Communities across western and central Colorado are bracing for a deluge of crude oil trains that could result from the construction of a new short-line railroad in eastern Utah. Over the objections of state and local leaders and environmental advocates, President Joe Biden’s administration is on track to approve the 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway, a multibillion-dollar project backed by a coalition of Utah county governments.
In a “downline analysis,” federal regulators estimated that the vast majority of the new railroad’s traffic — as many as five fully loaded, two-mile-long oil trains per day — would be routed through the Western Slope, across the Continental Divide and down the eastern face of the Front Range into Denver.
Down the Line is a multipart Newsline investigation into the risks posed by the railway to some of Colorado’s most scenic, fragile and densely populated places. Click here for an overview of the project, including maps of the route that the Uinta Basin oil trains would take through Colorado.
A proposal to build a new short-line railroad in the oil fields of eastern Utah could soon result in a dramatic increase in the amount of hazardous materials being shipped by rail through communities across western and central Colorado.
The 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway, backed by a partnership between industry and Utah county governments, would rank among the largest sustained efforts to transport crude oil by rail ever undertaken in the U.S. It would allow drillers to drastically ramp up production in Utah’s oil-rich Uinta Basin and ship the additional output to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Federal regulators say 90% of the resulting traffic would be routed east on the Union Pacific railroad through the Rocky Mountains and into Denver.
Some of the state’s most scenic, fragile and densely populated areas could soon be traversed by as many as five two-mile-long trains of tanker cars per day, hauling an average daily load of 315,000 barrels of Utah’s waxy crude oil. That would be more crude oil than was transported by rail across the entire U.S. last year, according to federal data — making the Colorado River Valley and parts of the Front Range the nation’s new oil-train superhighway.
While local opposition is mounting, the project has so far received only green lights from President Joe Biden’s administration, most recently in the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a permit to build the new railway through a protected area in Utah’s Ashley National Forest. Backers of the project, which carries a multibillion-dollar price tag, plan to apply for special tax-exempt infrastructure bonds from the U.S. Department of Transportation, drawing further protests from Colorado officials.
In an analysis, federal regulators sized up the “downline impacts” of the new railway, predicting that a spill of up to 30,000 gallons of oil would occur roughly once every five years. Colorado communities along the potential downline route have called that review “fatally flawed,” arguing that it didn’t do nearly enough to study the risks of spills, fires and other accidents along some of the most precarious stretches of railroad in the country.
This week, Newsline will publish Down the Line, a five-part series tracing the eastbound route that Uinta Basin oil trains could soon take through the Colorado River Valley, across the Continental Divide and down the eastern face of the Front Range to the Interstate 25 corridor.
