Don't get caught holding the environmental bag

摘要

Since the first railroad tank car was invented at the time of the Civil War and the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, the railroads have made available common-use "gang" or "team" spur tracks to their oil shipping customers. In the past, railroads did not charge to park tank cars for a couple of days so that their customers could bring tanker trucks or wagons alongside and transfer the oil. As economics changed, tank cars got larger, and companies began to extend the time tank cars would be parked on spurs. Railroads added demurrage charges on parked tank cars and soon found that the receivers of oil and other chemical products would accept charges for using convenient spur tracks as regu-lar shipment receiving points. Not until the early 1990s with the emergence of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act, and Sierra Club activists did railroads recognize the problem that these short-time spur track users were contributing to.