Coal Tar Sands
Bellingham, Friday Harbor, Mt Vernon Resources
Coal Train Resources (by County, as specified, or generically):
Whatcom County: http://lwvbellinghamwhatcom.org/files/position_paper.pdf
http://www.communitywisebellingham.org/gpt-traffic-impacts-on-the-waterfront/
Whatcom County impacts of increased rail traffic, 4 studies: http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/gtc-traffic-study-burlington-marysville-mt-vernon-and-stanwood-wa
http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/docs/New-Coal-export-factsheet-FNL-4-12-111.pdf
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/09/22/2694602/finds-subsidiaries-another-coal.html
http://media.bellinghamherald.com/static/images/downloads/JaredPaben/SKMBT_C36012062815290.pdf (critical lawsuit)
http://www.shipleygroup.com/news/articles/0505.pdf legal background is support of EIS statements
http://www.powerpastcoal.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/CoalExportCumulativeImpactsFactSheet.pdf
http://www.powerpastcoal.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Aquatics-flier-If-you-care-about-Puget-Sound1.pdf
Updating coal train issues in four state area (WA, ID, MT and OR):
Prepare for attending EIS hearings in the following locations, and be sure to weigh in on each WA state community where you have concerns! See these excellent guidelines, and use for EIS statement development in all communities affected by coal trains.
Port of Morrow background:
http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/09/20/army-corps-fast-tracks-port-morrow-coal-export-terminal
PSE Colstrip mine and campaign against:
Bellevue, WA, August 1, 2012- Today, members of the growing Coal-Free PSE coalition converged on Puget Sound Energy's corporate headquarters to deliver a strong message to its CEO, Kimberly Harris, to move beyond coal. The coalition delivered 8,000 petitions collected from local Puget Sound Energy customers, and rolled out their new advertisement campaign, which is set to run on buses throughout East King County. The message delivered painted a very clear picture of what's at stake, showing that PSE is at a crossroads, and called for Washington's largest utility to kick its coal habit and invest in clean, renewable sources of energy for Washington.
"It's time to invest in Washington clean energy jobs now. We should not waste another cent propping up a dirty coal plant in Montana that is literally pumping poisons like arsenic and mercury into our air, and is the eighth-worst greenhouse gas offender in the country,” said Christina Corvin, a fellow at FUSE Washington, a statewide progressive advocacy group. “Rosebud County, where PSE’s coal plant is located, has the third-highest asthma rate in Montana," Corvin added, "The continued burning of coal is holding us back from the transitioning to renewable and sustainable energy here in Washington."
Today's petition delivery comes in the wake of a federal lawsuit filed last week against Puget Sound Energy and fellow owners of the Colstrip Generating Facility, located in Montana. Colstrip is considered by the Environmental Protection Agency as the dirtiest coal-fired power plant in the West, and unbeknownst to some local residents, the source of over 30% of the energy provided to Washington homes in the PSE territory. Puget Sound Energy is the largest owner of the plant, and is being sued for violation of the Clean Air Act, a law that provides safeguards to protect the health and environment of communities from big polluters like the coal-burning facility located in Colstrip, Montana.
Puget Sound Energy's practice of burning coal is getting the attention of a broad spectrum of residents, including Ethan Hytopoulos, a fifth grader from Bainbridge Island. He says that when it comes to the most important threat facing his generation, climate change, he trusts science.
"I won’t be 11 for another 12 days, but people my age have learned enough about science to know that burning coal is a huge threat to our planet, our health, and our future," said Hytopoulos. "Coal may be cheap for PSE because they don’t pay for all the problems it creates, but kids my age will have to. Water and food shortages, droughts and storms, and record breaking heat are just some of the things we're already dealing with, and science says it's only going to get worse, unless we stop burning greenhouse gas causing fuels like coal." Hytopoulos added, "I’m here to ask the management of PSE to do the right thing – go home tonight and tell your kids and grandkids that you’ve decided to put their future ahead of short-term profits."
