Membership MeetingSunday December 7, 2014

Potluck Treats - Holiday Cheer1:30 pm – 3 pm

Hoquiam Library

The Sandpiper

November/December 2014

Washington Physicians for Social ResponsibilityPolicy Position Opposing the Siting of Crude Oil Terminals within Population Centers

On Saturday, November 1, the Washington Physi-cians for Social Responsibility presented a public discussion on the health impacts of crude oil trains and terminals (tank farms) at the Hoquiam High School Little Theater. They have taken a policy po-sition against the siting of crude oil tank farms in Hoquiam and other population centers. Following is their position paper, which is based on the very real risk of tank explosions and the lo-cation of the tank farms in the Cascadia Subduction Earthquake liquefaction and tsunami zone: Oil tanks for storage and shipment are part of the rapidly expanding crude oil by rail network in the NW. While Washington’s State Marine and Rail Transportation Study, requested by Governor In-slee, the Department of Ecology (DOE), and the public have been giving a great deal of attention to the expansion of and risks from oil by rail, almost no attention has been given to the proposed storage tanks at the loading/export ports (Vancouver and Hoquiam). The October 1, 2014 preliminary find-ings from the study do not address the issue of oil storage tanks and their presence in communities. All three of the proposed crude oil terminals in Ho-quiam are in population centers. The total amount of crude oil stored in the tanks would be approxi-mately 114,000,000 gallons.The US Development site would locate eight 125,000-barrel tanks within about 1,900 feet of the Hoquiam High School, 1,500 feet from their out-door playfield, and only slightly farther away from both the middle and elementary schools. The two other projects are just south of the city commercial center, but adjacent to each other. The proposed Imperium project would locate nine 80,000-barrel tanks immediately adjacent to an ex-isting biodiesel production facility and tank farm. Adjacent to the biodiesel site would be the pro-posed Westway project with five 200,000-barrel tanks. Existing storage tanks on the Westway site

include four tanks utilized for other liquid products including ethanol. Various commercial buildings and offices are lo-cated just across a city street that borders the north boundary of this massive complex of existing and proposed storage tanks.

Fires and explosions: two potential causes 1. Tank Explosions: Crude by rail through Wash-ington is projected to come primarily from the Bak-ken oil fields in North Dakota. This crude has a large component of light hydrocarbons making it highly volatile. There is an inherent risk of fire and explosions when handling, transporting and refin-ing crude oil, and explosions in tanks of various sizes and at many locations are common and well documented throughout the industry. While many of these explosions have been caused by employee lapses in judgment while working on smaller tanks or at well-drilling sites, some have occurred in large tanks from events inherent in the risks from equipment and technology for the industry. In other words, major explosive accidents at large facilities have occurred. This is probably one of the reasons that facilities for refining and storing these highly combustible substances are commonly sited away from population centers (consider the major petro-leum sites in Washington near Anacortes, well away from the city).

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Buncefield, England c Chilton Air Support

The President’s Perch

By Arnie Martin

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Please excuse the absence of the Sandpiper, as it has been a very busy late summer – early fall period of attending hearings on the third Crude by Rail project in Hoquiam, the Governor’s Study on Rail and Marine Transport, and various city council meetings. Now that things have quiet-ed down somewhat, It’s time to fill you all in on what has happened. There are now more than 15 resolutions from statewide Washington city councils in opposition to Crude By Rail terminals. Some resolutions are strong, asking for a moratorium on permitting of CBR terminals, and some are weaker, only asking for safety measures to be strengthened. Strong resolutions have passed in Aberdeen, Montesano, Elma, Ocean Shores, and Westport. Thanks to all who attended the many meetings to show support for keeping the CBR terminals away. Thanks also to the wonderful support of the Quinault Indian Nation, who stood shoulder to shoulder with all of us in meeting after meeting. They also put up the No Oil Trains (“NOT”) bill-board next to Grays Harbor Veterinary Clinic, visible driving east, just past the WSDOT weigh station. Thanks especially for their support and leadership in the legal fight against CBR, that is the appeal of the items rejected in the Shoreline Hearings board decision that remanded the per-mits back to Ecology and the City of Hoquiam. That appeal on Ocean Resources Management Act (ORMA) and on financial responsibility has been fully briefed at the Washington State Court of Appeals, and a decision on scheduling oral ar-guments is pending. We need your continuing support of the struggle to have strict constraints contained within the En-vironmental Impact Statements, both Draft and Final. These constraints must address financial responsibility, rail safety, marine safety, and pro-vision of funds for the control of spills and equip-ment for the first responders. Please support leg-islation during the 2015 session to provide “barrel taxes” on shipments of Crude Oil by Rail. These shippers currently pay no taxes on a shipment of crude that can exceed 84,000 barrels (3.5 million gallons) per unit train.

