Editorial: Transporting toxic cargo

Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.

Federal Transportation and Homeland Security department officials have proposed tightening safeguards for the nation's rail system, saying that a chemical spill from a derailment or one caused by a terrorist attack could result in an urban catastrophe.

Transportation Secretary Mary Peters has proposed that railroads should use routes that are the farthest from residences and cities for shipping chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and other poisonous gases and hazardous loads. Peters' plan was announced Friday, shortly after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff outlined his recommendations for improving railway security, the Associated Press reports.

Chertoff's plan would require that railroads curtail the amount of time that cars carrying hazardous loads stand still. He also said that freight and passenger cars should undergo regular inspections and be kept in secure areas when not in use.

However, these plans apply mostly to urban areas that have concentrated populations and are perceived to be at higher risk of terrorist threats and catastrophic outcomes. Hazardous materials would be rerouted through remote areas or smaller communities - places that, we can assume, would have fewer people and resources for reacting to attacks or spills.

"Radioactive substances" are included in the government's definitions of hazardous materials. But specific references to trains carrying high-level nuclear waste were not made - as usual. The proposed rules do say, however, that transport of hazardous materials is "unavoidable."

Certainly fuel for motor vehicles or chlorine to purify drinking water is essential. But federal officials bent on opening a repository for nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain also would have us believe that transport of nuclear waste is necessary. Proposed train routes for this toxic cargo would cross remote areas - which are not included under these new proposed security upgrades.

Democrats, who are to take control when Congress reconvenes in January, told AP that they would introduce legislation that includes calling for increasing the number of hazardous materials inspectors and routing trains carrying dangerous materials away from areas in which a spill could do serious damage.

Still, discussion of the most hazardous type of cargo - high-level nuclear waste - needs its own soapbox. Nevada's congressional delegation must aggressively emphasize that, even with tighter security, there is no safe way to tote this lethally toxic substance across the country by train to Nevada.