A crowd of about 70 environmentalists gathered outside the downtown Portland offices of the Army Corps of Engineers this afternoon to protest Oregon’s newest potential export, coal.
If you’ve been following this story, you know there are currently six proposed coal terminals for Oregon and Washington. If approved, they could move as much as 150 million tons of coal each year to energy-hungry Asia. According to the coal companies’ current plans, six percent of Northwest coal exports will be shipped by covered barges, while all the rest will head through the region on uncovered trains. It’s these uncovered trains that have everyone worried. As the trains head from Montana and Wyoming to Oregon and Washington, the trains are expected to release as much as 250,000 pounds of coal dust per train into the air, according to the Sierra Club, which organized today’s protest.
The environmental group paints a grim picture of the effects of coal dust floating off the trains. Incidents of asthma and emphysema have been known to spike in communities exposed to coal dust. The dust itself contains toxic metals including mercury, chromium, nickel, and selenium, all of which could end up in the water and soil on the trains’ routes. Even the chemical used to keep the coal dust down is itself toxic. Add to the list of woes, the coal being shipped is highly flammable. And then there’s that whole global warming thing. Oregon and Washington shouldn’t be onboard to export a fuel that’s only going to hurt the environment, say the groups lined up against the export terminals plan.
As Alex Zielinski reported back in April, many Oregon residents aren’t happy with coal trains moving through their towns, including North Portlanders who resent that their environmentally conscious city will be the routing point for trains headed to Coos Bay and Port of St. Helens terminals. But moving trains through North Portland pails in comparison to number the trains could do on smaller communities.
“The trains’ impact on jobs is going to be devastating to our tourism-based economy,” said Moli Thomas, a city councilwoman in Stevenson, Washington. Stevenson is about 50 miles from Portland, and the train tracks run smack dab through the center of the Gorge town. Thomas, who is one of about 100 elected officials in Oregon and Washington speaking against the terminals, told the Mercury the trains would divide her town in two every time they passed, making access to Stevenson’s downtown and waterfront impossible for the 40 minutes it will take each train to pass.
Governor John Kitzhaber has also publicly registered his discontent with the situation. In April, he asked the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management to perform a comprehensive impact statement on the terminals. Senator Jeff Merkley has made the same request. Not yet joining the chorus is Senator Ron Wyden, who, although he has met with anti-coal groups, has not yet taken a stance on the issue. Along with urging the Army Corps of Engineers to perform an environmental impact assessment, Laura Stevens from the Sierra Club told the Mercury she hopes her group can persuade Wyden to join the others in requesting a full environmental assessment.
Closer to home, Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who spoke at the event, say she is drafting a resolution against the coal exports. “This isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction to coal,” Fritz told the Mercury. “There are serious environmental as well as economic impacts to this.”
Of course not everyone is against the new terminals. According to a recent poll nearly half of Oregonians favor the coal exports.
Up to four coal trains a day pass through Vancouver, and the have been doing this for years. Wherer is the coal dust? The Wyoming coal is a cleaner coal than the coal from Australia, which is the other source China is looking at. Since Chinas’ emissions wind up on the west coast of America (so I have read) I would rather have China using our coal. I really don’t believe this 250,00 pounds of coal dust per train. The biggest problem will be the disruption of traffic with up to (according to the railroads) 10 trains per day. If we sell 150 million tons of coal per year, we could get a lot of our money back and just think of the number of permanent jobs that will be created.
Please cite your sources on the incorrect claim that Wyoming coal is ‘cleaner’ than Australian coal. Wyoming coal is much lower in energy that other forms of coal and so MORE of it often has to be burned to create the same amount of electricity. Any lower amount of other pollutants (like mercury, sulfur dioxide, etc) in Wyoming coal is likely offset by the need to burn significant amounts more of it.
This ‘I would rather have China using our coal’ is just plain head-in-the-sand ignorance.
And what do you mean by ‘we’ would sell coal and get ‘our’ money back? The coal is already owned by the American people, but is sold at below market value to multinational, out-of-state companies like Peabody coal for little more than $1.00 per ton, and then re-sold for huge profits by those same out-of-state coal companies, and billionaires like Warren Buffet, who owns Burlington Northern Railroad. ‘We’ in Oregon get little economic benefit. A true, comprehensive environmental impact statement would require an economic analysis that looks at the costs, benefits and tradeoffs. For the most part, aside from a relatively small number of jobs, Oregon will bear the economic costs for the profits of Peabody and Warren Buffet.
Perhaps the reason that coal export supporters are so vehemently opposed to an Environmental Impact Statement is that it will not only show environmental harm, but will reveal the true economic costs for the region, while the benefits go elsewhere.
WHY DON’T THEY JUST COVER THE COAL CARS? SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH TO ME.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious solution, Graham. If the main problem was coal dust, that would fix it.
I think the problem is “that whole global warming thing”. The US is finally moving away from coal, in favor of [slightly better] natural gas. It is asinine to backstop the coal companies’ dying industry by shipping coal overseas.
Plus, has anyone considered the possibility that China might also move away from coal in the not-so-distant future? (Yeah, they are building a coal plant every day, but they also have their own coal…) Who pays to build these terminals? Taxpayers? What can they become when no one wants coal anymore?