Kathe Low, a Sammamish resident and concerned local mother, feels that the risks associated with coal are endless, and they're not going away. With the potential to create real, good paying jobs in the clean energy sector for local residents, she believes that now is the time to embrace the opportunity for Washington to harness efficient and sustainable energy for generations to come.
"We know that PSE is committed to clean energy and has made serious investments, so why stop the progress now? With the growing costs associated with the coal plant, there is no time to waste for PSE to make a real plan to end its unhealthy reliance on coal. This coal addiction is not a legacy we can afford to leave to our children," said Low.
“PSE promotes a green image, but burning toxic coal at one of the biggest polluting facilities in the country is simply contradictory to that promise,” said Josh Nelson, Campaign Manager from CREDO Action. “Washingtonians don't need a watered down promise of a clean energy future, they need companies like PSE, who can make this vision a reality, to actually deliver the clean energy future." Nelson added, "PSE should come up with a plan to transition away from their filthy Colstrip coal plant immediately.”
“Washingtonians know that dirty coal is not who we are, and it’s certainly not where we want to go” said Seth Ballhorn, organizer with the Sierra Club. “We expect PSE to adequately account for the pollution liabilities and maintenance costs of their aging coal plant and evaluate whether sinking millions of ratepayer dollars into an outdated and increasingly expensive fossil fuel is a responsible decision.” Ballhorn added, “We are here to help PSE kick the coal habit. From PSE and its customers, to clean energy entrepreneurs, community leaders, and environmentalists—all of us have a role to play.”Today's delivery and ad roll out comes as Puget Sound Energy is in the midst of their Integrated Resource Planning Process, a state mandated public planning procedure. PSE was asked by state regulators to conduct a full analysis of all of the future costs and liabilities of its Colstrip Plant. Sierra Club and other stakeholders are fully engaged in this process, and are encouraging them to assess the many opportunities and benefits of investing in clean energy infrastructure here in Washington State.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
CoalFreePSE.org
Backbone Campaign passes along these resources:
Why taxes on carbon pollution are essential,
what’s happening now, and how you can help
what’s happening now, and how you can help
Extreme weather events bring the message home: Earth’s climate is changing in costly and painful ways. And yet we’ve barely started transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy and efficiency. Why not? Because price signals are too weak. The prices of fossil fuels don’t come close to reflecting their true costs. A permanent and increasing U.S. carbon tax will reduce the emissions that are driving global warming and generate revenue to help close our looming budget gaps.
- A carbon tax is a direct tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas).
- A carbon tax is the most economically efficient means to convey crucial price signals that spur carbon-reducing investment. Our spreadsheet shows how fast emissions will fall.
- Carbon taxes should be phased in so businesses and households have time to adapt.
- A carbon tax can be structured to soften the impacts of added costs by distributing tax revenues to households (“dividends”) or reducing other taxes (“tax-shifting”).
- Support for a carbon tax is growing steadily among public officials; economists; scientists; policy experts; business, religious, and environmental leaders; and ordinary citizens.
- Proposals for cap-and-trade with offsets cannot deliver the needed emissions reductions. See the courageous EPA lawyers’ superb video, “The Huge Mistake.”
We invite you to learn more about carbon taxing and to share your thoughts. Click here to sign a petition and write your Congressmember saying you agree that setting a direct price on carbon pollution is essential to address the climate crisis.
LATEST FROM THE BLOG:
Rep. McDermott (D-Wa) Introduces Bold “Managed Price” Carbon Tax Bill
08/2/2012 by James Handley Comments (5)
As brutal drought and punishing heat waves remind voters how deeply climate affects our lives, Washington State Democrat Jim McDermott today stepped up to the climate plate. Rep. McDermott, a 12-term House member who sits on the powerful tax-writing Ways & Means Committee, introduced the “Managed Carbon Price Act of 2012.” His carbon tax bill would substantially reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by predictably raising their costs relative to energy efficiency, renewables and innovation.
