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When I moved into my house a couple of years ago, I considered it charming that freight trains traveled through my backyard. I've gotten to know the conductors by the way they sound their horns at the intersection up the street: some are extra loud; some seem hesitant to wake me up in the middle of the night but know they have to do their job; some share their holiday festivity by playing Jingle Bells with their air horns.

Less charming is the way my 200-year-old house shakes when extra heavy trains roll by. My art desk rattles so hard I can't paint a straight line, and I find myself wondering if this will be the train that finally brings my house down. Despite this worry—and the low-level, ever-present concern about derailment that anyone living near tracks learns to carry—I still love trains and the glorious art that transforms them into rolling art galleries.

But if the Department of Transportation gets its way, those charming freight trains might soon be carrying liquified natural gas (LNG) through my backyard. Through your neighborhood too, most likely. They don't call them "bomb trains" for nothing. In South Jersey, few of us would be safe if there were an “accident,” and I put that in quotes because the dangers are so calamitous and well-documented that this proposed rule change can only be viewed as a purposeful effort to place corporate profits over American lives.

Last week I attended a webinar hosted by Delaware Riverkeeper Network, presented by Tracy Carluccio and Anneke Van Rossum along with guest speaker Jess Conard, who was a resident of East Palestine when a train derailed in their town and is now a full-time advocate for rail safety and ecological security.

Based on what I learned during the webinar, the information provided by Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and some additional research, here’s a high-level view of what could go catastrophically wrong, how we got here, and what we can do to (try to) stop it before corporate profits trump our safety once again.

After the webinar ended, I went outside, sat on my front porch, and listened to the train rumbling behind me, a couple hundred feet from my house. To say I suddenly felt a little nervous about it all the sudden would be an understatement.

NOTE: This is an editorial. In addition to research and facts, it also expresses the opinion of The Woodbury Warbler’s editorial board (which also happens to be me, Jen, your friend and neighbor!).

What could go wrong?

As we know, natural gas is nothing to mess around with. We’ve seen it level rowhomes and shut highways down, and if your home uses natural gas, hopefully you have carbon monoxide detectors to alert you to this odorless, colorless silent killer. If you smell a gas leak in your home, you’re advised to leave the house immediately and call the gas company to resolve it because it’s highly flammable and explosive. Less well-known, but equally important, is that natural gas is an asphyxiant. Even when it doesn’t explode, it can still rob your body of oxygen if you’re exposed to too much of it.

Liquified natural gas (LNG) is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state, which occurs at around negative 160 degrees Celsius. This reduces the storage space by about 620 times, which means that you can ship more gas in less space because it’s compressed. Rail cars carrying LNG are highly flammable and potentially explosive in a derailment. When LNG burns, it’s an extremely hot fire that cannot be extinguished. How hot? Around 2,426 degrees Fahrenheit. For frame of reference, iron melts at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The recommended protocol for emergency responders is to evacuate the area and let the fire burn itself out.

If a rail car carrying LNG leaks, a dense, ultracold ground-hugging cloud will spread, finding its way into sewers, basements, and tunnels. Someone who comes into contact with the gas will experience burns similar to dry ice burns. It robs the atmosphere of oxygen, so anyone within the vapor cloud is at risk of asphyxiation.

If the released LNG is ignited, a resulting pool fire is so hot that second degree burns can occur within five seconds for those exposed within .69 miles. Ten seconds of exposure could be fatal.[1]​

An LNG release can cause a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion.[2] When the gas or vapor cloud in the container is released, because it is flammable it is likely to ignite after the BLEVE, typically causing a fireball that burns fast, hot and wide. A fuel air explosion can also occur, known as a “vapor cloud explosion.” A vapor cloud explosion is the mechanism used in a thermobaric weapon that uses air to generate a high-temperature explosion, producing a long duration blast wave. Twenty-two rail cars carrying LNG contain the explosive equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb.

This concept is similar to the hazmat emergency you may remember taking place in Paulsboro a couple of years ago: a chemical tanker at the truck stop in Paulsboro was venting fumes -- the cooled chemical was expanding due to the hot weather conditions, and many people were exposed to the toxic fumes.

It’s a little toasty out there these days, so armed with all of this information it’s not hard to imagine what might happen if, say, a train lost power and/or was otherwise unable to keep the LNG rail cars cool, or if a train derailed as happened in Woodbury last month, or going back a little further in history, our crumbling infrastructure fails and a bridge collapses beneath the weight of a train, causing a chemical spill that continues to impact our health and waterways today.

