How to Stop Worrying and Love Coal Trains

Bellingham resident Preston L. Schiller has been involved with transportation and environmental issues for more than 25 years as a citizen, alternatives advocate, researcher and teacher. He is co-author of “An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation: Policy, Planning and Implementation”(Earthscan Publishing, 2010). In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he led an evaluation of a public health education program in a remote region of coalmining Appalachia for the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina. He witnessed the social and environmental devastation of King Coal up close and personal. He is much chagrined to find that Mr. Peabody’s coal trains are showing up in Bellingham.

Such happy fellas, those mayors of Lynden and Ferndale, smiling at us from ads running week after week in several local papers. Beaming so broadly because they know that the massive terminal expansion proposed for Cherry Point will bring nothing but good to Whatcom County — thousands of jobs, and tens of millions of dollars in tax revenues to replenish the public coffers of our area. On other news pages, the usual suspects, the usual boosters of any and every “growth” project, line up to either promote or enable the project and assure us that we should not worry too much.

The boosters include the project proposers SSA Marine (49 percent of which is owned by Goldman Sachs), the aforementioned mayors, the Chamber of Commerce’s Ken Oplinger, union leader Dave Warren, the editorial page of The Bellingham Herald, Cong. Rick Larsen (D-WA), and Gov. Christine Gregoire and her miens. The enablers include Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark who accepted a questionable environmental settlement for Cherry Point which has opened the door for SSA. Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) seems ready and eager to haul the coal hundreds of miles, through dozens of cities large and small, to the terminal for shipment to China.

It is unclear at this writing whether Bellingham’s Mayor Dan Pike will join the happy fellas of Lynden and Ferndale in their coal train and terminal boosting or whether he will use his office and resources to lead Bellingham in opposition to the current proposal. His public statements so far seem a bit equivocal, although he has stated the need for many mitigations and more study and analysis of impacts. At least he acknowledges the downside of this proposal. His declared challenger in the upcoming election, Kelli Linville, at the time of this article’s writing has not yet announced her position on SSA and coal trains, although her past performance does not inspire much confidence that she will be in opposition to the proposal. Indeed, her past performance might well lead one to expect that she will join the boosters club.

Boosting stupidity is not a recent phenomenon for our region. In an earlier Whatcom Watch article, I describe how the “best minds” of Bellingham in the early 1950s boosted a proposed routing of I-5 through the center of Fairhaven, along the Boulevard and through the heart of downtown in order to do favors for industrial “friends” (see Whatcom Watch, August 2010, www.whatcomwatch.org). Fortunately, the city was saved from its best minds by a thrift-minded State Department of Transportation that found the current I-5 routing to be less costly, hence more desirable.

The full page slick ad and the lineup of boosters and enablers begs a few questions. The last time I looked, Cherry Point was in unincorporated Birch Bay. It’s not clear why it is called Cherry Point. Were there cherry orchards once where polluting smokestacks now stand? Perhaps “Herring Point” or “Eel Grass Point” would be more environmentally correct appellations.

While Ferndale and Lynden eagerly annex adjacent farmland for sprawl divisions in order to lower their already low population densities, I am unaware of the annexation of Cherry Point by either of these jurisdictions. Has Mayor Jensen polled his council or citizenry about whether they desire two or three times as many trains per day rolling through Ferndale? Will greater Lynden reach all the way to Puget Sound? Has the city of Bellingham, unable to find sufficient funds for the G-P site clean-up, thought about slowing down or re-thinking their waterfront development plans in light of the challenge of BNSF coal trains? To date, it appears that only Caspian terns, not deep pocket developers, want to inhabit that site.

The news coverage, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to the local reporter for The Bellingham Herald and the Cascadia Weekly has been a little more measured and questioning than the booster efforts.

It is not easy to sift through the available information, misinformation, disinformation and missing information about or from the SSA proposal. Some of it, like the assertion of Craig Cole, SSA’s booster-in-chief, that there are currently 24-28 trains per day rolling through Bellingham is simply inaccurate – due either to being misinformed or misinforming the public in order to make a proposal that calls for 10 to 20 very long and polluting coal trains per day look like an insignificant increase.

On an average day, there are currently 14 trains, total, rolling through Bellingham. Four of these are Amtrak Cascades passenger trains which are much quieter, much shorter and move much more quickly than freight trains. The number of freight trains may vary slightly depending on the vagaries of rail traffic and demand, but ten per day seems to be the norm.

According to SSA Marine’s terminal proposal the 25 million tons per year SSA coal terminal would add at least nine or ten trains per day through Bellingham. These trains would probably be 50 percent longer than the current ten trains — up to a mile and a half in length. Full build out of the SSA terminal to 54 million tons of bulk cargo per year would likely add at least another 12 to 14 trains per day through Bellingham. If the agreement between SSA Marine terminal and Peabody Energy (King Coal) for 48 million tons of coal annually reaches fruition most of those 12 to 14 trains would be long coal trains. At that point, there could be close to 40 trains per day through Bellingham and Ferndale — a long slow train every half-hour or so.