- Rep. McDermott has represented Washington’s 7th CD (Seattle) since 1989.
The Carbon Tax Center estimates that by imposing a steadily rising “upstream” tax on polluters emitting the six principal greenhouse gases driving global warming, McDermott’s bill would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 30% within a decade. His elegant bill, just 21 pages of legislative text, would start modestly with a price of $12.50 per ton of CO2, but would then ramp up the cost of carbon pollution to $125 per ton of CO2 over a decade. (The actual price would fall within a tight, predictable price range. Non-CO2 greenhouse gases would be taxed at their CO2-equivalent rates.) CTC estimates that within a decade, McDermott’s price path would reduce greenhouse gas emissions almost twice as much as the most optimistic projections for prospective EPA regulations or the targets in the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House in 2009 but dropped in the Senate the following year.
Consistent with World Trade Organization rules, McDermott’s bill would exempt U.S. exports of energy-intensive goods while imposing an equivalent pollution tax on imports. The bill would thus protect U.S. domestic energy-intensive trade-exposed industries from unfair competition while offering an irresistible (and growing) “carrot” for our trading partners to enact their own carbon taxes in order to capture a rising stream of carbon tax revenue that would otherwise flow to the U.S. Treasury.
The McDermott bill also obviates the need for emissions trading by requiring polluters to purchase permits as needed. It returns 75% of revenue directly to households through a monthly “dividend” for each adult (with a half share for each dependent). This provision eliminates regressive income effects on low- and middle-income households while preserving a clear price signal across the entire economy so that everyone is rewarded for efficiency, innovation and investment in renewable energy. The remaining 25% of the bill’s revenue would be dedicated to deficit reduction, a feature that is sure to be salient as Congress confronts the looming “fiscal cliff” next January.
CTC estimates that the revenue stream available for deficit reduction in the tenth year after enactment would be roughly $100 billion, even accounting for the 30% reduction in emissions.
Transpartisan Politics on the Plains
Madeline Ostrander January 31, 2012
February 20, 2012 edition of The Nation
Lincoln, Nebraska
Long before the Occupy movement swept the country—more than two years ago—a revolt began in one of the reddest states in America. Farmers and ranchers in Nebraska, many of them longtime conservatives, got angry about corporate influence on a single issue that has since captivated the entire state and upset national politics: the KeystoneXL pipeline.
On January 18 the Obama administration announced it will reject the project, which would have carried tar-sands petroleum from Alberta across Nebraska and five other states to the Gulf of Mexico, where it would have been refined and likely shipped overseas. The decision came after months of political ping-pong. In November the State Department announced that the administration would delay the decision until after the 2012 election; in December Congressional Republicans attached a mandate to the payroll tax-cut extension that forced Obama to make his pipeline decision by February. Now Republicans will likely push
legislation written by Nebraska Representative Lee Terry that would strip Obama’s authority on Keystone XL and place the pipeline under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Still, the president’s rejection is a major victory for the environmental movement, which staged a series of protests against the pipeline in the fall. And in Nebraska, public sentiment stirred by the pipeline has the potential to remake state politics.
Nebraska’s pipeline uprising has heightened the level of conversation about clean government and the role of corporate money to a near fever pitch, becoming an issue large enough to motivate Republicans at the grassroots to make friends with liberals and “tree huggers.” Here in Nebraska, the Keystone XL pipeline fight has opened a new sense of possibility: that a few citizens with little money or experience in activism could wield collective political influence.
It takes a lot to shake polite Midwesterners out of politics as usual. Many citizens of rural Nebraska are birthright Republicans—reticent people whose conservatism is a component of their identity. Many feel their concerns are left out of national politics and media. (When Obama mentioned Nebraska in a statement on Keystone XL, rancher Susan Luebbe said she was “pretty surprised that he actually knows we have a state out here.”)
