Tag: rail

Biden White House insisted families were safe after toxic East Palestine derailment — but behind the scenes, admin warned of ‘cancer cluster’

The Biden administration admitted possible cancer-causing toxins were spread in East Palestine, Ohio, following the Norfolk Southern train derailment in 2023, explosive new emails show, despite the White House insisting residents were safe.

“The occurrence of a cancer-cluster in EP [East Palestine] is not zero,” FEMA recovery leader James McPherson wrote in a March 29, 2024, email to other public health officials — a little more than a year after the crash.

“As you all are aware, the first 48 hours of the fire created a really toxic plume,” he said in the chain of communications, which were first reported by News Nation.

Just two months earlier, President Biden had excoriated “multimillion-dollar railroad companies transporting toxic chemicals” for the fiasco — but praised his administration’s “herculean efforts” to resolve the “vast majority” of East Palestine’s problems.

The crash spewed harmful chemicals into the air and resulted in 115,000 gallons’ worth of carcinogenic vinyl chloride undergoing an open burn — displacing residents and leading to reports of strange illnesses as well as the death of livestock in the weeks following the Feb. 3, 2023, disaster.

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Ukraine Doubles Down on Terrorist Attacks, Sabotaging TWO Railway Bridges in Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk Regions – 7 Dead, Over 70 Injured, Including Children

As the peace negotiations unfold, with a second round of talks expected tomorrow (2) in Istanbul, the war in Ukraine continues unabated, with Russian forces advancing not only in the Eastern Donetsk Oblast, but also in northern regions of Sumy and Kharkov.

Just in the last week of offensive operations, Russia has occupied over 18 Ukrainian settlements and about 200 square kilometers, according to German newspaper BILD.

With its frontline formations collapsing in multiple points of the frontline, Ukraine is resorting ever more to asymmetrical tactics – a.k.a. terrorism.

Just three days ago, a suicide bomber blew himself up in Stavropol and killed Russian Major Zaur Aleksandrovich Gurtsiev.

The bomber, who rented a room in the Major building, approached Gurtsiev and detonated explosives in his bag – both men died.

Now if that was not enough, TWO Russian railway bridges were blown up overnight in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk in sabotage attacks.

The explosions and train derailings left a deadly trail of 7 fatalities and dozens of wounded, mostly civilians and including children – in a move that will most likely prompt severe retaliation by Moscow, in the eve of the June 2 talks in Istanbul.

RT reported:

“On Saturday evening, a bridge fell in front of a moving train in Bryansk Region, killing seven people and injuring 71 others. Several hours later, early on Sunday, a railway bridge collapsed under a moving freight train in Kursk Region, leaving the driver and two of his assistants wounded.”

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Supreme Court Unanimously Agrees To Curb Environmental Red Tape That Slows Down Construction Projects

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Utah railroad project on Thursday, setting a precedent that could make it easier to build things in the United States. 

The case at hand—Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County—involved an 88-mile-long railroad track in an oil-rich and rural area of Utah. The project would have connected this area to the national rail network, making it easier and more efficient to transport crude oil extracted in the region to refineries in Gulf Coast states. 

In 2020, a group of seven Utah counties known as the Seven Counties Infrastructure Coalition submitted its application to the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) for the project. During its review process, the board conducted six public meetings and collected over 1,900 comments to produce an environmental impact statement (EIS)—which is required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—that spanned over 3,600 pages. The board approved the project’s construction in 2021.

Before construction could begin, however, Eagle County, Colorado, and several environmental groups filed suit, challenging the STB’s approval. Specifically, this coalition argued that the STB did not consider the downstream environmental effects of the project—such as increased oil drilling in Utah and refining in the Gulf Coast. The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs and vacated the railroad’s construction approval. 

In an 8–0 decision on Thursday (Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case), the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling. 

In its majority opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court clarified that under NEPA the STB “did not need to evaluate potential environmental impacts of the separate upstream and downstream projects.” The Court concluded that the “proper judicial approach for NEPA cases is straightforward: Courts should review an agency’s EIS to check that it addresses the environmental effects of the project at hand. The EIS need not address the effects of separate projects.”

This statement “is particularly significant for infrastructure projects, such as pipelines or transmission lines, and should help reduce NEPA’s burdens (at least at the margins),” wrote Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in The Volokh Conspiracy. “The opinion will also likely hamper any future efforts, perhaps by Democratic administrations, to expand or restore more fulsome (and burdensome) NEPA requirements.”

One recent example is former President Joe Biden, who finalized rules requiring federal agencies to consider a project’s impacts on climate change—a global issue that is incredibly complex and hard to forecast—in their NEPA analyses. The Trump administration recently rescinded this requirement. 

Kavanaugh’s opinion also clarified that courts should “afford substantial deference” to federal agencies in their EIS reviews and “should not micromanage” agency choices “so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness.” 

This point could reduce one of the largest delays caused by NEPA: litigation. Since its passage in 1969, NEPA has been weaponized by environmental groups to stunt disfavored projects—which has disproportionately impacted clean energy projects. On average, these challenges delay a permitted project’s start time by 4.2 years, according to The Breakthrough Institute.

The increased threat of litigation has forced federal agencies to better cover their bases, leading to longer and more expensive environmental reviews. With courts deferring more to agency decisions, litigation could be settled more quickly.  

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