Phillips 66 plan would offer no local control of dangerous trains

The term “pre-emption” is used as a shorthand to reference the fact that when it comes to railroads, locomotives, rail tracks, cargoes, operations, safety and maintenance of same, the federal government has control, and local entities and states have none.

For those of us in San Luis Obispo County, it means that if Phillips 66 gets to build a crude oil train terminal at its Nipomo refinery, we will have no control over the number of crude oil trains that pass through our communities, their safety, the pollution they emit or their negative impact on our health and economy.

Each oil train weighs over 17 million pounds and will cross structurally questionable more-than-100-year-old trestles in our county. The summary for the final environmental impact report for the project uses the word “pre-emption” 23 times when referring to the 11 Class 1 environmental impacts (significant and unavoidable) this project results in — which simply means the county has no control over the project’s impacts.

Phillips 66 needs county permission to build the terminal. If the terminal is not built, the dangerous crude oil trains will not be coming through our communities. We have one chance to stop this project. The Planning Commission is holding hearings this week for public comment. Please join your friends and neighbors in telling our planning commissioners and supervisors to deny this project. For more information, go to www.protectslo.org.

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 2:37 PM with the headline "Phillips 66 plan would offer no local control of dangerous trains."