Oil Train Spills Into River

Luckily for our region, not the Hudson River.

From the New York Times late yesterday, April 30:

In the latest accident involving rail cars carrying crude oil, a CSX train derailed and erupted into black, smoky flames on Wednesday in downtown Lynchburg, Va., forcing scores of people to evacuate and causing a spill in the James River.

In the Hudson Valley region, both Riverkeeper and Scenic Hudson have been pushing for regulation of these oil transport trains.

Read Albany Issues Crude Oil Moratorium on Wigwam.

There was an interesting sentence toward the end of the Times article that hinted at the complexity of energy issues today:

Environmentalists quickly made the case on Wednesday that the accident was another sign of the dangers of oil drilling, even though they are also critical of alternative pipeline transport.

Obviously, it would totally suck if a transport  train derailed and spilled oil into the Hudson River. And, reading the news, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture it happening right here in Beacon’s front yard. But without that oil from the North Dakota fields, how do we continue to run our economy, never mind become the energy-independent country everyone is talking about?

A clear understanding of the energy situation in the world today is arguably the most important information a community can have while laying plans for its future. Wigwam added energy as a new category, and we’ll be taking a periodic look at how this resource, in its various forms, has affected our past, and how it might affect our local economy in the next five to fifty years.