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The emergency manager estimated that about 8,000 residents who live, work and attend school within a half-mile radius of the tracks would need to evacuate in the event of a rail emergency.
Bergen County has become a major corridor for oil with 15 to 30 trains traveling every week on the CSX River Line, the report said. More than 60,000 tank cars, each containing as much as 3 million gallons of crude oil, are hauled through 11 Bergen County municipalities: Norwood, Harrington Park, Closter, Haworth, Dumont, Bergenfield, Teaneck, Bogota, Ridgefield Park and Ridgefield, according to officials. The containers carry Bakken crude oil from North Dakota, on trains headed to refineries in New Jersey and Philadelphia.
Bakken crude oil is petroleum from the Bakken shale formation. It’s a mixture of flammable and combustible liquids and gasses in the natural state that it was recovered from the ground. It’s flammable at all local temperatures and is volatile because of dissolved gasses, such as butane.
Bakken Crude Oil is one many hazardous materials transported by the rail line through Teaneck. The rail line has been active since 1873 and as far as Township records show, there have only been two train accidents in Teaneck: one in 1930 and one in 1960. In both accidents, no hazardous materials were released and there were no injuries or damages to Teaneck residents or businesses along the track.
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