Take Action to Protect Your Community From Exploding Oil Trains

  • by: Sierra Club
  • recipient: U.S. Department of Transportation
Trains carrying dangerous, highly explosive fuels travel through countless communities every day. You may be one of the 25 million Americans living in the blast zone of explosive oil trains without even knowing it.

After a record-breaking year of oil train derailments, spills and explosions, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has called these dangerous oil trains an "imminent hazard" to the public. That's why they've proposed new standards to make these shipments safer.

But oil and rail companies don't want to pay more to make oil trains safer. Take a moment to make sure the DOT is listening to the people, not Big Oil, by urging them to protect your community from explosive oil trains!
Dear [Decision maker],

I applaud the Department of Transportation's efforts to address the increasing risk of crude by rail transport through its proposed rule, however the DOT's final rules must go further to ensure our communities are safe.

In particular, the slow phase-out of the notoriously unsafe DOT-111 tankers will do nothing to protect Americans from explosions and spills resulting from derailments until as late as 2020. I urge you to put in place an immediate ban on transporting flammable materials in these dangerous tankers. High hazard flammable trains -- trains carrying 20 or more tankers of volatile oil -- should also be banned to protect our communities.

The DOT must also ensure that the final rail safety rule implements, at a minimum, all of the tank car safety standards proposed by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. I ask that the DOT takes a hard look at whether it can go further to ensure risks to public health, safety, property and environment are minimized.

I also urge the DOT to ensure that both the public and first responders are notified of dangerous crude-by-rail shipments through their communities, and that the required threshold for these public notices should be less than the current one million gallons of oil. People have a right to know when they are being put at risk by the transportation of hazardous materials.

[Your comments here]

Please finalize these important rules as quickly as possible, and keep the implementation phase-in period as short as possible. As shipments of crude-by-rail soar around the country, we cannot wait years for new safety standards to take effect.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
Sign Petition
Sign Petition
You have JavaScript disabled. Without it, our site might not function properly.

Privacy Policy

By signing, you accept Care2's Terms of Service.
You can unsub at any time here.

Having problems signing this? Let us know.