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Oil tank cars at an unloading facility on the Columbia River near Clatskanie. Oil began traveling the route in late 2012.

(Rob Davis/The Oregonian)

After a two-month fight, the Oregon Department of Transportation on Tuesday released records to The Oregonian showing where some trains have moved crude oil in the state.

But the records are incomplete, raising questions about whether ODOT, Oregon’s rail safety overseer, has stopped requiring all railroad companies to follow state law and annually report where they move highly flammable oil and other hazardous materials through the state.

The lagging disclosure adds to questions about the oversight culture at an agency whose top officials have downplayed the risks of moving highly flammable crude around the state. As a recent investigation by The Oregonian found, ODOT is unusually accommodating of the railroad companies it oversees.

For months, ODOT officials resisted saying where oil trains moved in Oregon, even denying that they knew. But they should. State law requires railroad companies to tell the state agency where they’ve hauled dangerous substances, including oil, every year.

The Oregonian petitioned for the release of those records and received some of them Tuesday under an order from the Oregon Department of Justice.

The reports show what ODOT acknowledged publicly last week: Oil trains are hauling crude across vast swaths of the state, including Salem, Eugene, Bend, Gresham and Klamath Falls.

But records are missing. Despite the order, ODOT didn’t provide:

* Reports showing where oil moved in 2013, when volumes sharply increased in the state. Railroads were required by law to have filed this information with ODOT by March 1, 2014. They haven’t filed yet, an ODOT spokesman said.

* Reports showing oil movements on the Portland & Western railroad, which connects Portland with an oil train terminal outside Clatskanie. Oil began moving on the line in 2012.

* Reports showing oil movements on Union Pacific's line in 2011 or 2012. A railroad spokesman said the company hauled oil in the state in 2012 and filed its report as required with ODOT. The state didn't provide it. Union Pacific has not filed a 2011 report, company spokesman Aaron Hunt said, but will soon.

David Thompson, an ODOT spokesman said the rail safety officials who could explain why the reports were incomplete were out of the office Tuesday on vacation. ODOT is working with the state fire marshal and first responders to improve notifications about oil train movements, Thompson said.

The reports released Tuesday, called milepost inventories, show how many carloads of oil moved through specific rail corridors each year. Statewide,

5,500 carloads of crude oil moved in 2012, up from nearly none in 2007.

Michael Eyer, a former ODOT railroad safety inspector, oversaw the agency’s collection of the inventories before he retired in 2009.

He said they gave him an overview of where different hazardous materials moved in Oregon. The inventories were a helpful planning tool, he said, allowing him to focus his safety inspections on key corridors.

“It was important,” Eyer said. “We didn’t have guess what was out there. It was hard numbers. I found it to be useful.”

The records allowed him to know whether new chemicals were moving in the state. He routinely shared the information with emergency responders across Oregon, he said, so they could effectively plan for unique safety risks posed by unique chemicals.

But state law has no penalty if railroads fail to disclose where they’ve moved hazardous materials. “There was no incentive for them to do the reporting,” Eyer said.

When Eyer retired in 2009, he said ODOT’s rail safety managers had begun pushing inspectors to pump up their inspection numbers, not to focus on things like corralling the reports from companies that often filed late.

“It sounds like it was let go as something that didn’t have value,” Eyer said. “It sounds like you’re being given a continuing delay and obfuscation.”

-- Rob Davis