A questionable track record for coal, oil trains

Published 5:34 pm Friday, June 10, 2016

Recent months have proved to be a rough stretch of track for trains carrying fossil fuels in the Northwest.

In May, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for a proposed coal export terminal at Cherry Point in Whatcom County because it would have had adverse effects on the tribal fishing rights of the Lummi Nation. The denial of that permit this month led the state Department of Resources to deny an aquatic lands lease to the project that would have brought coal from mines in Montana and Wyoming via rail through Washington state and Snohomish county, then by freighter to China and elsewhere. The Gateway Pacific Terminal’s proponents, SSA Marine, are still weighing a possible challenge to the Army Corps’ decision.

Public opposition, including a quarter-million comments during an environmental review — and to be fair some public support — also has surfaced against an oil terminal along the Columbia River at the Port of Vancouver proposed by a partnership of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. The project will get a June 27 hearing before a state quasi-judicial panel before the issue is turned over to Gov. Jay Inslee for his final decision.

There’s significant opposition as well to the $600 million Millennium Bulk coal terminal in Longview, which envisions loading the coal from as many as eight trains a day for export to Asia. More than a thousand people attended a hearing in Longview last month, where those wearing red shirts in opposition outnumbered those in blue supporting the terminal.

Then, on June 3, the same day the state Department of Ecology was taking public comment on proposed safety rules for shipments of oil by rail, a Union Pacific train carrying volatile Bakken crude derailed in the Columbia River town of Mosier, Oregon. Four tank cars ruptured, releasing 42,000 gallons of crude much of which inundated the town’s water treatment facility, burned in a fire or left a sheen on the Columbia.

The comment period regarding the environmental review for the Longview coal terminal ends today, perhaps an opportunity to call “last stop” for what looked to be significant growth for coal shipments by rail.

Regardless of pending decisions by Gov. Inslee and state and federal agencies for the remaining export facilities, there no longer appears to be the demand for coal from China and the rest of Asia that drove up prices and the interest in exports. Arch Coal, which held a major stake in the Longview project, declared bankruptcy in January and pulled out of Millennium two weeks ago. Coal production, itself, has dropped as coal-fired power plants have shut down or switched to natural gas and the growth of solar and wind as a preferred source of energy continues.

With coal’s uncertain future, there seems little value in the state approving the Longview project.

But if we see fewer coal trains in Washington state, don’t expect a shorter wait at rail crossings; more bearing crude oil may be ready to roll in their stead. Late last year, Congress lifted a 40-year ban on the export of crude oil, and the pressure to permit oil terminals in the Northwest, a prime location for export facilities to Asia, will continue, especially as the price of oil increases.

All the more reason for Northwest states and the federal government to get rules and other safeguards in place now to protect the natural resources of the state’s marine waters and the Columbia River as well as the communities along the routes where the trains run.