BELLINGHAM, Wash.–A proposed Puget Sound terminal that would ship millions of tons of coal to Asia drew opposition from most speakers Oct. 27, with many opponents at a public meeting calling for a broader environmental impact statement analyzing impacts stretching from Montana strip mines to Chinese smoke stacks.
Some 1,800 people attended the first of a series of seven scoping meetings on the Gateway Pacific Terminal, which would be located about 12 miles south of the Canadian border. The site is just north of Bellingham, where some 81,000 people live sandwiched between a snow-capped volcano and Puget Sound’s San Juan archipelago in what has been dubbed one of the most livable small cities on the West Coast.
Of just over 200 speakers at the scoping meeting convened by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Washington Department of Ecology, and local county government, fewer than 10 spoke in favor of the terminal. While project proponents point to the 1,250 direct and indirect jobs the project would bring when up and running, opponents dismiss that benefit as being far outweighed by a multitude of negative economic, health, environmental, social, and cultural impacts.
SSA Marine, the largest U.S. terminal and stevedoring company, has 51 percent of the proposed project with the other 49 percent held by Goldman Sachs Infrastructure Partners. Gateway, the largest of five coal terminals proposed in the Northwest, would ship up to 48 million metric tons annually. If all five come to fruition, U.S. coal exports would more than double at maximum output. The U.S. exported 107.3 million short tons of coal last year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Native Fishermen Fear Impacts.
Peabody Energy, the biggest private-sector coal company in the world, has contracted to ship up to 24 million metric tons of coal through the terminal. The coal would travel from Montana and Wyoming’s coal-rich Power River Basin to Gateway on Berkshire Hathaway’s BNSF Railway Inc.
Speaker after speaker rose in the Squalicum High School gymnasium making the case that the scope of the EIS should encompass not simply the impacts associated with Gateway site, but instead look at the cumulative impacts of all five proposals beginning at the mines and including the rail routes, at each proposed terminal, on the maritime shipping lanes and the environmental consequences of burning the coal in Asia.
Lummi Nation council member Jay Julius was the first to speak as a representative of a tribe whose fully litigated treaty fishing rights include the waters off the Gateway site. Those waters are also within a state aquatic refuge that is home to key herring habitat. Herring are prey for endangered king salmon, which is the prime food source for endangered orca.
"Lummi says no," Julius said. "I am personally a fisherman. My great-great-grandfather was a fisherman and so were his ancestors. To us fishing is culture and culture is fish." He asked for a study on "the spiritual impacts this will have on my people."
Before the meeting, Julius told BNA that the Gateway site contains native cemetery and archaeological village sites. "In addition to those sites, the impacts it [Gateway] will have on the earth over the next 40 years will be felt by our children’s children forever," he said.
Spill Would ‘Devastate the Orcas.'
Following Julius were 99 more speakers in the gymnasium and over 100 in the school’s auditorium. A mother with two kids in tow stood and expressed worry about the health effects of coal dust billowing from the mile-and-a-half-long coal trains, nine of which would pass by her house each day. The trains are a "threat to our property values and our health," Peggy Lupo said.
Family farmer Nicole Brown said she fears losing market share for her organic greens, which rely on our "clean and green reputation."
Multiple speakers asserted variations on the theme that with hundreds of extra transits by huge Post Panamax vessels plying Puget Sound, an "oil spill would devastate the orcas" and the salmon upon which they feed.
Thom Prichard said the trains that already run through town set his house rumbling. "At 3 o’clock most mornings, I’m awakened by some guy holding on the horn. " Prichard was one of many who cast the conflict in terms of a populist struggle of people versus a business elite. "This is another case of big business getting all the benefits at the cost of the citizens," he said.
Paul Shukovsky
To access a government website on the Gateway EIS process, go to http://www.ecy.wa.gov/geographic/gatewaypacific/.
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