To receive rail shipments and transfer them to trucks
A San Francisco Superior Court judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by environmental groups that sought to halt rail shipments of volatile Bakken crude oil into Richmond. Judge Peter J. Busch ruled that the lawsuit was filed too late.
The plaintiffs, which included the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), had challenged a permit issued by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) allowing Kinder Morgan to receive rail shipments and transfer them to trucks, which haul the oil to Tesoro’s Golden Eagle refinery in Martinez.
After the hearing, representatives of the four groups said that the decision allows the oil industry to imperil public health by transporting highly flammable Bakken crude oil near homes and schools.
“Any community along the rail line is vulnerable to derailment and explosion,” said Andres Soto, a member of CBE. “But Richmond, being the place where materials are off-loaded from rail cars to trucks, creates more opportunities for both mechanical and human errors.”
Since early 2014, Kinder Morgan, the fourth largest energy company in America, has been transporting crude oil by trains, then by tanker trucks to the Tesoro refinery. The BAAQMD issued the permit back in 2013, allowing Kinder Morgan to switch from unloading ethanol to Bakken crude oil fracked in North Dakota. The permit was issued ministerially, which bypasses public environment review.