Every day, someplace in Orange County, there's a truck or a train speeding along laden with hazardous materials. But under current state and federal regulations, those trucks and trains can usually zip through densely populated neighborhoods with no one aware of it.
While the state does require hazardous materials to be properly packaged and the vehicles that are carrying them to display a highly visible placard denoting the type of material on board, in almost all cases transport companies are not required to notify county officials that hazardous materials are coming through.
"There is so much commerce going on that emergency response agencies couldn't deal with real-time notification of movement of hazardous materials," said Ernie von Ibsch, a senior transportation operations supervisor at the state Public Utilities Commission. "It's happening so fast that you couldn't write it down."
Capt. Dan Young, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Department, said current regulations on placarding and advance notification depends on the type and the amount of hazardous material being transported. The Fire Department must be notified in advance if a company is planning to ship rocket fuel through the county--which happened as recently as last week--but no advance notification is required for most other toxic chemicals, including nuclear waste.
Young said the operators of the San Onofre nuclear power plant usually notify county officials in advance when large shipments of waste are moving the county, which is a rare occurrence. He said there are other sources of radioactive material that frequently move through the county, such as medical products used in radiation treatments.
"There is radioactive material transported fairly routinely, but not every day," Young said. "That might raise some concerns, but it shows it's been done safely for years without a problem."
Vehicles carrying explosives or a variety of materials that are radioactive, combustible, flammable, corrosive or water-reactive must have placards visible from at least a quarter-mile away, or labeled with standard identification numbers that denote the chemical being shipped, Young said. But even placarding is not ordinarily required if the vehicles are carrying only small amounts of hazardous materials, he said.
