Are rusty, aging rail bridges safe for oil trains?

Boatbuilder Larry Graf has spent his entire life on Washington’s waters. And whenever the Burlington-based engineer and designer of Aspen Power Catamarans goes under one of the state’s aging rail bridges, he gets worried.

“I don’t think people realize just how old the bridges are. I mean some of them predate cars,” he said.

Amid the growing controversy over trains carrying flammable crude oil across the state, Graf has grown increasingly concerned seeing so many rusting bridges over Washington’s rivers and lakes. And he’s begun documenting them in a series of photos.

“It has always amazed me that a big company with a lot of resources would let an asset like that rust away,” Graf said.

Graf is unlike many of the other vocal activists staging protests against oil trains. He says he has no problem with oil, just the risk of an environmental disaster if a train derails or a bridge collapses.

“Now you’ve got this enormous mess in a river and it starts flowing down river, what do you do with that? And oh, by the way, it’s probably on fire,” Graf said.

But despite several high profile derailments and explosions in recent years, the government and rail industry insist the bridges and entire system are safe and getting safer everyday.

The United States has approximately 76,000 railroad bridges, according to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

While the government is tasked with overseeing their safety, daily maintenance and inspections are left to the private railroad companies that own in them.

In Washington state, that’s primarily Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.

The railroad conducts inspections on average six days a week, and a bridge specialist inspects all of the bridges monthly, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas.

That’s far more than the single annual inspection mandated by federal law. And Melonas said the railroad is subjected to regular audits by FRA certified inspectors.

“If we feel that a structure isn’t safe we’ll take it out of service and we won’t move freight on it,” Melonas said. “The safety of the transportation of all of the products that we move is our number one priority.”

Melonas said this isn’t the first time concerns have been raised about the appearance of bridges. But he insists it’s an issue of cosmetics far more than structural integrity.

“We’re not concerned and if we are we are going to change them out,” Melonas said.

According to Melonas, BNSF is in the midst of a major capitol improvement campaign, spending $6 billion last year to upgrade or replace aging bridges along with rail and other infrastructure.

And in response to worries about a derailment and spill, BNSF has not had a single fatality as the result of a hazardous materials spill along its northern tier from the Great Lakes to Washington state since 1981, Melonas said.

“And that doesn’t happen by luck that happens with compliance to the strict rules that happens because of our regular inspections internally, externally with the federal government, it happens with training, investments in new track regularly,” Melonas said.

But as Graf points out, there are only seven federal inspectors nationwide to oversee the railroads.

Because the bridges are privately owned, railroads are not required to disclose the findings of their internal inspections or maintenance.

The public can only access parts of the federal audits by filing requests under the Freedom of Information Act, so there is no readily accessible record of bridge conditions.

Graf worries some of the oldest could be at risk of catastrophic failure, much like the Skagit River I-5 bridge that collapsed after a truck hit a cross section.

“You know we saw up in Mount Vernon when one of those pieces in a bridge breaks the thing falls down. So just the whole concept amazes me that we are even doing it,” Graf said.

Graf is lobbying for the construction of pipelines to carry oil in place of trains. While controversial, he calls it far safer.

Related: Skagit County oil train project blocked for full environmental review

“I’d like to see us develop some modern pipelines with automatic shutoffs every 1500 feet, so if you did somehow break the pipeline it would spill 400 gallons not 29,000 gallons,” he said.

In addition, Graf is calling for more inspections by independent, third-party experts to guarantee the structural integrity of the rail bridges.

“These are really old. And the only reason they are holding up is they were engineered for steam trains.”

But Melonas argues the BNSF experts are far better suited to determine the structural integrity of bridges than a lay person, regardless of their training or previous experience.

“I’m certainly not saying that people are not qualified but I would say that we’ll leave it up to our experts,” Melonas said.