Specialized rail cars that can maintain LNG in its liquid, compressed state rely on robust safety infrastructure which, as we’ve seen over the past six months, is being systematically dismantled. The DOT-113C120W9 rail car has been authorized to transport LNG. This rail car is a double-walled, tank-within-a-tank rail car designed to transport cryogenic liquids. It has not been tested with LNG. These rail cars are reported to have an excellent safety record, but while the probability of incidents is low, it is never zero, and even one incident has the potential to be catastrophic.

Here’s a map of the freight railways in our corner of South Jersey:

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It’s important to note that there is no requirement for corporations or railways to disclose to our municipalities what materials are being transported through our towns unless a spill or emergency occurs. We are not, on a local level, able to opt out of LNG being transported through our backyards.

It’s also important to note that following the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, there are still hundreds of open or partially-fulfilled safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board for railcar safety enhancements including wheel bearing defect sensors (a wheel bearing defect caused the derailment in East Palestine), tank car modernization, onboard voice and data recording, and local emergency response training for hazardous materials.

So, while train derailments happen about three times every single day in America, only about twenty-seven of those incidents per year actually involve hazardous materials spilling out.[3] That's roughly 2.3% of all derailments. The math might make it sound rare, but when those twenty-seven incidents happen, they can be catastrophic. Statistically, we can reasonably predict that there will be one to five major incidents per year when LNG is transported by rail, with a major derailment every five to ten years.

Imagine if some of those daily derailments involved LNG.

How did we get here?

Right now, natural gas moves across North America the way it has for decades: through an extensive network of underground pipelines that stretch from extraction sites to processing facilities to your local utility company. These pipelines are designed specifically for gas transport, monitored continuously, and built to handle the pressure and temperature requirements that come with moving methane across thousands of miles. When gas reaches its destination, it's distributed through smaller local pipelines to power plants, factories, and eventually the gas line that connects to your stove and furnace. It's a system that, while not perfect, has been refined over time to move enormous quantities of gas efficiently and (relatively) safely (setting aside the very real concerns about the ways using natural gas in enclosed spaces impacts our lung health).

This pipeline infrastructure has served us well enough that North America produces more natural gas than it can use domestically. We're not facing a shortage here, it’s actually quite the opposite. The United States exported 11.9 billion cubic feet per day of liquefied natural gas in 2024 and was the world's largest LNG exporter.[4] U.S. natural gas production exceeded domestic consumption from 2017 through 2022, contributing to increased exports and making the United States a natural gas net exporter.[5] We're literally looking for ways to ship our surplus to other countries.

Yes, domestic demand is growing. It’s projected to more than triple over the next six years! McKinsey largely attributes this to the AI boom that's driving U.S. data center demand from 25 GW in 2024 to more than 80 GW by 2030.[6]​

Here's what most people don't realize: when you flip a light switch or charge your phone, there's a decent chance that electricity is coming from burning natural gas. According to Ember Energy, natural gas was the largest source (43%) of electricity generation in 2024,[7] making it our single largest source of power—more than coal, nuclear, wind, or solar. Natural gas power plants work by burning the gas to create steam that spins massive turbines, or by using the combustion directly to power turbines that generate electricity.

Utility companies love these plants because they can fire up quickly when demand spikes—say, when everyone comes home and cranks up their air conditioning, or when massive data centers need more juice to train the latest AI model. So when we talk about exploding demand for natural gas, we're really talking about our ever-growing appetite for electricity. Every new AI server farm, every crypto mining operation, every electric vehicle charging station ultimately traces back to burning more natural gas in power plants scattered across the country.

(Yes, you read that right: EVs are part of the problem.)

The existing pipeline network is being expanded to handle growing demand, with significant new capacity additions in 2024.[8] Bottlenecks have occurred in key production regions where growth has outpaced pipeline capacity, but the bottom line is that the priority is transporting LNG to facilities on the coast for export.[9]​

So when industry representatives start talking about the urgent need to transport natural gas by rail, they're not primarily solving a domestic supply problem or addressing some critical infrastructure gap. Domestic demand is growing, and so are our exports. So what they’re really doing is expanding a revenue stream that happens to involve rolling potential disasters through our communities. If we truly had an energy emergency, at any time they could stop exporting LNG and redirect natural gas through our already-existing infrastructure to meet our domestic energy needs.

What do they want to change?

There is extensive legislative history on this issue, but there’s no need to get into the weeds here because Delaware Riverkeeper Network sums it up nicely:

Delaware Riverkeeper Network shares a lot of additional information and links on their website, and I encourage you to visit them if you’re interested in doing a deep dive into the history.