The pipeline didn’t make regular headlines in Nebraska until 2010. In 2008 and 2009 the story that Canadian pipeline developer TransCanada was sniffing around Nebraska ranches and farms, pressuring people to sign easements to run the pipeline through their pastures and cropland, spread largely by word of mouth.
It wasn’t until the spring of 2010, when the State Department held public hearings in the towns of Atkinson and York, that the opposition to the pipeline found its voice. Ben Gotschall, a fourth-generation rancher then in his late 20s, attended the York hearing, where he met
Jane Kleeb, wife of a former Democratic candidate for the US Senate and founder of the progressive advocacy group Bold Nebraska.
Gotschall and Kleeb were concerned that Keystone XL would cross the Sandhills, a 12 million-acre landscape of fragile, erodible soil and rolling sand dunes. A patch of trampled grass there can weather into a dune blowout and destroy a hay meadow. The water table is shallow—in some places, you can strike groundwater by digging elbow-deep into the soil. And it’s not just any groundwater; it’s the massive Ogallala aquifer, a drinking water and irrigation source for eight states.
To Gotschall, Kleeb and many other Nebraskans, it didn’t make sense to dig up miles
of the Sandhills and send a pipe of high-pressure tar-sands bitumen—full of benzene, arsenic and other toxins—through the source of the region’s irrigation and drinking wells, many of which are untreated. They feared that an oil spill would ruin generations-old
ranching communities. Together, Gotschall and Kleeb posted an ad in Prairie Fire, a regional monthly newspaper, in which Gotschall described the risks of the pipeline.
At the time, Gotschall was a part-time poetry and literature professor in Lincoln and a cattle breeder at his family’s ranch in Holt County.
About eight months ago, Bold Nebraska hired him to work as a campaigner against the pipeline and continue building a network of opponents, including other ranchers. Meanwhile, Bold Nebraska formed a coalition that grew to include groups like the Sierra Club’s Nebraska chapter, the Nebraska Wildlife Federation, the League of Women Voters and the Nebraska Farmers Union, an organization that has long served as a bridge between conservation groups and the farmers and ranchers it represents.
Despite its progressive roots, this coalition became the primary platform for anyone from any political background opposed to Keystone XL, including Cindy Myers, a nurse from Holt County in the Nebraska Sandhills. When Myers, then a registered Republican, heard about
Keystone XL, she was incredulous. “I thought, This just can’t be, and people don’t understand our groundwater here,” she says. Myers speaks haltingly and is, by her own admission, a quiet person who was not involved in activism until Keystone XL. In 2009 she began writing letters to government agencies and her representatives. In May 2010 she attended a State Department public hearing in Atkinson. “I had no clue what a hearing was and that you give testimony,” she says. The common sentiment at the meeting was that the pipeline was a “done deal.” “And I kept sitting there fuming, thinking, Well, what about
our water? I didn’t hear anybody concerned about water,” says Myers.
She stifles a laugh when she explains that, soon after the hearing, she went to a pipeline protest led by Bold Nebraska. Last spring she traveled to Washington, DC, with a coalition from Bold Nebraska to meet with members of Congress and State Department officials. In the fall, she organized two jam-packed public meetings on the pipeline in the 600-person town of Stuart. Myers heard resistance from some locals when she brought information from Bold Nebraska to the meetings. But she staunchly defended the group and won over some of her conservative neighbors.
Myers is one of many Nebraskans swept into the political fray by Keystone XL. A potent combination of issues made it easier for pipeline opponents to find unity. First, the pipeline represented a clear threat to Nebraskan livelihoods: irrigation is the life-support system of the state’s agriculture. Second, Nebraskans found a common enemy in a Canadian oil company whose tactics have ranged from hostile (intimidating landowners with threats of eminent domain even though it lacked authority to enforce them) to bizarre (airing pro-pipeline ads
at Husker football games, which were booed by thousands of fans, causing the university to cancel the company’s ad contract). Randy Thompson, a rancher who has refused to give TransCanada access to his land, bristled when a company representative called him on the day of his mother’s funeral, then sent flowers to the memorial service.