Think it’s hard now to find developers for the waterfront, downtown or Fairhaven? Just wait a few years when freight train traffic more than triples.

Another factor which has not yet been discussed by boosters is the likely increase in road traffic linked with this project. The huge amount of construction activity generated there will greatly increase truck and service vehicle traffic in the major corridors serving Cherry Point. The service vehicle traffic will persist after construction and be augmented by the daily commuters to an area where no buses dare to tread, carpooling is unpopular and whose residents regularly vote against transit.

The social and environmental devastation wrought by King Coal was widely known before climate change and global warming were front and center in public consciousness. Understanding that there is no such thing as “clean coal,” and that more coal use can only aggravate our extreme atmospheric problems should give pause to all citizens of our planet, especially those who might be involved with any effort to perpetuate or expand its use.

Deliberate destruction of streams, forests, landscapes and communities is the byproduct of coalmining, strip or deep tunnel. Fouled air, polluted groundwater supplies, and black lung disease (coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, known as or CWP) are but a few of its health hazards. The transport of coal via rail creates serious air, ground and water pollution problems as well as increasing the risk of train wrecks through its deposit on tracks.

The politics of King Coal thuggery are among the most vicious in the extremely vicious world of resource extraction. Even relatively innocuous efforts, such as the proposal to convert the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C., from coal to natural gas as part of Congress’ “Greening the Capitol” effort was effectively stymied by bi-partisan efforts led by the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

The current Republican tea bagger majority in the House has gleefully gutted the whole “Greening the Capitol” initiative, from maintaining coal as the fuel of choice for the Capitol Power Plant to the reintroduction of styrene coffee cups in the House cafeteria. Those at the center of this roll-back effort have, of course, been richly rewarded through sizeable campaign contributions from King Coal.

Meanwhile the pollution from the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant, a few blocks from the Capitol itself, degrades the health of local residents and defaces monuments, facades and copper-clad roofs throughout the Capitol. The latter adds greatly to the cost of upkeep, maintenance and restoration of these public facilities — so much for fiscal responsibility. Elsewhere on Planet Earth, climate activists from the U.K. to Australia are blockading coal trains and in some cases unloading them by hand as part of their “Leave it in the ground!” campaigns.

A full review of the domain of King Coal is beyond the scope of this article. Fortunately, the Bellingham-based environmental non-profit RE-Sources has become energized to watchdog this issue. Excellent coverage of local issues around the coal terminal and rail hauling, as well as a cornucopia of background materials, can be found at its website (www.re-sources.org). Bellinghamster Jack Delay is also a good source of information on the SSA manueverings (email coaltrain@mailyz.com to receive updates).

Rather than duplicating or overlapping their excellent work this article will attempt to augment it and point to a few more issues.

The social and environmental issues and local and regional impacts involved with the proposed SSA terminal and the dramatic increase in rail and road traffic it will engender include:

• Air pollution from coal dust along the rail route and around the facility itself;

• Increased local air pollution from the locomotives — especially for neighborhoods along the rail route or in the vicinity of switching facilities;

• Increased water pollution from runoff from coal dust;

• Increased round-the-clock noise pollution even if a federal “quiet zone” through Bellingham is established;

• Local traffic and access problems (say goodbye to the connection between Boulevard Park and Boulevard Trail that BNSF tried to close several years ago until a large citizen protest, including Mayor Mark Asmundson, forced BNSF to reopen it, wave farewell to other waterfront access points, be prepared for long waits and short crossing intervals at other crossings). Some businesses may be adversely affected by the increasing inaccessibility of their locations and move out of Bellingham, taking their jobs along with them.

• Decreased rail safety due to slick rail tracks and compromised rail ballasts created by coal dust depositions (some of the resources include graphic examples of this problem). This is a significant problem over which BNSF has been locked in legal contest with some of the corporations for which it hauls coal.

• Possible interference with passenger rail operations if the project proceeds before ensuring the priority of reliable Amtrak service and schedules.

These are just a few of the local impacts. A much longer list including global impacts such as the long distance transport of air toxics (including mercury) from the burning of Mr. Peabody’s coal across the Pacific (or anywhere in the world), could be compiled. Some of the resources listed with this article provide information on these.

SSA Marine appears to be waging one of the slickest and best financed campaigns for approval that this region has seen in recent years, perhaps decades. The blitzkrieg speed of their current campaign speaks to a long period of preparation and skillful planning — not surprising since they have been doggedly working at this project for decades. A few of the most salient features of its public facade are worth noting:

• Recruit an exemplary local leader-spokesperson. This has been done in the personage of Craig Cole, persuasive well-established local business luminary, former elected official, endeared to those at all levels of government, occasional supporter of “safe” environmental issues (such as protecting griz habitat), etc.

• Create a happy face for this project rather than a smudged coal face: get smiling mayors and other luminaries to boost this project and extoll its virtues, promise everything to everyone; consider changing the name of the location to “Cheery Point.”

