In response to the Tuesday letter, “Everett must join fight against plan,” bemoaning the transit of coal trains through Everett: The obvious first rebuttal is that the railroad was here first and we picked where we wanted to live. I don’t know how close the writer is to the railroad tracks, but I’m sure I am closer. In fact, I look almost straight down at the trains as they pass our home and it is our conclusion that the coal trains are the least noisy of all the trains that pass by. Maybe because the trains are so heavy, they cause the least amount of vibration.
If we want to cut the number of trains that pass through Everett, we might look at the reason we ship this coal to China. I contend that we export this cheap energy to China because our government has decided that we should shutter our coal-powered plants and utilize inefficient, expensive, green energy. For the most part, we have the cleanest power plants in the world, but are restricted from burning our own coal. As President Obama said: Go ahead and build your coal powered plants and we will bankrupt you.
So, the solution to the writer’s concern could be that we utilize our own resources to power our country with clean energy through efficient plants or send our energy to China where standards for clean emissions are minimal. As I see it, we can have clean, cheap energy with fewer trains through Everett or higher energy costs, more trains and dirty air from China.
Enn Mikk
Everett
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