“These [TransCanada] people are something else,” he says. “I went through the roof.”
Thompson, another first-time activist, became one of the most respected and visible opponents of Keystone XL. His face appeared on anti-pipeline posters with the phrase, “I stand with Randy”; the New York Times called him a Nebraska “folk hero.” His activism caused him to question his views. He admits that he thought climate change was “a bunch of BS” until Keystone XL turned him into a voracious scholar of all things related to pipelines, oil and tar sands, and changed his mind. Now he says he probably “won’t be a Republican much longer.”
* * *
The issue has continued to blur conventional political lines. Several labor unions supported the pipeline, citing the jobs they hoped it would bring to the region. Unions and the conservative Americans for Prosperity bused in Keystone XL supporters to testify at State Department hearings in Atkinson in September. But TransCanada’s heavy-handed lobbying strategies bolstered opposition across the political spectrum. TransCanada made plain to Nebraskans just how far-reaching corporate influence can be. Bold Nebraska publicized evidence that the State Department was relying on a project management consultant, Cardno Entrix, of which TransCanada was also a client before the story made national headlines. TransCanada flooded the local radio and television stations with pro-pipeline ads and used threats as well as pleas to win support. Nebraskans watched as their state representatives took closed-door meetings with TransCanada officials and Canadian policy-makers while at times excluding citizen groups from key discussions. Nebraska’s governor and attorney general accepted campaign contributions from TransCanada (then returned them, fearing legal consequences).
In December 2010 a TransCanada spokesperson told a Nebraska Farmers Union gathering that the company would follow any regulations the state passed. But in late October 2011 TransCanada issued a nineteen-page legal statement threatening to sue Nebraska for billions of dollars in damages under the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution should the state pass laws that interfere with Keystone XL.
Citizens responded by flooding newspapers with letters to the editor, and opponents took on a watchdog role, publicizing company memos and documents that suggested political deals and doublespeak. The issue stirred strong public opinion: in a September poll, 64 percent of
Nebraska voters supported more state regulations for pipelines, and 47 percent opposed Keystone XL altogether. Nearly three-quarters of Nebraskans would like to prohibit any foreign company, TransCanada being just one of them, from taking property by eminent domain.
Obama’s announcement of the pipeline delay in November was a relief to many Nebraskans and boosted their esteem for the president, even among conservatives. The delay bought the state time to institute its own regulations and oversight of pipelines; public outcry had persuaded the governor to hold a special legislative session to consider bills guiding pipeline siting. Just before Thanksgiving, the legislature passed two pipeline bills. One designated a state agency to oversee the permitting and siting of pipelines, though it applied only to future pipeline proposals, not to Keystone XL. The second authorized Nebraska to do its own environmental impact assessment of Keystone, with the state’s money (an estimated $2 million) rather than funding from TransCanada.
Many citizens watched the legislative session closely to see whether state officials were defending their interests. When Cindy Myers testified before the legislature’s Natural Resources Committee, senators grilled her and other citizens who testified on their credentials and backgrounds. After the hearing, Myers sat in her car and sobbed. That evening, her e-mail inbox, Facebook page and voicemail were full of sympathetic messages from people who had watched the hearings—including Republican friends from Holt County and a chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. Bold Nebraska launched an online campaign asking lawmakers on the Natural Resources Committee to apologize to Myers and other citizens who gave testimony.
After the session adjourned, the group celebrated the bills that passed as a win against Big Oil, though they acknowledged that the regulations could have been stronger and that TransCanada wielded too much influence during the process. “This issue is now not just an
environmental issue or a landowner or a natural resource issue,” says John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “It is now a clean government issue.” Hansen and many others say they can’t remember another issue that aroused such strong feelings, and such deep scrutiny, from Nebraskans.
