Washington State Train Watch to Utilize Twitter for Monitoring #waoiltrainwatch

Vancouver Action Network is proud to announce that due to the success of our first Train Watch efforts from April 16-27, 2014 that we are continuing the program. We are taking this action in response to the DOT's Emergency Order requiring railroads to disclose any shipments of more than 1 million gallons of oil or roughly 35 oil rail cars to State Emergency Management Agencies. VAN volunteers feel that it important to help enforce this Emergency Order and possibly bust the railroads for violations and Train Watch is the perfect tool for this purpose.

For more info on the DOT Emergency Order of May 7, 2014 http://www.dot.gov/briefing-room/emergency-order Any railroad carrier or person failing to comply with this Emergency Order is subject to civil penalties of up to $175,000 for each violation or for each day it is found to be in violation (49 U.S.C. 5123).

Thanks to the many volunteers who called and texted in your train watching activities! To make the program more decentralized we have started a Twitter feed on our blog and Facebook account. Train Watchers will need to sign up for a personal Twitter account. You don't have to use your real name when setting up your account. When you see a 100% oil train in Washington state you can Tweet the train's direction of travel, time, location and the hashtag #waoiltrainwatch. This information will show up on our blog and Facebook pages and will be used as a publicly accessible reference document. Please make sure that the information you tweet is accurate to the best of your knowledge so that our data remains credible. If you haven't ever used Twitter don't worry it isn't that hard. If you can send an email, text, or a social media site like Facebook you can send a Tweet.

Here's the printable version of our new flyer Be an Oil Train Monitor.

Thanks for your continued support. Take care, Matt Landon with VAN