One puncture in a 90-ton railroad tanker full of chlorine gas and 100,000 people could die in downtown Washington D.C. There is currently a D.C. law on the books that would prevent rail shipments of hazardous materials from passing through the District. However, the law protecting the District’s citizens from such a catastrophe is being contested by a railroad corporation in a federal appellate court, where it will likely be overturned as unconstitutional. If the courts will do nothing, the Federal Government must step in to protect from the city from a release of these dangerous chemicals during an accident or a terrorist attack.
“[The law] seems to me to be pretty clearly unconstitutional,” Richard Allen, the former General Counsel of the Interstate Commerce Commission, said. “It violates federal statutes … wherever [rail companies] put their hazardous material trains, even if they put them through small towns, that’s a hazard to small towns. Why should a city have more say than a small town?”
The hazardous materials law runs up against the Constitution’s Interstate Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from imposing undue burdens on interstate commerce. It is certainly difficult to argue that forcing a company such as CSX Transportation, which is disputing the law in the Federal Court of Appeals, to divert their trains hundreds of miles to avoid D.C. does not burden interstate commerce. Especially since almost every railroad track, if followed far enough, leads to a big city like D.C.
According to a written statement by the company, “[CSX Transportation] brought the legal proceedings to clarify its legal duty. It is also supported in the proceeding by a number of transportation and manufacturing groups that believe if laws like the District’s are allowed to stand, they will increase danger and create chaos in the U.S. transportation systems.”
However, it is even harder to argue that legal clarity for big business has precedence over the safety and security of the hundreds of thousands of individuals in the District. When CSX’s appeal first went to federal court, it was denied by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, whose statement said that CSX’s argument offered “only vague predictions of increased costs and logistical burdens … [that] pale in comparison to the potential devastation predicted to occur in the event of a terrorist attack on a railcar transporting hazmats in the nation’s capital.”
“Given these competing interests,” Sullivan wrote, “the balance of equities clearly favors the District of Columbia and its residents.” Every community that lies on the path of hazardous materials shipments is obviously in danger of a leak or of a terrorist attack. Is it too much to ask that companies like CSX divert their shipments away from areas with high population densities? The federal courts should step in to ensure the safety of D.C.’s citizens rather than sating big business by becoming mired in the minutiae of Constitutional law.