* * *
It’s too early to predict how the aftermath of the pipeline debate—or Obama’s final announcement on Keystone XL, which mentioned opposition in Nebraska as a key motivation for rejecting the project—will reshape Nebraska’s political map. But the issue has established an ad hoc statewide network of environmentalists, liberals, conservatives,
urbanites and country folks. Leaders emerged from the grassroots and discovered surprising common ground with people with profoundly different politics. The issue has pushed some of the pipeline’s most vocal opponents beyond not-in-my-backyard indignation to a broader
view of the system. Myers’s views had begun to shift during the 2008 presidential campaign: she cast her ballot for Obama. The pipeline has nudged her much further. “When I started speaking out, I was only thinking about Holt County,” she says. “But the more I researched and read and learned… I’m also concerned internationally and even globally with our climate and the effects on people in Michigan with the Kalamazoo River [spill]…plus the people living in the tar sands up in Canada.”
Ken Winston, lobbyist for the Nebraska chapter of the Sierra Club, believes that Keystone XL has stirred up a significant number of Nebraskans and opened the door to discussing environmental issues more earnestly across the state. “One of the things that concerned the
corporate interests is that there are people who suddenly realized that they have the ability to impact the political process,” he says.
Rancher Susan Luebbe takes a dim view of politicians and has found her pipeline activism to be exhausting. But she’s made many new friends and gotten calls of support from out of state. In October she traveled to Washington with Bold Nebraska for a demonstration. She was surprised to find herself standing beside protesters from Occupy DC.
“The stories [of the Occupy movement] make a whole lot of sense about how the corporate world has taken over, and the little people don’t matter anymore,” she says. “And somewhere it’s got to even out, so that all citizens get an equal chance of what the United States can
offer.”
Keystone XL may influence Nebraska politics for months or even years. Some pipeline opponents are deeply dissatisfied with the outcome of the special legislative session. Thompson is disgusted. “They exempted TransCanada from a lot of the regulations, and I just don’t feel like they should have,” he says.
Myers is also disappointed. She feels that the regulations passed by the state accomplished little except to defuse public criticism. “TransCanada came out ahead in the whole special session,” she says. “It makes it more difficult to fight against the pipeline.” She alsothinks that Bold Nebraska and the Sierra Club should have taken a harder line against the amendments that exempted Keystone XL. She wonders if she can still support these groups, and says she’s “wiped out.” But she continued to write letters to the State Department about the pipeline and to speak on the phone with citizen groups and with a candidate for State Senate. “I would stand up against anything that I think would be harmful for people,” she says. Myers recently registered as a Democrat.
Whether the improbable anti-pipeline alliance forged over the past year can build momentum on other issues will depend on its ability to remain relevant to people like Myers, who still feel their communities are isolated from and overlooked by the political process. Bold
Nebraska continues to fight for bills that would restrict the influence of corporate lobbyists and stays active in pipeline politics. Jane Kleeb says the group plans to campaign in the next election against legislators who ignored citizen opinion during the Keystone process. Their challenge will be to continue to speak to both left and right with populist integrity and to focus on the core principle that brought the alliance together—defending Nebraska’s
communities against the oversized influence of the fossil-fuel industry.
It’s a struggle that may play out elsewhere in the country as Occupy continues to draw attention to the role of money in politics. Concern about corporate influence is no longer only the left’s issue. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they want less corporate involvement in
government. In the next year or so, Nebraska may be an interesting test case to see whether transpartisan politics—united by opposition to corporate power—can survive.
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/23/145650779/-op-ed-canada-must-change-xl-pipeline-debate
The Truth About Keystone XL: Few Jobs, No Energy Security
Those in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline project, which the State Department rejected on Wednesday, have made two grand claims: (1) The pipeline will create jobs. (2) It will lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, especially from unsavory regimes like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Advertisements by ExxonMobil, for instance, push “energy security and economic growth.” Energy Secretary Steven Chu has also suggested that petroleum from oil sands would help in that regard. “It’s certainly true that having Canada as a supplier for our oil is much more comforting than to have other countries supply our oil,” he said in an interview with EnergyNow.com.
