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James and other attorneys general oppose plan to move ethane by rail

Mar 07, 2023 12:21 am

Rick Karlin reports in the Times Union that New York Attorney General Letitia James has joined with 13 of her counterparts in other states to oppose a proposal by a Texas-based company to ship frozen ethane by rail. The trains with ethane might traverse part of New York. The attorneys general wrote in a letter that the recent train disaster in Ohio, “illustrates the inherent danger of transporting hazardous materials by rail.” In recent years local activists protested train loads of crude oil coming to the Port of Albany, calling them "bomb trains" that posed a fire or explosion hazard. The oil shipments have stopped, but ethanol trains still come to the port. Cryogenic liquefied ethane, the proposed freight now, is less-flammable. Still, James and other attorneys general told the federal Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration they are against the proposal. The application is more than a year old, but the letter of opposition came only after the Ohio train disaster. Read the full story in the Times Union.