Rollin Stone

Railroad management asleep at the switch

While driving my daily commute to work from way up north, I noticed one of those long, snaking Alaska Railroad trains traveling along on the rail around Mile 49 on the Parks Highway.

Stopped at a red light, I watched the massive train engines towing dozens of sleek, black cars filled with whatever petroleum by-product they were hauling into Anchorage via our sleepy Valley, but I lost count.

As I drove on, the train and I continued to travel parallel through our separate journeys. The train thundered under the bridge I was crossing and I thought about how powerful the immense, segmented machine was.

It then occurred to me what the scene must have been like when 54 tanker cars carrying more than 1 million gallons of toxic fuel hit a patch of snow, flung 15 of its cars onto the pristine ground, and spewed 100,000 gallons of the poison just north of Talkeetna and at the edge of Denali Park.

Most of the jet fuel is still in the ground from the derailment which happened one month ago, and I wonder if I am the only one who sees what an incredible screw-up the ARRC powers-that-be are making of cleaning up this mess the railroad has created.

Now, Im no railroad scientist or environmental know-it-all. But I cant help thinking something stinks here besides all the hazardous liquid slowly seeping closer to the Big Susitna river.

First, lets look at the derailment itself. The second one I mean. Remember this was the railroads second derailment in less than two months. Weather conditions were, admittedly, strange.

We witnessed a big dumping of snow, then an unseasonable downpour of rain, followed by a deep freeze. But come on, railroad guys, this is Alaska. Weve got extreme, unpredictable weather lots of it and we always will.

So whats with the big scramble by railroad leadership to suddenly come up with procedures for clearing and maintaining tracks when they are hauling more than 1 million gallons of fuel and oil through wilderness, towns and cities daily?

You dropped the ball, guys, pure and simple, and now youre scrambling around with letters to the media about how much you care about the situation, and releasing snappy sound bites for television from corporate VIPs outlining your clean-up plans.

The words plans, investigations, and organizing roll from your tongues like tanker cars rolling off snow-packed tracks.

When are we going to see some action? It was real swell of the railroad leaders to break camp at the derailment site and let the over-worked recovery crews, who had been on the job less than a week, have the New Years weekend off.

But while all that merriment was had by the railroad crews, the foul poison was trickling ever closer to underground water which may be seeping into the Big Su River.

That is just one example of the delays caused by the railroads lack of action. The Department of Environmental Conservation wrote a letter to the railroad Jan. 5, warning of possible punitive action if the railroad didnt increase crews and step up recovery efforts.

To date, the railroad has not indicated any interest in stepping up efforts, claiming the spill isnt critical enough to warrant any changes in its grand plan.

Its time for the media and Alaska residents to start asking some hard questions, and start demanding some accountability from the railroad corporation for what may be an environmental catastrophe.

If this were the private sector, the real world if you will, there would be much more scrutiny of the ARRC leadership. It is time to take a good hard look at the competency of present railroad leadership and management.

The bottom line, of course, is Alaskans will lose on all fronts.

It is a publicly owned corporation, so ultimately we will pay for clean-up and fines, not to mention the cost of poisoning our own beautiful state. And what about the next time a train derails with 1 million gallons on board? It happened in our back yard twice.

What makes us think the next one wont be in our front yard?

Jo C. Goode is a Frontiersman reporter who covers the courts and crime in the Valley.