it is not cool to side with the separitists is it? It wouldn't be smart now to call the Ukrainians "fascists" now would it?
Glad you have seen a good reason to print the facts.
Janet Way
Shoreline, WA
Ask your friends how they feel about Ukraine formally honoring their WW II Nazi collaborators.
Ask them how they feel about scores, or possibly hundreds of civilians being brutally murdered in Odessa.
Here's a video put together by Ukrainians that traces the "peaceful grassroots democratic" protests from Maidan to Odessa. No overdubs or such really. Just video documenting the events, some with English subtitles for what the "heroes" are saying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrG_UZibwbU
That video stops before the resistance fighters took to arms against the new regime in Kiev, so it gives a good sense of why so many Ukrainians oppose this regime.
If it sparks your curiosity, I'd be happy to post newer ones showing you the daily shooting, shelling and bombing of civilians since May.
It was asked, and answered by a retired pilot and the answer is economics. Passenger planes try to fly as direct a route as possible to keep costs to their customers down. And it wasn't exactly "in the midst" but 33,000 feet up.
MH17 was flying at around 30,000 feet (5-6 miles) high. Shooting down a plane at that height involves having calibrated (tested & adjusted for a wide range of factors) fixed ground based launching facilities way beyond the body held missiles held by eastern Ukrainians or the long range missile supposedly recently (within days) captured. Setting up these systems take months of platform preparation, tooling, adjustment, calibration, measurement & testing in order to achieve accuracy at 30,000 feet.
Considering the long list of USA instigated 'FALSE-FLAG' operations over decades. Here are a few very brief summaries (less than 10%) not including USA's genocide of 1st Nations on its own soil including right up & including present: http://www.911review.com/articles/anon/false_flag_perations.html www.wanttoknow.info/falseflag www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
The western Finance-Media-M ilitary-Industr ial-Legislative -Complex trillionaire oligarchs & their bevy of submissive billionaires, concerned that Russia-China have moved to a Euro-Asian oil-currency, are in a rush to instigate nuclear WW3
(On the tape -- which now seems impossible to access -- the Russian photo captions under the mug shots are mistranslated: the word under the top mug shot is "mayor" [accent on the last syllable; the word means "major," the military rank], and I don't remember the name under the other mug shot save that it too was not as given in the translation.)
(Da, I studied a little Russian a very long time ago, and can still sort of puzzle out the alphabet at about a pre-kindergarte n level.)
The same maniacs, or their successors, may be pushing to attack RUSSIA, before it's "too late".
Ten or fifteen years ago, I'd have accused anyone suggesting such a scenario of being an alarmist, or even an idiot. Now the times have changed, sad to say.
Those nukes were already armed and ready, and the officers in Cuba had authority to launch them at will.
There's some evidence that the CIA and USAF KNEW those missiles were already hot, and wanted to initiate the nuclear world war because they thought the'd win (after some hundreds of millions of deaths).
That same valuation of human life could well be prominent in the shadow government today.
He was in charge of security at the Maidan.
On May 21 he was still saying that 'the Russians did it (the sniper attack) claiming that 18 Russian Spetsnaz had penetrated his security cordon and had done the sniping.
This article details the Ukrainian investigation of the snipers in Maidan and Parubiy's involvement in that event.
Needless to say, this updated information hasn't been carried in any of the MSM that I've seen:
http://theother14.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/svobodas-andriy-parubiy-found-responsible-for-ordering-snippers-at-maiden-protests/
Like Sarin use by Syria government ...
who stands to gain from this disaster? Russia, the separatists? I don't think so... Poroshenko and the US are the only ones to gain something. Isn't it obvious when you see the big picture? ....
Only Ukraine/Kiev has the capabilities to shoot down the plane .. it was likely by mistake, but these poor soldiers are scared.
rt.com/news/173792-malaysian-plane-diverted-warzone/
"the route over Donetsk Region was considered safe for civil aviation despite the violence on the ground. Last week Ukraine closed the airspace in its east to traffic flying at altitudes of 7,900 meters or lower, but MH17 was flying at 10,600 meters.
Militias have been using relatively simple anti-aircraft weapons like shoulder-fired SAMs, which can engage targets up to 3,500 meters high, which apparently was good enough reason for airlines and Ukrainian traffic controllers to allow high-flying planes over the restricted area."
"New Math"?
Sorry, that was rude. How about "best check your math".
Thank you for correction:
33,000 feet minus 21,000 feet = 12,000 feet aka 4000+ METERS.
This is estimated height - makes sense to round - (aka .. approximately) .. when they say at 4000 meters it could by 10% up or down ...
There is ALMOST certainty that this "recording" is made up in Kiev by ... like photo of Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine ...
These ground to air missile are Soviet/Russian made - and without radar support are useless - it is complex system ..
