PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Although the director of the state Department of Transportation has pledged to begin collecting annual reports on oil shipments in Oregon, information about current shipments is piecemeal, The Oregonian reports.
Representatives of Friends of the Columbia Gorge said they met with Union Pacific officials earlier this month and were assured the company was moving only a few cars of oil on the Oregon side of the gorge, and no mile-long trains carrying solely oil.
But an amateur photographer looking for wildflowers photographed such a train a week later, on Friday, and notified the group, which told The Oregonian (https://is.gd/cbucpZ ).
The railroad said it told the state agency about the train, but not local fire officials.
Aaron Hunt, a Union Pacific spokesman, said his company had always left open the possibility that it would move full trains of oil, something it hopes to continue doing.
What the company told an official of the gorge group “was accurate at the time,” Hunt said. “That was accurate until Friday.”
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