SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) Fracking and other developing oil extraction technologies employed in Canada and the United States have significantly increased oil production. This source of new oil has created a problem in the transportation and delivery of crude oil. There is currently not enough pipeline capacity in North America to transport these increased volumes to refineries and distribution points. As a result, rail is becoming the primary way to move inland crude oil and hydrocarbon gas liquids to the West Coast. California like the rest of the nation is experiencing dramatic changes in the amount of oil being transported by rail.
(b) As oil-by-rail shipments have dramatically increased in recent years, there has been a resulting increase in the number of incidents involving crude oil spills by rail.
(c) The danger from a major oil spill is exacerbated by the type of oil that is being spilled. Oil from the Bakken Shale Formation is high quality, light, sweet crude. It is precisely because this crude oil is so energy dense that it is both valuable and hazardous. Its light nature and high density under the right circumstances makes it volatile, highly flammable, and toxic.
(d) Crude oil trains travel through some of the state’s most densely populated areas, as well as some of the most sensitive ecological areas, since rail lines frequently operate near or over rivers and other sensitive waterways in the state.
(e) There are wide
disparities in training and equipment for oil-by-rail spills in the following instances: between volunteer and nonvolunteer fire departments; between rural and urban fire departments; and between small and large fire departments. Large, urban fire departments tend to receive more training and are better equipped than smaller rural fire departments. Volunteer fire departments have almost no independent ability to respond to large scale oil-by-rail spills, relying instead upon regional mutual aid or upon railroad personnel and assets.
(f) Many small and some medium-sized fire departments do not have the budget to send firefighters for training even if the costs of that training are subsidized or paid for with grants or other assistance. When a firefighter is sent for training, another off-duty firefighter must be called in to cover the shift and maintain coverage for services. This requires paying the firefighter his or her salary during his or
her training and also paying an off-duty firefighter to cover the shift. Railroads provide free training for local first responders in California in localities that are convenient to the fire departments, yet volunteer and small rural fire departments frequently do not attend or participate in such training classes.