I'm a little puzzled by your last sentence:
"Only Ukraine/Kiev has the capabilities to shoot down the plane .. it was likely by mistake, but these poor soldiers are scared."
Which soldiers are you talking about?
Why do you think the rebels wouldn't have the capability to shoot the plane down?
If the Kiev government would gain by this incident, why should the soldiers be scared? If it was Kiev soldiers, they should be happy that they've succeeded in their mission by your logic.
Kiev deployed powerful anti-air systems to E. Ukraine ahead of the Malaysian plane crash ...
rt.com/news/173784-ukraine-plane-malaysian-russia/
these are complex systems, there are no information that resistance in the Eastern Ukraine has this capabilities. The recording above is fabricated .. any high school hacker can do that ...
So I'm still unsure which soldiers you were referring to there.
You're coming to a conclusion based on a perception of "scared" without any knowledge of context, analysis of data or intimacy with people. As I listen to the video & read the transcript, there is only a group of men who have come upon quite a huge disaster with bodies strewn about a large aircraft. I hear them rightly assessing that something 'big' has happened & that from pieces on the ground, they're trying to figure out what. As investigators for their republic, they are responsible for reporting back to their authorities.
Typically soldiers who carry out 'falseflags' are not informed about anything devious in their mission. They are misinformed, mislead tools of much larger manipulations. They are fed a false story about their mission & simply carry out their role with blinders on, not aware of how they are being used as tools.
Activista is right in his assessment that bring a fast moving passenger plane down from 33,000 feet is way beyond body held rocket-launcher s or even mobile devices. Typically ground based missile defence launchers are carefully calibrated over months for the 1000s of factors involved in bringing down any target at that height.
The eastern Ukraine sovereigntists have brought down other planes from much lower altitudes recently but none from this very technically weapons & training demanding altitude. The voice recordings may refer to any number of recorded events. I'm assuming, they are communicating over cell-phones. Obama is incorrect to draw any association & correct, as Putin did first, to call for an international inquiry.
The trouble with inquiries such as Europe's report into eg:
1) Maidan sniper fire from a Maidan rebel totally controlled building,
2) Victoria Nuland's proud declaration of investing 5 USD billion into the destabilization of Ukraine's democratically elected Yanukovych government or
3) Syrian rebel use of Sarin gas reported by Carla del Ponte
is that they all point to US & western financial, arms & training in Crimes Against Humanity but then US controlled corporate media allows absolutely no reporting on these events, issues & reports so the popular mind is lead directly to the next false-flag accusation. Social-media touches some 20% of US, Canada, NATO & Israeli populations. 80% mainstream still believe that the accusations are true.
If one accepts the recording as genuine, as you seem to do, one would have to determine first which side the speakers were on. You appear to assume they were Kiev soldiers. I'm not an expert on Ukraine, but I would think that would be doubtful. Presumably they would've been identified by their accent, vocabulary, and things they mention.
Remember that this tape has to be believable to Ukrainians, not just us. Ukrainians know what people in different regions sound like.
If you believe the recordings are fabricated, as Activista does, then those problems don't come up. The Kiev regime could fake a rebel recording.
The Kiev regime has claimed they monitored evidence of a missile battery capable of hitting the plane being brought in from Russia and then hastily being returned after the disaster. I realize the problems with verifying that.
These missile batteries are quite complex units - with radar tracking trucks etc. Do not see ANY evidence that what Kiev regime is telling is true.
The Guardian ?- think that Guardian is more correct on Israel ...
Seumas Milne: The idea that Israel is defending itself from unprovoked attacks is absurd. Occupied people have the right to resist.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/16/gaza-shameful-injustice-israel-attacks-occupied-people
Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Saddam Hussein and Weapons of Mass Destruction, two well-known examples of many one could cite:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/y4P2O8UjQeU
Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War
Never discount the possibility that this was a "false flag" operation by one of the principals involved in the conflict regarding Ukraine.
"Operation Northwoods" was a covert proposal during the height of the Cold War by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President John F. Kennedy involving the shooting down of passenger airlines to provoke a preemptive war of aggression against Cuba.
https://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Operation_Northwoods
Fortunately JFK courageously had the sound prudential judgment and strategic clarity to reject such dangerous actions.
Barack Obama has demonstrated time and time again that he does not possess these same high qualities of character and integrity to resist such folly.
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmockingbird.htm
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
Not only is the limit actually about 1480 characters, all the characters in a URL count against the total.
This means even one long URL (for example,
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/24844-focus-recording-strongly-suggests-russian-separatist-shot-down-malaysian-jet, which is 135 characters), invariably eliminates vital text.
Moreover, the website TinyURL is no longer an acceptable fix. It is so obnoxiously clogged by Google Analytics and other ad-monitoring software, it is now as slow as dial-up, which means converting a long URL into a short equivalent can take up to 10 minutes.
