A terminal’s full impact
Published 8:03 pm Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Endless pressure, endlessly applied.
The motto of conservationist Brock Evans was given expression Wednesday as the Washington Department of Ecology announced the scope of its Environmental Impact Statement for the Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point. The endless pressure of seven hearings and 125,000 public comments informed Ecology’s decision and the two other co-lead agencies — Whatcom County Planning and Development Services and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — to consider a broad array of indirect and cumulative impacts both in Washington and throughout the West.
The EIS, which will take at least two years to complete, incorporates elements such as air and water quality, employment, health and safety, rail and vehicular traffic, and tribal treaty rights. The analysis will answer what Marysville and Edmonds residents have stewed over for months: In addition to jacking commute times, how will 18 more coal trains a day affect police and EMS services?
The EIS also will evaluate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions of end-use coal combustion (read: burning coal in China.) The big picture could have an emperor-has-no-clothes takeaway — greenhouse gasses don’t respect borders.
“This scope is a reflection of Northwest values — the depth and breadth of the scope is absolutely on target and appropriate given the impacts this project would have on our way of life,” said Cesia Kearns, campaign director for Power Past Coal, an anti-coal group.
To avoid redundancy, the EIS will meet the requirements of both the national and state environmental policy acts. The state act (SEPA) provides wider latitude than NEPA, and includes the lead agency examining a project’s fallout beyond its jurisdictional boundaries. A web-of-life lens was written into NEPA’s 1969 preamble, that the law aimed to “promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man.” It’s a crystalline definition of the public interest.
Ecology made its Gateway scoping decision based on the scale of the project, the avalanche of public comments, and a tangle of state laws that target greenhouse gases and coal use. A few bird-dogging lawmakers such as Rep. Reuven Carlyle and Rep. Jeff Morris stand out for asking the tough questions.
The business of America is business, Calvin Coolidge said, and Burlington Northern, Wyoming coal producers, and Gateway investors such as Peabody Energy and Goldman Sachs are goliaths that will continue to prod.
In two years, Washington will know the whole truth about Gateway’s impacts. And the truth, good or ill, will set us free.
