These are some of the stories we’ve been following this week.

Elementary school teacher and students

Elementary school teacher and students courtesy of woodleywonderworks, CC BY 2.0.

  • Federal regulators found that Plains All American Pipeline, the company responsible for the California oil spill near Santa Barbara’s coast, kept poor records prior to the spill on how it would prevent or respond to a spill and the level of emergency training of its employees.
  • Inspectors in New York examining oil trains, switches, and tracks found four critical defects that required immediate fixes, along with 91 defects that were not critical. The inspections began following oil train crashes in other states.