Bakken crude oil was large­ly unknown to the gen­er­al pub­lic when a 2013 rail­road explo­sion and fire killed 47 res­i­dents of the tiny Cana­di­an bor­der town of Lac-Mégan­tic. Bakken wasn’t often men­tioned on the streets of West­port in South Bal­ti­more, where crime, pover­ty and dete­ri­o­rat­ed hous­ing seemed more urgent. But West­port is a through­way for the dan­ger­ous­ly flam­ma­ble oil ship­ments, and a coali­tion of cli­mate-change cam­paign­ers, social jus­tice activists and rail safe­ty reform­ers have been try­ing to make Bakken a house­hold word.

Anti-crude advocates are at a disadvantage, Edler adds, because federal rail safety law generally preempts local regulations. “The city of Baltimore couldn’t ban Bakken shipments inside the city limits even if it wanted to.”

The non-prof­it Chesa­peake Cli­mate Action Net­work (CCAN) has led anti-oil train ral­lies out­side City Coun­cil meet­ings, deliv­ered peti­tions to coun­cil mem­bers and pro­ject­ed the words ​“Oil Train Blast Zone” onto at-risk sites to raise aware­ness and pres­sure for tighter regulations.

For CCAN, Bakken rep­re­sents an ener­gy com­plex run wild. Using frack­ing and hor­i­zon­tal drilling tech­niques, ener­gy com­pa­nies are exploit­ing the Bakken For­ma­tion, a mas­sive oil and gas deposit span­ning North Dako­ta, Mon­tana and south­ern Cana­da. A recent boom has flood­ed the mar­ket with cheap crude petro­le­um, depressed oil prices and encour­aged greater con­sump­tion, says CCAN. Bakken is active­ly mak­ing glob­al warm­ing worse, the group argues — and putting work­ing-class neigh­bor­hoods like West­port at risk in the process.

Keisha Allen, pres­i­dent of the West­port Neigh­bor­hood Asso­ci­a­tion, first heard of Bakken in Decem­ber 2013 when a CCAN cam­paign­er pre­sent­ed to her com­mu­ni­ty. Allen was star­tled to learn that rail­road giant CSX com­mon­ly routes Bakken ship­ments near her home and neigh­bor­hood. By CCAN’s esti­mate, some 165,000 Bal­ti­more­ans live in the ​“impact zone.”

“We are sit­ting ducks,” Allen says as she dri­ves along Annapo­lis Road, just south­west of the Bal­ti­more Ravens’ sta­di­um and the glit­ter­ing new Horse­shoe Casi­no. She bumps over CSX tracks just a few hun­dred feet from Colleen’s Cor­ner Tav­ern, where her neigh­bors often relax as the trains rum­ble by.

Bal­ti­more has its own his­to­ry of rail dis­as­ter: The 2001 Howard Street Tun­nel fire fumed down­town for five days after a CSX chem­i­cal tanker derail­ment. And Lac-Mégan­tic is one of sev­er­al Bakken-relat­ed train fires.

It is a fact of mod­ern indus­tri­al life that rail­roads route dan­ger­ous car­go through dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed urban areas, says Fritz Edler, a retired loco­mo­tive engi­neer active in work­place safe­ty issues with Rail­road Work­ers Unit­ed. But, accord­ing to Edler, rail­road com­pa­nies often fail to pay ade­quate atten­tion to safe­ty issues. Bakken is even more dan­ger­ous and volatile than most oth­er types of crude oil, he says. ​“A lot of peo­ple are wound up.”

Anti-crude advo­cates are at a dis­ad­van­tage, Edler adds, because fed­er­al rail safe­ty law gen­er­al­ly pre­empts local reg­u­la­tions. ​“The city of Bal­ti­more couldn’t ban Bakken ship­ments inside the city lim­its even if it want­ed to.”

That means cam­paign­ers have to take an indi­rect approach. Allen is agi­tat­ing for new safe­ty mea­sures that can be man­dat­ed by the city, such as large warn­ing signs on the streets and a well-pub­li­cized safe­ty plan.

Even as activists ratch­et up pub­lic demon­stra­tions, the Bal­ti­more City Coun­cil has moved frus­trat­ing­ly slow­ly, Allen says. ​“We have to do some­thing. We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

Anoth­er approach con­nects Bakken ship­ments to air qual­i­ty law. Leah Kel­ly, a lawyer with the Envi­ron­men­tal Integri­ty Project (EIP), explains that in addi­tion to the threat of explo­sion, emis­sions con­nect­ed to the oil tran­sit process have been linked to asth­ma and oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, which are already com­mon in Bal­ti­more. When oil and gas com­pa­ny Tar­ga Resources applied for a per­mit to ship crude oil, EIP attor­neys filed legal com­ments rais­ing con­cerns, and the Mary­land Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment (MDE) asked Tar­ga for more infor­ma­tion. ​“This stuff enters the atmos­phere,” Kel­ly says. Bal­ti­more res­i­dents ​“have every right to know what is hap­pen­ing [and to object.]”

Tar­ga did not pro­vide the request­ed infor­ma­tion and with­drew its emis­sions per­mit appli­ca­tion in July. While Tar­ga didn’t get its per­mit, anoth­er com­pa­ny, Axeon, cur­rent­ly ships crude oil in Bal­ti­more. In 2015, a Bal­ti­more Cir­cuit Court judge ruled that MDE could make pub­lic infor­ma­tion on Axeon’s activ­i­ties — a dis­clo­sure Axeon had tried to pre­vent — reveal­ing that over 50 mil­lion bar­rels are shipped through the city annu­al­ly. Nei­ther Axeon nor Tar­ga also respond­ed to requests for comment.

Right now, accord­ing to Edler, the vol­ume of Bakken rail ship­ments is falling, as the cur­rent glut of oil on the mar­ket makes Bakken less prof­itable. But it’s impor­tant to press the issue nev­er­the­less, he believes, as shift­ing mar­ket con­di­tions could eas­i­ly send mas­sive new ship­ments nationwide.

“Oil prices will inevitably go high­er,” says CCAN founder and direc­tor Mike Tid­well, and ship­ments will increase. ​“We have to demand from the Bal­ti­more City Coun­cil the new safe­ty mea­sures that are need­ed” to pre­vent a repeat of Lac-Mégan­tic, he says. CCAN is also work­ing with Mary­land State Del­e­gate Clarence Lam on leg­is­la­tion to increase trans­paren­cy and boost safe­ty requirements.

The next steps are to press local offi­cials with even greater urgency, Tid­well says. Those who pro­mote and prof­it from Bakken crude are count­ing on pub­lic com­pla­cen­cy, he says, and alliances like the one in Bal­ti­more are the only thing stand­ing in their way.