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U.S. Government, Railroad Officials All But Acknowledge Rerouting Chlorine Trains to Avoid Capital By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — U.S. and railroad officials yesterday gave their strongest indications yet that they may be rerouting shipments of chlorine and other toxic chemicals away from the U.S. capital in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the United States (see GSN, Nov. 1). Some analyses indicate that if attacked, the trains could create a toxic cloud that could kill thousands of people within minutes. Journalists and activist groups have documented the trains traveling through the center of Washington, passing within blocks of the Capitol and within yards of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (see GSN, Oct. 20). Mindful of liability concerns and of the dangers of making security information available to potential attackers, neither rail operator CSX nor the U.S. Homeland Security Department has publicly acknowledged rerouting the trains at times other than during special events. U.S. House of Representatives members said late last month, though, that they had determined that CSX had been voluntarily rerouting chlorine trains on a regular basis. CSX and Homeland Security officials now appear to have told District of Columbia Council members that CSX has been voluntarily rerouting the shipments. At a public council meeting yesterday, officials from both CSX and Homeland Security stopped just short of acknowledging the rerouting. The strongest such indication came in an exchange between CSX Assistant Vice President for Public Safety Skip Elliott and council Public Works and Environment Committee Chairwoman Carol Schwartz. After Schwartz said closed-door briefings with Elliott and others had convinced her that her “goal” of rerouting the trains had been “accomplished,” Elliott replied, “I too believe that your desire to achieve your goals … has been accomplished.” Elliott added that he had told local officials about the specific steps CSX is taking but could not discuss the measures in public. At another point in the hearing, Homeland Security National Capital Region Coordination Office Director Thomas Lockwood also appeared implicitly to acknowledge the measure. Asked by the chairwoman whether Homeland Security would know if CSX stopped rerouting, he did not dispute the premise that rerouting was under way, saying instead that he did not know how his office would learn if the practice stopped. Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration recently led the development of a security plan for the Washington rail corridor, producing what Lockwood called a “risk-based” plan involving measures such as barriers and cameras to achieve “a measurable hardening of the rail corridor in and around D.C.” “Rerouting is one of the tools that is already in the toolbox. If CSX would like to talk about rerouting, they can. I cannot,” Lockwood said. Among his concerns about such a disclosure, he cited the possibility that Homeland Security could eventually be held to account legally for disclosing information about a private company’s security operations. Elliott said the shipments were “necessary for the public health, safety and security” — chlorine, for example, is used to treat water for human use — and that rail was the safest means of transporting the materials. He described CSX’s own post-Sept. 11 security plan, which involves strengthened communication with police and rail-specific security training for railroad employees and local emergency personnel. “The CSX security plan includes a variety of base-level measures that are already in place and certain additional measures that can be implemented to varying degrees based on receipt of credible intelligence received from a number of civilian and military sources within the federal government,” Elliott said. “When … intelligence indicates a credible threat to security, countermeasures are implemented as appropriate to respond to the threat.” Elliott said in his prepared statement that “federal officials have not directed CSX to route hazardous materials away from the District of Columbia or other urban areas on a long-term basis” but did not say whether CSX had done so voluntarily. Council members and activists at yesterday’s hearing called for government regulation instead of voluntary measures and stressed what they see as the potential deterrent value of announcing that rerouting is taking place. They cited the possibility that attackers, believing that empty rail cars labeled as chlorine shipments were actually full, could fail in their bid to wage toxic warfare but still kill people nearby. Greenpeace Toxics Campaign Legislative Director Rick Hind said rerouting trains without publicizing the measure amounted to a “lessening of security and safety.” Added Schwartz, “Why can’t we just talk turkey about what’s actually being done? Because we feel like sitting ducks here.” The chairwoman said she would continue to seek a government order that CSX reroute the trains, despite her belief that voluntary diversion was under way. She expressed continued support for administrative, rather than legislative, action, in part because of the city’s special vulnerability to federal pre-emption of its laws. “I’m going to keep working on it,” Schwartz said in an interview after the hearing. Elliott said that although “we don’t necessarily believe that regulation is necessary for CSX to do the right thing,” the company “responds to orders from appropriate federal agencies, including the United States Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Transportation.” According to Lockwood, “It is not the department’s stand to mandate specific rail routing of the millions of hazardous shipments that occur annually.” Chlorine and ammonia, another material that has been shipped by rail through the city, have been used in chemical warfare, and activists yesterday repeatedly described the trains as potential weapons of mass destruction. “We’re talking about a disaster of the magnitude of Hiroshima or worse,” Sierra Club legal expert Jim Dougherty said. Rail-security expert Fred Millar, a Friends of the Earth consultant, added, “We are prepositioning weapons of mass destruction in our target cities and making it quite easy and quite attractive for al-Qaeda to attack.”
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