ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A proposal to ship trains filled with liquefied natural gas through the Lehigh Valley has hit a major roadblock — or rail block — as a federal agency revoked approval for the project.
Energy Transport Solutions, a unit of New Fortress Energy, was seeking to renew a special permit that let it transport the fuel in rail tank cars.
- A company was proposing to send train cars filled with liquefied natural gas through the Lehigh Valley
- Federal regulators denied a new permit for the project Monday after a previous one expired in 2021
- Lehigh County Commissioner Bob Elbich said the denial is “a step forward in protecting the lives” of Lehigh Valley residents
The company planned to build a liquefaction plant in northeastern Pennsylvania that would have then shipped millions of gallons of liquified natural gas, or LNG, each day by truck and/or train to a deepwater port in New Jersey, where the substance would be stored and loaded onto ships.
Applications for planning approval showed the plant in Wyalusing, Bradford County, would liquefy up to 4 million gallons of natural gas daily.
Proposed shipping routes showed Norfolk Southern trains carrying LNG directly through Northampton, Catasauqua, Allentown, Emmaus, Macungie and Alburtis on their way to Reading before heading southeast toward southern New Jersey.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration approved a special permit in 2019 for New Fortress Energy’s plans to ship LNG on trains after former President Donald Trump lifted a ban on rail LNG transport.
The company had hoped to renew the permit after a prior one expired in 2021, but the PHMSA on Monday denied the company a new special permit.
Confirmation of that denial was included in the April 24 version of the Federal Register.
Like a 'powerful bomb'
Lehigh Valley officials and activists have been fighting the New Fortress Energy proposal for years.
The Lehigh County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution in August 2020 that urged officials to reject plans for New Fortress Energy’s project.
“The transport of LNG has unique safety hazards, exposing those along this particular rail route to unprecedented and unjustifiable risk,” the resolution says.
“The explosive force of LNG is similar to a thermobaric explosion — a catastrophically powerful bomb."Lehigh County commissioners in a resolution passed in August 2020
To create LNG, natural gas is cooled to 260 degrees below zero to liquefy it for shipping and storage. The cryogenic substance is not explosive or flammable in its liquid state but is “inherently volatile,” the Congressional Research Service said in a 2009 report.
“An uncontrolled release of LNG poses a hazard of fire or, in confined spaces, explosion,” the report says.
Exposure to LNG can cause “extreme freeze burns” and lead to asphyxiation in enclosed spaces, Lehigh County commissioners say in the resolution.
LNG fires are “inextinguishable” and are “so hot that second-degree burns can occur within 30 seconds for those exposed within a mile,” the resolution says.
“The explosive force of LNG is similar to a thermobaric explosion — a catastrophically powerful bomb,” commissioners said.
Public safety 'prevailed'
Lehigh County Commissioner Bob Elbich was among the sponsors of that resolution. He said Wednesday he’s “extremely grateful” the PHMSA denied a new special permit for the project.
The initial approval was based on a “flawed analysis on both an engineering and emergency response basis,” Elbich said during the Lehigh County commissioners’ meeting Wednesday.
"New Fortress Energy planned to send “hundreds of rail cars laden with millions of cubic feet of volatile and potentially explosive product through the heart of Lehigh County” on Norfolk Southern trains."Lehigh County Commissioner Bob Elbich
The U.S. Transportation Department “totally ignored and dismissed” warnings from emergency-response agencies “about the many extreme hazards” of shipping LNG by train through populated areas, he said.
New Fortress Energy planned to send “hundreds of rail cars laden with millions of cubic feet of volatile and potentially explosive product through the heart of Lehigh County” on Norfolk Southern trains, Elbich said.
An LNG rail project through the Lehigh Valley could create the potential for deadly incidents and “an unsustainable disaster-response scenario,” Elbich said.
He called Monday’s denial “a step forward in protecting the lives” of residents in Lehigh and Northampton counties.
The commissioner credited U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, D-Lehigh, for pressuring the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to deny a new special permit for LNG-carrying trains through eastern Pennsylvania.
In a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Wild and six other Democratic Congress members from the state said the Trump administration “did not perform the necessary analysis or propose adequate safeguards” for LNG rail transport through populated areas.
Lehigh County Commissioner Geoff Brace said he was “grateful that the concerns of public safety and emergency responders prevailed … because the stories of the last couple of months show us what happens when we're not paying attention to that.”
'Casts doubt on the entire project's future'
Lehigh commissioners were among almost a dozen governing boards in Pennsylvania that approved resolutions opposing the plans, according to the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
More than 100,000 people signed petitions calling for the PHMSA to pull its approval for the project, the organization said. It has referred to LNG-carrying trains as “bomb trains,” saying that 22 tanks cars filled with LNG “hold the equivalent energy of the Hiroshima bomb.”
The train cars New Fortress Energy was proposing to use “were not tested or proven safe” to carry LNG, the Sierra Club said Wednesday. If approved, the permit would have let the company ship two 100-car trains from northeastern Pennsylvania to southern New Jersey, the organization said.
Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the Sierra Club’s operations in New Jersey, said Monday’s denial “casts doubt on the entire … project’s future.”
Derailments across the U.S.
Elbich — a longtime volunteer firefighter — has voiced concerns in recent months over the potentially “catastrophic” impacts of a train coming off the tracks in the Lehigh Valley amid a series of train derailments throughout the United States.
A Norfolk Southern train that included about 20 cars carrying hazardous materials derailed on Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio. That sparked a fire that burned for several days before emergency crews led a controlled burn of several railcars, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Derailed tank cars leaked about 100,000 gallons of hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, a carcinogenic industrial polymer widely used in PVC plastics, the EPA said.
Officials ordered several thousand residents in the area to evacuate. Many who have since returned are worried about how those spilled chemicals will contaminate the air, soil and water in the area.
The EPA says its repeated tests have shown no long-term air or water quality issues. Almost 68,000 pounds of contaminated soil have been removed from the area around the derailment, the agency said this week.
In another incident, several rail cars caught fire after a train carrying ethanol derailed on March 30 in rural Minnesota, prompting officials to order residents within a half-mile to evacuate, according to the Associated Press.
There also have been recent train derailments in Arizona, Michigan, Alabama, Nevada and West Virginia, according to reports.
Statistics from the Federal Railroad Administration show there were 30 train derailments in Pennsylvania in 2022, while four have been reported so far in 2023.
