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Oregon Lawmakers Advance Measure Aimed At Rail Spill Disasters

In the wake of Friday's derailment, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown called for a temporary moratorium on oil train traffic in the Columbia Gorge.
Emily Schwing
/
Northwest News Network
In the wake of Friday's derailment, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown called for a temporary moratorium on oil train traffic in the Columbia Gorge.

Oregon lawmakers are moving ahead with a measure that would require railroads to explain how they'd deal with hazardous spills. A legislative budget subcommittee voted Tuesday to advance the measure.

It comes just over a year after a Union Pacific freight train carrying crude oil derailed and burned in the Columbia Gorge town of Mosier.

Democratic Rep. Barbara Smith Warner said that while no one was killed, the incident was a wake-up call.

"I really believe that we have to continue to plan and prepare for another oil spill,” she said. “Mosier was far from the worst-case situation, and we're lucky that it wasn't."

Railroads would be required to submit contingency plans to the state on how they'd deal with a future spill. But those plans would be kept from the public under the bill.

Some lawmakers on the committee said that provision concerns them, and they might vote against the measure if it comes to the floor.

Copyright 2017 Northwest News Network

Chris Lehman
Chris Lehman graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree in 1997. He landed his first job less than a month later, producing arts stories for Red River Public Radio in Shreveport, Louisiana. Three years later he headed north to DeKalb, Illinois, where he worked as a reporter and announcer for NPR–affiliate WNIJ–FM. In 2006 he headed west to become the Salem Correspondent for the Northwest News Network.