Increasingly, however, skeptics came to question these assertions. In a September 2011 report, Pipe Dreams? Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost by the Construction of Keystone XL, the Cornell University Global Labor Institute wrote, “It is our assessment—based on the publicly available data—that the construction of [Keystone XL] will create far fewer jobs in the U.S. than its proponents have claimed and may actually destroy more jobs than it generates.” Job estimates, the report says, are based on flawed or inflated numbers supplied by the oil industry. The Cornell report also says that Keystone XL would “almost certainly be constructed by temporary labor working with steel made in Canada and India.”
The difference in jobs forecasts is staggering. An article at FoxNews.com recalls Keystone’s initial estimate, from 2008, of “‘a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel’ in temporary jobs building the pipeline.” By 2011, TransCanada’s estimate had expanded to 20,000 jobs: 13,000 in construction and 7,000 in manufacturing. Or had it? The “20,000 jobs” figure cited is highly misleading. TransCanada was measuring not jobs as we know them but “person-years” of employment—a person-year is defined as an amount of work that would employ one person for one year. A further report commissioned by TransCanada said that Keystone XL would create 118,000 person-years of work factoring in “spin-off” employment—employment that crops up around the building of the pipeline, say, restaurants and services. This figure again was wrongly simplified as 118,000 jobs or spin-off jobs, and was widely used in official responses to Tuesday’s announcement. For some, though, 118,000 jobs wasn’t enough—an expanded estimate of 250,000 jobs (is that jobs, or person-years? Does it matter at this point?) was publicized, and repeated.
(These are just the broad strokes on the number-fudging—for more detail, read the breakdowns at the Washington Post and Huffington Post.)
When you compare that number to the State Department’s estimate of 5,000 to 6,000 two-year jobs (which isn’t in disagreement with TransCanada’s earlier estimates), it’s hard to imagine that the numbers could keep growing without any basis in fact. And yet they do: A post at the industry-sponsored Energy Tomorrow blog touts “20,000 [jobs] in the pipeline’s construction phase and up to a half-million more over time.” (Emphasis added.)
As for U.S. energy security, The New York Times is similarly dubious about methodology: “What pipeline advocates…fail to mention is that much of the tar sands oil that would be refined on the Gulf Coast is destined for export,” said an October 2 editorial. “Six companies have already contracted for three quarters of the oil. Five are foreign, and the business model of the one American company—Valero—is geared toward export.”
And the export market, as we’ve reported before, is the growing market. Indeed, though conventional wisdom has long held that U.S. demand for imported oil will always rise, figures indicate it has been declining for the past two years—and will continue to do so. There is currently a glut of oil at the massive tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma (a terminus of the existing Keystone pipeline) and the refined products that would be made from that oil—gasoline, diesel and jet fuel—fetch better prices overseas.
So while there may be much money in oil sands, those profits would be measured more in Canadian dollars and Euros than U.S. greenbacks.
Given the United States’ problems with oil, it is tempting to see Canada as a friendly neighbor and Canadian oil as an ethical solution. But that just isn’t the case. Oil from the Alberta Tar Sands is a valuable substance that, understandably, oil companies would like to refine and sell to the highest bidder. It’s easy to see how the Keystone XL pipeline would be in Canada’s national interest, or in the interest of the six companies that wish to refine tar sands crude in the Gulf (in tax-free trade zones, no less). But peer through the smokescreens of jobs and energy security, and it’s hard to see how Keystone XL, in enabling Canada to sell its oil to the rest of the world, is in the national interest of the United States.
Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/20/the-truth-about-keystone-xl-few-jobs-no-energy-security-60041
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/20/the-truth-about-keystone-xl-few-jobs-no-energy-security-60041#ixzz1kS3dPr8H
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Coal Terminal Issues
It’s time for Governor Gregoire to take a stand against dirty coal that will undercut Washington’s commitment to reducing global warming pollution.
