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"Fact Sheets,” Flack Sheets or Misinformation?


May 2012

Gateway Pacific Coal Terminal

"Fact Sheets,” Flack Sheets or Misinformation?

by Preston Schiller

Part 2

In Part I (Whatcom Watch, March 2012) we addressed several of the misleading assertions found in a widely distributed “fact sheet” by Gateway Pacific Terminal (GPT) proposal staff. Part II completes that task. The format is for the GPT assertion followed by a response crafted by the author with help from other community persons closely following this project who prefer to remain anonymous.

• Gateway Pacific Terminal: “Coal dust: Studies show that coal dust loss from untreated railcars occurs with the most frequency close to loading points at the mines and materially decreases as the railcars move farther from the mining areas in the Powder River Basin (PRB). Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad has issued a new rule that requires PRB coal shippers to implement measures that will reduce coal dust loss by 85 percent.”

• Anti-Coalies: May be true — eventually – but has no impact on diesel emissions or coal from the terminal. And to be clear—15 percent (if emissions are reduced 85 percent) of a minimum of 500 pounds of dust lost PER CAR means 75 pounds per car lost, or 9,375 pounds of toxic coal dust lost per 125-car train. Also the coal producers are fighting the railroad’s new rule implementing minimal coal dust suppression measures; it is under appeal at present, blocked and unclear which side might prevail.

• Gateway Pacific Terminal: “Trains carrying coal have been travelling through western Washington on their way to British Columbia ports for years, yet the Northwest Clean Air Agency and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have no record of coal dust complaints.”

• Anti-Coalies: Misleading. Neither agency is complaint driven and neither monitors particulates at the tracks. Bellingham’s single monitoring station is far away, near the intersection of Alabama and Yew Streets. This captures none of the proximate air quality impacts from today’s trains.

 

• Gateway Pacific Terminal: “A study generated for the Port of Bellingham found that the typical delay for a mile-long train is around four minutes.”

• Anti-Coalies: Very misleading. Coal trains are 1.5 miles long and slow to accelerate. The shortest delay at any particular intersection would be six minutes — not four, assuming a constant speed that is difficult given the situation of the current tracks slowed by curves and crossings. Actually, as all those who live near or travel near the tracks know, trains are often much slower, delayed or idling on the tracks or sidings for appreciable amounts of time. Twenty additional trains, each causing six minutes of delay at each crossing, translates to a minimum of two hours of delay above the already-existing one hour of delay. We may also see trains clustered together depending on rail traffic down the line, which could translate into massive blockages at crossings at certain times of the day that would greatly affect emergency response.

 

• Gateway Pacific Terminal: “Any increased freight traffic will not come at the expense of existing passenger traffic. BNSF has a long, successful history of working with passenger rail authorities.”

• Anti-Coalies: In principle, passenger services are supposed to be treated with some level of priority on the tracks whose use they pay for from freight operations such as BNSF. This does not always happen in practice. At present many Amtrak Cascades services are being slowed by freight trains, especially due to the long coal trains on both sides of the border. Perhaps GPT officials, including their spokespersons, need to ride one of the two daily round-trip Amtrak Cascades trains between Vancouver, BC, and Seattle and direct this question to Amtrak Cascades personnel. Add another twenty or more trains per day and the already challenged Amtrak schedule will be shredded. Adding more freight trains to this already crowded corridor will also squeeze out capacity for needed additional passenger trains should funding for these materialize at state or federal levels.

The Wrong Idea, Wrong Place and Wrong Time!

When the flack sheets show up in your community’s or organization’s newsletter, please ask the editor of that publication to publish the other side or feel free to use our rebuttal of the coal “terminalators.” When the Gateway Pacific Terminal glossy and equally misleading brochures, with cover titles such as “What would you call having the right idea in the right place and at the right time?” show up in your mailbox or at your doorstep please talk with your neighbors about how GPT’s proposal is “the wrong idea, at the wrong place and at the wrong time.”

Gateway Pacific Terminal quotations from an article by Sherri Burrill, Communications Coordinator for Gateway Pacific Terminal, “Gateway Pacific Terminal: The Issues” in the January 2012, Volume 22, No. 1 issue of the “Chuckanut News” published by the Chuckanut Bay Community Association. chuckanutcommunity.org/cbcanews1-12.pdf


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