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/18/facts-needed-on-malaysian-plane-shoot-down/
You've almost got it!
It's whatever bad thing that happens in the Near East, Middle East or what used be called Asia Minor is always due to Die Ashkenazi Juden Eidechse Menschen. If happens any place else on the planet,and if in answer to the question, Qui bono?i.e., who benefits, if it's the Lizards of the Levant, Wall St. or "The City of London" the most likely suspect is you know who... uh, er... You know - Jew.
You were close, but no six pointed star on the top of the paper, today, pupik!
I don't know who shot down the plane and probably never will. this is just like the Syria Sarin gas episode. All that matters is who's story dominates the media. That's what people will believe from now on. It is propaganda of the very worst sort.
It's been verified that Flt MH17's flightpath deviated from the normal flightpath when it left Amsterdam and, when crossing into Western Ukrainian airspace, was instructed to reduce its altitude by Ukrainian air traffic controllers from 35000 ft to 33000 ft as it approached the area in eastern Ukraine where it was shot down. This should be verified by the black boxes.
I don't know if this could be classified as a false-flag event. If (and I do say if) the plane was shot down by an anti-Kiev govt rebel, it was done so by a knee-jerk reaction. There're many ways one can possibly take this. All of this could simply have been a tragedy of errors.
One possibility is that the Kiev govt was losing too many planes to the ground-to-air missile systems used by the rebels to stop the human slaughter on the ground by the Kiev govt of innocent Ukrainian civilians, which is currently taking place right now in Lugansk. 16 civilians have died in the past few days by ground and air attacks by the Kiev govt.
I don't think that the Kiev govt by itself could've thought this up. It's possible that U.S. intelligence could've suggested to Kiev to purposely redirect Flt MH17 into the jaws of death hoping that someone on the rebel side would react without thinking because of the constant incursions of Kiev govt military jets into eastern Ukraine, and accidentally shoot down Flt MH17, and they got their wish.
"Pretty Much Everyone is Pissed at Putin Right Now"
http://news.yahoo.com/pretty-much-everyone-pissed-putin-now-143009756.html
I hope Putin stands his ground and doesn't capitulate anymore to the western powers.
"Here's the Ridiculous Way Russia's Propaganda Channel is Covering the Downed Malaysia Airliner"
http://www.businessinsider.com/rt-malaysia-airlines-ukraine-2014-7
"Russia Today Anchor Resigns, Admits to Spreading 'Lies' for Putin"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/18/sara-firth-resigns-russia-today-lies-anchor_n_5598815.html
"Russia Today Reporter Quits Over 'Lies' On Ukraine"
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-today-reporter-quits-over-lies-ukraine-170626565.html
In the above article, Sara Firth accused Polly Boiko of telling lies for Putin. A blogger accused Ms. Boiko of taking money to spread Putin's lies about Malaysia Flight MH17. Ms. Boiko responded by asking "What am I spreading?" Sara Firth responded "Lies hun!"
I listen to Polly Boiko on RT news and I've never heard her make any statements in support of or against Putin or against the western media. She only tells the news in a neutral and unbiased manner.
Sara Firth accuses Ms. Boiko and RT news in general of telling lies for Putin, but she has never given any examples in her public statements.
But I do seriously hope whoever murdered those people is caught and punished.
Sigh ...
And what Putin/Russia would gain from shooting down the plane?
http://infowars.com
Where is there an ounce of sanity in any of this?
Why was the BUK deployed to the region by Kiev & why was it switched on & operational ?
Why is one of its missiles missing from the battery as seen on YouTube video emerging today?
The US started this conflict in Maidan & used Nazi elements for the coup and never wanted a cease-fire so once again Obama the 'war criminal' is responsible!
Tell it like it is & stop the killing........ .... We have all had enough of Yankistan meddling & wars!"
rt.com/usa/174008-ron-paul-malaysia-ukraine-crash/
Comments: + Ralph G WarCloud DestinDestin In this article all what i said about Buk earlier (i'm the AAF officer in past). Buk and Buk M1 shooting range is 18-22km as i said. Not 40km. Buk M1 is latest (1982 or 1986 year of production) that ukraine have. This complex is from USSR. 4 vehicles & a lot of specialists - i said it before. Yes, about 12-14 specialists they must have. They haven't.
MH17 shot down on Thursday July 17 at 1:30 pm UTC which is 16:20 Kiev time on July 17th.
The video claiming 'proof' of the activist's involvement was created 2014-07-16 19:10:24. Wednesday July 16th.
Something not quite in the right sequence there.
Worth a crack. I suppose, but sorry guys, thats a 'Fail'!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltP2t9nq9fI
not referenced in latest news/propaganda much anymore ...
But read Yahoo forum ... people (could be paid trolls) calling for STRONG LEADER (fuhrer) to replace Obama. This is VERY SCARY ... do Americans want Netanyahu type?