When meetings are scheduled that require pub-lic support we hope you will attend the meetings, bringing your friends and neighbors. We will keep you posted with messages on our website (www.ghas.org) and at the Friends of Grays Har-bor website (www.fogh.org), as well as in future Sandpiper issues.

Membership Meeting Please join us at the Hoquiam Timberland Li-brary on Sunday, December 7 at 1:30 pm for an opportunity to spend time and share holiday treats with fellow Auduboners. There will be no formal program this time, rather it will be a time to catch up on individual activities, sightings, concerns and camaraderie. Bring your favorite treat, pho-tos and excursions and share with others during this Holiday Season wind down to the year’s end.

We will also be presenting and voting on this com-ing year’s Board. The nominating committee is presenting the same slate of officers as the current.

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PSR Policy Position Continued from Page 1

Case Study: Buncefield fire, December 11, 2005 in Herfordshire, England. The Herfordshire Oil Storage Terminal was the fifth largest oil-prod-ucts storage facility in the United Kingdom. The official inquiry by the British Health and Safety Executive reported that while the tank was filling from a pipeline, a switch that should have detect-ed that the tank was full and shut off the supply, failed to operate. The switch failure should have triggered an alarm, but it too failed. Hundreds of liters of petrol spilled down the side of the tank through the roof vents onto the ground. The over-flow resulted in the rapid formation of a rich fuel and air vapor cloud, triggering a so-called fuel-air explosion. The explosion was presumed to have been ignited by an electric generator or the de-pot’s pumping system. The first and largest explosion, tank 912, led to further explosions involving multiple other tanks, a domino effect from tanks adjacent to each other. The British Geological Survey moni-tored the event which measured 2.4 on the Rich-ter scale. Although the oil terminal was distant from population centers, the blasts destroyed a warehouse more than a half a mile from the site. A school sustained serious damage and windows were blown out of St. Albans Abbey, both about five miles from the blast. Cars in nearby streets caught fire. Emergency services at peak times consisted of 25 fire engines, 20 support vehicles and 180 fire fighters. From the time of the first explosion, 6:00 am on December 11, it took until 4:30 pm on De-cember 12 to extinguish most of the tanks. By mid-day on December 13, two days later, all but three fires had been extinguished but the largest tank was still burning. (Appendix 2) A massive cloud of dense smoke engulfed the surrounding area and had reached the English Channel by the time the fire was out. It was vis-ible seventy miles away, threatened air quality in the vicinity and resulted in several hospitaliza-tions for respiratory problems. Had this event occurred near a population center, it is assumed there would have been many inju-ries and deaths. The Health Protection Agency advised that prevention of accidents of such mag-nitude was the only reasonable answer; no rea-sonable emergency response capability could be expected to be readily available or effective or fi-nancially feasible to maintain permanently, given the magnitude of the fire.

Industry literature is replete with incidents that have involved loss of containment from storage tanks. The Buncefield Standards Task Group, established to study the causes of the explosion, reported that tank overflows “should not be con-sidered as rare events. Data have been compiled by a reputable operator in the USA indicating that overfilling occurs once in every 3,300 filling op-erations.”

2. Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake and Tsunami: The Port of Grays Harbor resides within the po-tential zone of impact from a tsunami. The US Development Company engineering study ad-dresses the structural requirements for its eight proposed tanks to withstand an earthquake. The engineering report does not address the structural requirements to withstand a subsequent tsunami. USGS Professional Paper 1661-B, Local Tsunami Hazards in the Pacific Northwest from Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquakes, reports the fol-lowing: “Comparing the results in this study at specific sites where previous inundation models have been formulated, the range in tsunami am-plitude offshore Grays Harbor WA, 2 to 7 meters, is slightly lower compared to the offshore ampli-tudes predicted by Preuss and Hebenstreit (7-8 meters)”. Considering that US Development Company’s geologic studies show that soils in the tank farm area up to depths of 150 feet or more consist of “outwash from alpine glaciation” which means unstable sand, gravels, silts, etc. , and the recom-mended depth for pilings as support foundations would extend only a few feet into the “dense to very dense” alluvium (not bedrock), we have sig-nificant doubt that the foundation structures for these massive storage tanks would withstand a tsunami wave of up to 24 feet. Structural integ-rity could be further compromised by the fact that the groundwater depth begins at only 17 feet be-low the surface, and during the rainy season it is six feet or less. Should a massive tsunami dislodge one or more oil tanks, the probability of tank rupture is likely, and subsequent fire and explosions would appear to be almost inevitable considering the extensive presence of electrical equipment. Should this un-fold, involvement of multiple tanks seems plau-sible, even inevitable, with the discharge of vast quantities of highly flammable crude oil into the area. The magnitude of a likely explosion and fire would almost certainly be massive, all of this

