Registered nurse will join with teachers and homeowners Tuesday to urge Pismo city leaders to oppose a controversial Phillips 66 proposal to add five additional rail shipments a week of dirty tar sands crude oil through the center of San Luis Obispo County to Phillips’ Santa Maria refinery.
 
Opponents of the project will rally in front of Pismo Beach City Hall before the council meeting, and then bring their concerns directly to council members at their regular council meeting.

Date:             Tuesday, May 5, 2015, 5:15 p.m.
Where:           In front of Pismo Beach City Hall, 760 Mattie Street, Pismo Beach

 
The city of San Luis Obispo last month became the first in the county to declare its opposition to the Phillips 66 project. Cities and schools boards in blast zone communities north and south of the county have also sent in letters opposing Phillip 66’s oil train project.
 
“This project presents significant and unacceptable risks to the health and safety of our communities throughout California and beyond, due to toxic emissions, and the potential for oil spills,” stated Amber Wiehl, an RN at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo.
 
“Our most vulnerable populations are particularly at risk,” said Wiehl. “Children and infants are at greater risk due to their still-developing lungs and respiratory systems. The elderly and people with preexisting respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer all face greater risks than the general public. As the Mother of a child who has been hospitalized with respiratory issues, these concerns hit especially close to home”
 
Adding five trains per week if the Phillips 66 project is approved, substantially increases the risk of a catastrophic oil train accident for those hospitals, schools and homes in the one-mile “blast zone” on either side of the tracks. Rail accidents involving tar sands crude have become increasingly common in the U.S. and Canada
 
“There are 29 elementary, middle and high schools in the county in the blast zone”, said 30-year elementary school teacher Kathleen Minck. “Our school children at these schools are in extreme risk if there is a major oil train accident. Also, increasing air pollution from the trains will affect all our children with asthma, even in the absence of a major accident”.
 
"Already in 2015 we've seen four major train accidents and explosions in the US and Canada," says Ethan Buckner, ForestEthics campaigner. "SLO County officials will decide if we allow these exploding trains to roll through downtown SLO and threaten the five million Californians who live in the oil train blast zone." 
 
Noting the train runs right next to the Cal Poly campus, Soroush Aboutalebi, Cal Poly Environmental Management and Protection major, said, “We want Cal Poly President Armstrong to oppose the oil trains because of the risk they pose to our university, but so far he hasn’t.”
 
“I am concerned.” Aboutalebi added, “that other educational institutions in the county have mentioned the on-going financial support they receive from Phillips 66 as one reason for supporting Phillips 66’s oil trains project in their letters to the Planning Commission.”
 
Diana Robertson, a Pismo Beach homeowner in the” blast zone” said she is especially concerned that “our elected officials in the southern part of the county where Phillip 66’s refinery is located have not yet joined us in opposing the project.”
 
“Five more oil trains means tripling the risk of an oil train accident,” said Robertson. “Communities in the blast zone north and south of our county are looking to us, the residents of San Luis County, to protect their communities too, because we can influence our local Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors to deny the building permit for Phillips 66’s new rail yard.”
 
"The Phillips 66 project is a recipe for disaster," said Valerie Love with the Center for Biological Diversity. "It would bring millions of gallons of toxic, explosive crude from Canada into populated areas of California every day, putting people, businesses and critical water supplies at risk.”
 
The Final Environmental Impact Report on the Phillips 66 project is expected soon. After the Planning Commission votes on the project, the appeal is voted on by the Board of Supervisors, followed by an appeal to the California Coastal Commission.