Oil Trains Concerning To Local Leaders

The Cres­cent News today reports that the CSX train car­ry­ing crude oil, which derailed in West Vir­ginia last week, passed through Defi­ance and Henry coun­ties before trav­el­ing south.

Tracy Busch, the Direc­tor of the Henry County Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, told the paper that a lot of the ethanol and crude that is pro­duced in the Bakken oil fields, in fact 72 per­cent of it, is trans­ported by rail, much of it by CSX, on trains that travel through our area.

Mil­lions of gal­lons of crude oil pass through Ohiio each week, much of it locally on the CSX line in Henry and Defi­ance coun­ties, Nor­folk South­ern line in Pauld­ing, Put­nam, Williams and Ful­ton coun­ties and the Cana­dian Pacific and Nor­folk South­ern lines in Williams and Ful­ton coun­ties.

That fact, along with the derail­ment last week in West Vir­ginia, now has many local offi­cials tak­ing a more seri­ous look at just what prepa­ra­tions need to be in place in the event some­thing like what hap­pened in West Vir­ginia were to hap­pen here.