Railroad giant BNSF is criticizing the state's claims that the company failed to report more than a dozen hazardous material spills, claiming it found inaccuracies of more than 90 percent of the alleged violations, the Bellingham Herald reported.
The report, released by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission on March 19, recommended over $700,000 in fines for the company, finding that between Nov. 1 and Feb. 24, there were 14 incidents of releasing hazardous materials not properly documented with the state. By law, spills must be reported to a state hotline within the required half hour of learning about them.
In its report, the state claimed that in some cases BNSF did call the hotline, but not within the required 30 minutes. In other cases, it claimed BNSF did not call at all but submitted a copy of a federal report required within a month of any hazardous material spill.
BNSF claims, however, that the company reported at least six of the other incidents to the hotline, and it has the reports to prove it, according to an email newsletter sent Monday.
"We are disappointed we were not provided the opportunity to review the report and correct some of the misinformation before it was issued," the BNSF newsletter reads.
In the most severe of the allegations, which included up to 111 violations involving a tank car that leaked 1,600 gallons of crude oil, the state claimed it was not notified until nearly a month after the incident, when it got a report BNSF sent to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
In its statement, BNSF said the leak was “discovered off BNSF property,” that the car was not in transit, and that it was not it in the company’s custody when the incident happened.
Karina Shagren, spokeswoman for the state Emergency Management Division, told the Herald that BNSF had, in fact, reported the Dec. 7 and 8 incidents, but not within 30 minutes of when the spills were reported to have happened.
Four other incidents on Dec. 9, Shagren said, were reported to the state by an employee from the National Response Center, the federal government’s 24-hour hotline for reporting spills of hazardous materials and oil. A copy of those reports shows that BNSF reported the spills to the NRC.
Read Crosscut's coverage of the spills here.