• Build on your cheerful message and encourage federal officials to fund much of the rail expansions (i.e., sidings, double tracking) that the project would need. Most of these rail improvements would benefit the freight haulers and swell the multi-billion dollar profits of “Buffett Northern Santa Fe.” Claim that all the federally funded track improvements are solely for the benefit of Amtrak, although the fate of future additional trips to Vancouver, BC, is clouded over by a lack of commitment to facilitate those trips on the Canadian side of the border. This strategy has worked well for BNSF for decades with a great deal of public funding (federal, state and local in the case of Sound Transit’s rail project) already benefitting it. Why shouldn’t it continue?

• If some resist the happy face approach, then dampen the spirit of your opposition by creating a number of “inevitability arguments” to place in the mouths of your boosters, such as: “You can’t stop the trains. BNSF can increase the number of its trains and the makeup of its cargos regardless of local impacts or objections” (see below, this is a half-truth at best) or; “if we (who is “we?”) don’t sell them the coal the Aussies or some other country will” (see “Coal Protests” in gray box for examples of Australian and British coal train blockades and global movements to reduce the use of coal.) or; “if the Cherry Point terminal doesn’t get built, it will just be shipped out of another port and the jobs will go elsewhere” (see “Information From Regional Sources” in gray box for examples of how several other Washington localities are rejecting such a facility.) or; “we’re helping the Chinese by sending lower sulfur coal to them so that they pollute less” (see “Information From Regional Sources” in gray box for rebuttals of this.) or; “there used to be more trains in the past when GP was fully operational” (not yet verified but if so what a great victory; swapping chlorine and sawdust trains for coal trains!) and on … and on.

• Meet with the editorial board of the local daily newspaper. Prepare a “fact sheet” stressing how badly Whatcom County needs this project and how much good it will bring. Smile when they publish an editorial titled: “Community desperately needs jobs, investment of new shipping port” that liberally borrows from your “fact sheet” (see The Bellingham Herald, Feb. 27, 2011).

While SSA Marine says that it plans to handle only 25 million tons per year of coal, the remaining 30 million tons per year of its capacity would handle potash (which has some of its own problems) and grain. But there is no guarantee that almost all of its additional capacity would not go into coal if that was where the most profitable demand was. And the agreement that the SSA Marine terminal has forged with Peabody Energy (i.e., coal) suggests that up to 48 million tons of coal annually might be shipped through Cherry Point.

At this point there are several things that citizens, environmental organizations and other public interest groups can do to challenge this proposal and to shape a better outcome for Bellingham and the region. These include:

• Keep informed: Check the RE-Sources website regularly; get on the mailing list for coaltrain@mailyz.com; read Whatcom Watch and support these organizations through donations and volunteer work.

• Assist and support the emerging challenges to the proposal.

• Talk up the problems associated with the proposal throughout the county. Ferndale will likely be as adversely affected by this proposal as Bellingham.

• Remind others, including government officials, that the proposed expansion of freight trains in the current corridor could choke off the two additional planned future Amtrak Cascades round-trips (which when added to the current two, would bring us 80 percent of the way to 1915 service levels) and possibly interfere with current services.

If the happy face coal terminal boosting mayors of Ferndale and Lynden truly represent their constituents, well then perhaps they would welcome a new rail routing that would bring the 20-plus coal trains through their communities and skirt Bellingham? At present, BNSF owns an underused rail line that runs northward from Burlington to Sumas and beyond. A rail spur connects the rail line at Sumas with the heart of Lynden. A new rail shortcut just north of Nooksack, a few miles of new single track rail line from downtown Lynden west and one could have a connector between the Burlington-Sumas line and Cherry Point.

If the citizens of Ferndale are not in synch with their mayor and protest more coal trains, then the new line could go north of Ferndale to connect with the existing rail spur between the current BNSF mainline and Cherry Point. While this sounds extravagant, it is close to what Cherry Point boosters have unsuccessfully proposed in previous decades. And it would probably not cost more than the upgrades to the current BNSF line through Bellingham that would have to occur in order to accommodate greatly expanded rail traffic there.

Alternatively, sufficient protest might cause BNSF to improve and route coal shipping along the Burlington-Sumas line, which connects with Canadian rail lines that go both to the existing BNSF mainline north of White Rock, BC, and to the current Port of Vancouver’s coal terminal at Delta Port. Of course that longer route and the costs associated with it might not seem as attractive to BNSF as simply forcing more trains through Bellingham, and they would have our heartfelt sympathies for a tiny dent in their multi-billion dollar annual profits.

There probably is not a solution to this proposal that will satisfy BNSF, SSA Marine and its boosters, and the citizens who value the social and environmental qualities that would be destroyed by this project.

That should not deter or discourage those whose values are at odds with those of the beneficiaries of the project from making their voices heard above the noise of train whistles and rail clatter. Get on board the train challenging the proposal folks; the ride will be bumpy with plenty of curves and steep grades. Better pack a lunch. §

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