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Continued from Page 3within the City of Hoquiam. The close proximity of the two proposed new crude oil tank farms (Im-perium and Westway) coupled with already ex-isting volatile tanks (biodiesel and ethanol), also in proximity, produces an environment where a single triggering event could spread to other tanks in the complex, causing a conflagration mirroring one in Buncefield. Explosions and fires of this magnitude would pose serious risks to adjoin-ing port structures and infrastructure as well as commercial establishments within a few hundred yards of the edge of this complex.

Conclusions: The transport of crude by rail through commu-nities and near waterways poses significant risks to the public. These concerns have been raised in many forums. We describe a new and criti-cal concern: proposed crude oil tank farms that by design would be sited within the population center of Hoquiam / Aberdeen, creating perma-nent, indeterminate risk from fires or explosions. There is also the risk of spillage, accident and fire with any train-to-tank transfer, which could occur at any of the three locations within the city. We have presented two separate scenarios whereby massive fires and explosions could be triggered. The first, a major accident, has es-tablished precedent, and is not based simply on speculation. The second, a tsunami following a subduction earthquake, is also plausible because the entire coast of Washington is under continu-ous tsunami warning from the state. Therefore, we believe that siting tank farms in Hoquiam as well as other population centers poses an unacceptable risk to the public health of residents of the area. The close proximity of one massive tank farm to three public schools and to the railroad tank cars bringing oil to the tanks should be of grave concern to residents of Hoquiam.

Policy Position: Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility opposes the siting of crude oil tanks and terminals within population centers. Further, we call upon the Washington Department of Ecology and Gov-ernor Inslee to deny permits for the proposed ter-minals on the basis of serious, credible threats to the health and safety of residents of Washington communities (including Vancouver). We also call upon the WA Department of Health to study the potential health and safety issues related to crude oil storage within and shipment from communities. This seems especially impor-

tant since local health departments have generally not filled this role to date.

Adopted 10/20/14WPSR Board of TrusteesBruce Amundson, MD, President

What is the Audubon Birds and Cli-mate Report? It is a comprehensive, first-of-its kind study that predicts how climate change could affect the ranges of 588 North American birds. Audubon scientists used three decades of citi-zen-scientist observations from the Audubon Christmas Bird Count and the North American Breeding Bird Survey to define the “climatic suit-ability” for each bird species—the range of tem-peratures, precipitation, and seasonal changes each species needs to survive. Then, using inter-nationally recognized greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, they mapped where each bird’s ideal climatic range may be found in the future as the climate changes. These maps serve as a guide to how each bird’s current range could expand, contract, or shift across three future time periods (2020, 2050, and 2080). http://climate.audubon.org/article/audubon-report-glance

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Tropical Kingbird(Tyrannus melancholicus)by Dianna Moore

Did you feel a definite lean to the northwest this past two weeks? That would be due to the amazing number of birders headed to Neah Bay from all over the country...yes, I said country, not county. As is often the case, when a mega-rarity shows up in any given area, the rush to see it and tick it off the life list produces a lot more eyes, and many more unexpected birds can be found. The Eurasian Hobby that began the rush was fol-lowed by a Brambling, a Cattle Egret, Clay-col-ored Sparrow, Orchard Oriole, Swamp Sparrow, and no fewer than seven Tropical Kingbirds! I have been hoping the hobby would make its way south and stop over in Grays Harbor County, but it has not been seen so far. Meanwhile, one of the birds IS seen here on the Harbor nearly every year, the Tropical Kingbird, and so I offer this photo by Doug Schurman in hopes some of you will recognize one next time it appears. The more eyes watching, the more likely we are to find the unusual bird. General Description: Known as a very common bird in the tropics, this kingbird barely reaches into the U.S. with sightings in south Texas and southern Arizona, yet it has been showing up more regularly on the Pacific coast as far north as British Columbia. It is a flycatcher so fairly easy to spot, especially at this time of year when other flycatching species have left the area. At 9.25 inches in length, with a wingspan of 14.5 inches, and weighing approximately 1.4 ounces,

