To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate

Stop transporting explosive & hazardous crude oil via rail using unsafe and outdated DOT-111 tank...

Shipments of Bakken Crude Oil via rail are increasing exponentially across the United States. Most of these shipments are being carried out using DOT-111 tank cars.

Out of 93,000 of these tank cars now in service, only 14,000 are up to current safety standards. And if that were not enough, Bakken Crude Oil is more volatile than other crude oil products.

These high-risk rail tank cars need to be taken out of service immediately before the next derailment causes serious loss of life and reprehensible damage to our environment.

The tank cars are going just about everywhere across the U.S. and Canada--probably through your own neighborhood.

(Side Note: I have also started a petition on the White House "We the People" web site. Please sign that one too...thank you.)

Why is this important?

I spend a lot of time along the Mississippi River doing what I love--photographing birds and wildlife. Last year I started noticing a huge increase in the amount of rail activity along the river. I was seeing a lot of mile-long trains carrying nothing but tanker cars. After some investigative work I realized the tanker cars were carrying crude oil from the Bakken Region of North Dakota and Canada. These tanker cars (called DOT-111) have too thin of a skin to withstand most derailments, have valves and controls that are easily ripped off in accidents and do not have crush guards on the front and rear of the tanks.