What are the perceived benefits?

I understand that Delaware Riverkeeper Network is an advocacy organization with a specific lens through which they view this issue. I asked during the webinar whether there were any benefits to transporting LNG by rail, and the answer was that this is primarily a for-profit enterprise. There is no demonstrated domestic need to transport LNG by rail. However, there is a lot of profit to be realized by exporting natural gas, and that’s what’s driving this initiative.

I know after I hit publish “what if I missed The Good Reason?” will keep me up at night. I would LOVE to know there’s a greater reason to put our safety at risk on this scale than AI server farms and corporate profits. But, all of the research I did while drafting this article support what I learned in the webinar. I was hoping to find a good reason but came up empty-handed.

What can we do about it?

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network is asking us to submit comments to PHMSA. The public comment period is open until August 4, 2025. You can submit your comments here. There is a sample comment letter at the bottom of this page. They recommend that you personalize the letter in the first and last paragraphs, and let them know how this proposed rule change will affect you, because otherwise it will just look like a form letter which blends in with all of the others.

This issue isn’t getting much attention in our corner of South Jersey. We don’t have any meaningful local news coverage to speak of. While there’s been the odd article here and there nationally, I didn’t stumble across a deep dive.

So, the other thing you can do is share this with someone who lives close enough to a rail line to be impacted, which in South Jersey is all of us.

Thank you for inviting me into your inbox each week. These special editions will be rare, and I hope you found it helpful.

It was nice to catch up with so many of you IRL this weekend! See you bright and early Wednesday morning! (The market/brunch dogs this week are excited to say hello!)

Singing the songs of our shared communities,

Jen Russell, your neighbor and Editor-in-Chief, The Woodbury Warbler​

PS, you've subscribed, right? If not, click this button:

Thumbnail image: "Gundelsheim - Class 50 and Freight Train" by roger4336 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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​[1] “The Council on Environmental Quality describes the danger: The characteristics of these fires on water, like the behavior of vapor clouds, are subject to great uncertainties and estimates of the safe distance from their intense radiant heat vary significantly. According to a recent FPC (Federal Power Commission) analysis, a generally safe distance from a 25,000-cubic-meter pool fire would be about 8,300 feet or 1.6 miles. People standing 3,600 feet away would blister in 5 seconds, and exposure for longer times-perhaps 10 seconds — would be fatal. Estimates based on Bureau of Mines figures indicate that the danger might extend farther. According to these figures, on a windless day when thermal radiation is greatest, unsheltered people at a distance of 9,600 feet, or nearly 2 miles, could suffer fatal burns.” “DELAWARE COASTAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM AND FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT”. [From the U.S. Government Printing Office, www.gpo.gov ]. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of Coastal Zone Management, *41T4 O74f. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, The Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology, Washington, D.C. 20230, JUL 2 1979. P. 225 of PDF.

​[2] “LNG tank BLEVE is possible in some transportation scenarios.” Sandia National Laboratories, “LNG Use and Safety Concerns (LNG export facility, refueling stations, marine/barge/ferry/rail/truck transport)”, Tom Blanchat, Mike Hightower, Anay Luketa. November 2014. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1367739 P. 23.

​[3]​Rail Safety Overview Report (1.12), U.S. Department of Transportation, Run Date: 7/27/2025 03:48:24 pm, https://data.transportation.gov/stories/s/dsuf-xcni

​[4]​The United States remained the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter in 2024 - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) U.S. Energy Information Administration, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64844 (accessed 7/27/2025)

​[5]​Natural gas imports and exports - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) U.S. Energy Information Administration, https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/imports-and-exports.php (accessed 7/27/2025)

​[6]​How data centers and the energy sector can sate AI’s hunger for power, McKinsey & Company, September 17, 2024, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/private-capital/our-insights/how-data-centers-and-the-energy-sector-can-sate-ais-hunger-for-power (accessed 7/27/2025)

​[7]​2024 in review - US Electricity 2025 Special Report, Ember Energy, March 2025, https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/us-electricity-2025-special-report/2024-in-review/ (accessed 7/27/2025)

​[8]​Natural gas pipeline project completions increase takeaway capacity in producing regions, U.S. Energy Information Administration, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64744 (accessed 7/27/2025)

​[9]​AI, LNG demand to keep US natgas use at record highs but bottlenecks threaten, Reuters, March 13, 2025,

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ceraweek-ai-lng-demand-keep-us-natgas-use-record-highs-bottlenecks-threaten-2025-03-12/

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