it is larger than our more common Harbor birds, another help in identifying it. Finally, it has a fair-ly bright yellow breast, a greenish-gray back, a long forked tail, a dark mask across its eyes, and a strong black bill. Habitat: Open areas bordered by trees, man-grove or cactus forests and urban areas. Behavior: Perches on the outer branches of trees, and on fences and elevated places to fly out and nab insects from the air, making it a pretty easy bird to spot. Diet: Insects such as beetles, grasshoppers, drag-onflies, bees, wasps, termites, moths and butter-flies, and some fruit...berries here but more tropi-cal fruits in most of its range. Nesting: This bird is now breeding in southeast-ern Arizona and the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, but most of the breeding territories are from Costa Rica south through tropical Argen-tina. The male attracts a female to his territory, then she builds the nest of vines, rootlets, and dry grasses on a horizontal limb, incubates 2 to 4 eggs for 15 to 16 days. The male remains close by to defend both her and the nest, and both parents feed the nestlings. They fledge in 18 to 19 days. Migration: Tropical Kingbirds breeding here in the U.S. migrate south in autumn to Mexico and into Central America and the Caribbean islands. Those birds living in South America migrate north in our summer, and these are the birds we sometimes see in our late summer and fall along the Pacific coast. Conversation: This kingbird is actually doing well adapting to the changes being made to the landscape in the southern U.S. Clearing land, planting urban trees, and an increase in housing developments all make for good territory. They live well with people. Considering flies are a source of food for them, that might not be such a good thing! When and Where to find on the Harbor: I know for sure of the one in the Scotch Broom fields around the marina in Ocean Shores, but I would be willing to bet they can also be found around sewage lagoons. It is a little too late to find them now (maybe), but late September through Octo-ber are good times to look. Just watch for a bird flying out, grabbing a bug, then returning to a conspicuous place.

© Doug Schurman

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GHAS Mission The mission of the Grays Harbor Audubon Society is to seek a sustainable balance between human activity and the needs of the environ-ment, and to promote enjoy-ment of birds and the natural world

GHAS Board of Directors

Arnie Martin 612-0437 arnold6.martin@comcast.netDianna Moore 289-5048 dlmoor2@coastaccess.comMary O’Neil 533-9833 deed2et2et@yahoo.comLinda Orgel 648-2476 ldotorg@olearycreek.comDiane Schwickerath 495-3101 deananddiane@gmail.comLynn Smith 292-9340 sylviasmith6057@msn.comJanet Strong 495-3950 strongjan@centurytel.net

Chapter Officers

President Arnie Martin 612-0437 arnold6.martin@comcast.net

Vice President Linda Orgel 648-2476 ldotorg@olearycreek.com Treasurer Diane Schwickerath 495-3101 deananddiane@gmail.comSecretary

Committee Chairs

Conservation Janet Strong, 495-3950 strongjan@centurytel.netEducation Vacant

Field Trips Dianna Moore 289-5048 dlmoor2@coastaccess.comHabitat Vacant Hospitality Linda Orgel 648-2476 ldotorg@olearycreek.comMembership Linda Orgel 648-2476 ldotorg@olearycreek.comNewsletter R.D. Grunbaum, 648-2476 rd@olearycreek.comProgram Chair Dianna Moore 289-5048 dlmoor2@coastaccess.comPublicity Vacant

Other Audubon Contacts

GHAS voice mail (360) 289-5048National Audubon (212) 979-3000GHAS Website http://ghas.orgGHAS Blog http://ghas.org/blog

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Inside this Issue

PSR Policy 1Pres. Perch 2Membership Meeting 2PSR continued 3PSR continued 4Audubon Report 4Tropical Kingbird 5Board & Officers 6Member Application 7

Membership Meeting Sunday, December 7, 2014 1:30 - 3:00PM

Hoquiam Librarydownstairs meeting room

Potluck Treats - Holiday Cheer