Editor’s note: With this issue, Vermont Woman launches a new column dedicated to our environment. We are fortunate to live in a state where protecting our environment is a priority for residents and for our government leaders: this is not a given in other states. But we are affected by other states’ choices and corporate and national policies over which we have little influence.

“Listen to Your Mother” will highlight current topics and bring you the most informed perspectives on issues that concern us all, such as divestment, renewable energy, and carbon pollution tax, and invite experts to write on these topics. In this inaugural column, scientist Mollie Mattsen writes about the oil trains on Lake Champlain. Vermont Woman is committed to bringing its readers comprehensive, accurate reporting on environmental issues that matter to Vermonters: let us know what you’d like to hear about.

In late 2012, mile-long black trains hauling extremely flammable crude oil started rumbling along the western shore of Lake Champlain, en route to Albany. The crude is from a geological formation known as the Bakken shale, centered in North Dakota. The development of hydrofracturing technology, otherwise known as “fracking,” has allowed exploitation of this energy source to become economically feasible. In a rush to get Bakken crude to market and lacking pipeline infrastructure, the oil industry turned to rail transport. The crude oil arriving at Albany continues to be shipped on barges and tanker ships to East Coast refineries.

The flash point of Bakken crude is extremely low, similar to gasoline. The tank cars in which the crude oil is hauled were originally designed to carry nonhazardous materials such as corn syrup. The cars puncture easily in collisions as slow as 15 miles per hour. Rather than mixing the tank cars in with other freight, the oil and rail industries have found it most efficient to haul the crude in “unit trains,” made up only of an engine and 80 to 100 or more tank cars laden with oil. The result is more than one million gallons of highly volatile fuel in containers some have called “Pepsi cans on wheels.”

It took a catastrophe to bring the new developments to light. On July 6, 2013, an unmanned oil train parked for the night on the outskirts of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec (approximately a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Burlington) lost braking power and started to roll down the tracks. By the time it reached the small tourist town, it was moving at 65 mph. The tank cars hit a curve, flew off the rails, and crashed into buildings and each other. Sparks instantly ignited the spilled fuel; the heat from the burning oil caused other tank cars to rupture and explode. Much of the downtown was destroyed in the giant conflagration, and 47 people were burned to death. Over one million gallons of crude poured into the nearby lake and river. Cleanup and rebuilding, which is still ongoing, may eventually total over $2 billion.

The incident at Lac-Mégantic was a wake-up call regarding the threat of crude-by-rail transportation. Numerous subsequent fiery derailments, including at Casselton, North Dakota, in November 2013; Lynchburg, Virginia, in April 2014; Gogama, Ontario and Mount Carbon, West Virginia, in February 2015; and Galena, Illinois, in March 2015, have further fueled concerns about the dangers of transporting crude oil by train. To date, no other deaths have occurred, but the potential for significant human casualties, property damage, and environmental contamination is high. The federal government estimates that one Lac-Mégantic-scale disaster is likely to occur every two years, as long as current infrastructure—including puncture-prone tank cars—are in use.

Unfortunately, the federal government is still not doing nearly enough to safeguard the public or the environment. Lax regulation of the rail industry has a long history in this country. Along with the railroad companies, the oil industry has exerted intense pressure on federal agencies to block or minimize any new safety regulations. For example, instead of banning dangerous tank cars immediately, new Department of Transportation rules issued this May call for a phase-out stretching over a decade. Even then, the restrictions on hazardous tank cars will only be on their use in continuous blocks of 20 cars or more, with a limit of 35 cars maximum per train. Other rules regarding speed limits and retrofitting of old cars also fall far short of what is needed. For example, it’s questionable whether the spate of fiery accidents earlier this year would have been prevented even if the rules had been fully implemented.

In the Champlain Valley, oil trains threaten our iconic Lake Champlain, as well as the numerous, small Adirondack communities through which the trains pass. Much has been made of the volatility of Bakken crude, with its obvious threat to public safety, but the Champlain region was also, up until recently, at risk of becoming a corridor for tar sands crude from western Canada. This viscous, heavy substance, strip-mined out of the boreal forest, sinks straight to the bottom when spilled in water. It can be nearly impossible to remove. Spilled tar sands in water may linger for many years, leaking toxins into the environment. Whether spilled crude is light, like Bakken, or heavy, like tar sands, it contaminates drinking water, can harm birds, mammals, and reptiles, and can be especially detrimental to fish in their larval and juvenile stages.

Recognizing that the federal government, and in many cases, state governments, have not been taking sufficient action to protect the public and the environment from hazardous oil trains, citizens and communities have fought back. In Albany, a coalition of citizen activists, environmental groups, and a threatened low-income neighborhood directly adjacent to the rail yard where oil trains were parked, succeeded in beating back, at least for now, the plan to bring tar sands by rail to Albany. Bakken oil, however, continues to be transported by rail through the Champlain Valley.

With this year’s sagging oil prices, transporting crude by rail has become less profitable. Nationwide, oil train traffic is down. Fewer tank cars are needed. The older ones must be decommissioned or retrofitted over the next few years, because of the new Department of Transportation rules. Based on a growing number of reports in New York and Vermont of long strings of idle tank cars being parked on siding or little used spur lines, it would seem that tank car storage is the latest use to which the oil and railroad industries have put our corner of the world. Again, there has been no notification, no public discussion. With few exceptions, the rails are under federal jurisdiction, and it seems no federal law requires the railroads to consult local communities or adjoining landowners about making rail lines into parking lots for freight cars, including those that once contained, or still do contain, hazardous materials.

Ultimately, of course, it is not enough to simply route the oil trains to different tracks, store tank cars in different places, or even enact stronger rules that stop the worst derailments and fires, but still allow our fossil-fuel based economy to keep rolling. Today, oil trains run through the Champlain Valley, putting our “backyard” at risk. But everywhere is someone’s backyard, or home, or sacred space, or essential habitat.

Mollie Matteson is a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity in Richmond, VT.

K.C. Whiteley, editor of “Listen to Your Mother,” is a climate change activist, has worked on the tar sands threat in the Northeast Kingdom, and serves on the 350 Vermont advisory board.