Rail oil tanker cars at the Port of Albany on Thursday Dec. 12, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) Rail oil tanker cars at the Port of Albany on Thursday Dec. 12, 2013 in Albany, N.Y. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) Photo: Michael P. Farrell Photo: Michael P. Farrell Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 100 gallons of oil spilled from rail car at Port of Albany 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Albany

An estimated 100 gallons of oil that spilled from a rail car at a transfer facility at the Port of Albany Sunday posed no danger to nearby residents or the environment, a port official said.

But county officials, who have imposed a moratorium on the growth of the oil infrastructure at the port amid safety concerns, said they were furious that they weren't notified of the incident — no matter how small.

The oil spilled from a rail car vent in a yard at the Global Partners terminal, where oil is transferred from inbound rail cars to tankers that send it down the Hudson River, port Manager Richard Hendrick said.

Ed Greenberg, a spokesman for the Canadian Pacific railroad, said the incident did not involve a moving train and that only a small amount — five gallons or less — spilled onto the railroad's property.

The Global terminal has been the center of the local debate, fueled by the much larger national one, over the safety of the increasing amount of rail-borne oil moving through the port, much of which is originating in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota.

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Global Partners' plans to expand its existing complex at the port have drawn opposition from South End neighborhood activists, who fear the risk of a derailment or explosion, and environmentalists who fear potentially catastrophic damage to the river.

"This just assures me that what I'm doing is right," said County Executive Dan McCoy, a former city firefighter whose administration in March issued a moratorium at least temporarily halting Global's expansion until the health and safety impacts can be studied. "We're not backing off."

The company's plans call for a heating plant to make it easier to transfer the oil from the rail cars.

Hendrick described Sunday's spill as "very small" and said it was largely contained to "spill pans" along the tracks in the rail yard installed for just such an incident. He described the location as "blocks from the water" and said the spill was so small that city firefighters did not need to respond.

Mayor Kathy Sheehan was notified, as were the state Department of Environmental Conservation's spill response team and the Federal Railroad Administration, Hendrick said.

"The terminal has a complete spill plan with the railroad and the DEC, and they followed it as soon as it occurred," Hendrick said. "Any place where they're offloading that product there's a pan that's in the tracks for any spills."

Peter Constantakes, a spokesman for DEC, said the agency believes the 100-gallon estimate to be correct. Constantakes said most of the oil appears to have sprayed into what he described as a "secondary asphalt containment area."

The agency was on the scene Sunday as the firm Clean Harbors cleaned up the spill and will return Monday to confirm, Constantakes said.

"Everything seemed to be for the most part contained," he said.

The exact time of the incident was not immediately clear, but it appeared to have happened sometime between 2 and 2:30 p.m.

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