Coal companies are targeting Washington State as the gateway for coal export terminals that would send staggering quantities of U.S. coal to China. The first terminal, proposed by Australia-based Ambre Energy, would annually export 5 million tons of Powder River Basin coal from a Longview port.
THE FUTURE OF COAL IN WASHINGTON?
Coal giants Peabody, Arch Coal, and other players also have plans to transport massive volumes of coal from Wyoming, through the Columbia River Gorge, to SW Washington, where the coal will be shipped to China. Peabody’s stock reports said they plan to export 20 to 30 million tons of U.S. coal per year to Asia. This has the carbon equivalent to ten Trans-Alta coal-fired power plants. Peabody Coal stated that "Coal's best days are ahead" while Washington fights for clean energy.
COAL EXPORT IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY
Coal export requires a small workforce and wastes hundreds of acres of waterfront property to store raw coal. Currently, 50 peo- ple work at the targeted port in Longview and Ambre proposes to add just 20 more. This 460-acre site has tremendous potential for thousands of jobs in light industrial and smart-tech growth, in- stead of being mired in a single-commodity dirty export trade. Far from being a job creator, the volatile export market for coal leaves the long term viability of these terminals an open question.
COAL EXPORT THREATENS WASHINGTON’S CLEAN ENERGY GAINS
While Washington invests in clean tech jobs for wind, wave, and solar energy, the coal export terminals would fly in the face of the state’s commitment to reduce global warming pollution. The coal export proposals come on the heels of Washington’s popular 2007 legislation restricting coal plant development, Governor Gregoire’s Executive Order on climate change, and both
Washington’s and Oregon’s efforts to end their dependence on coal-fired power.
The idea of Washington exporting coal is creating alarm across the state. The Washington Environmental Council, Sierra Club, Climate Solutions, Columbia Riverkeeper, and partners have launched a state-wide campaign to support our state’s investment in a clean-tech economy and stop coal speculators’ plans to reverse years of progress.
Site of the proposed Ambre Energy coal export Facility on the Columbia River in Longview, WA.
Governor Gregoire tours a wind farm.
“Washington is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of Climate Change ... the impacts will negatively affect nearly every part of Washington’s economy and environment.”
~ Governor Gregoire’s Executive Order
Fore Information visit www.columbiariverkeeper.orgDon’t let Washington become the gateway for coal to china
COAL TRANSPORT WILL POLLUTE WASHINGTON’S AIR, WATER, AND COMMUNITIES. For the farmers, landowners, and communities along the rail lines, coal dust is more than a nuisance—it’s a public health issue. According to Bur- lington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad studies, 500 to 2,000 pounds of coal can be lost in the form of dust from each rail car. Each 100-car train may spill 20,000 pounds of coal dust into our rivers and towns.
COAL TRANSPORT WILL CLOG UP RAIL TRAFFIC.
Coal export will significantly increase train traffic in Washington. Ambre’s own transportation analyses reveal that moving this volume of coal to Longview will require a train well over a mile in length — 125 fully loaded
cars — every ten hours year round, as well as an additional 84 truck trips from the site per day. BNSF already recognizes coal dust as a major problem for the rail lines.
CHEAP EXPORT WILL LEAD TO MORE COAL PLANTS. Washington should not facilitate cheap coal exports while saying coal is unsafe in the Pacific Northwest.
COAL BURNING IN ASIA POLLUTES WASHINGTON’S RIVERS & AIR
A major source of mercury in Washington is air deposition from ChinaMercury is highly toxic, and coal-fired power plants in China are not subject to modern pollution controls.
THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES CAN REJECT COAL EXPORT ON STATE-OWNED AQUATIC LAND. Ambre will ask DNR to approve a transfer of a DNR lease to operate the terminal. DNR’s lease gives the state broad discretion to deny the transfer based on the “nature of the proposed transferee’s business.”
ECOLOGY CAN ASSUME LEAD STATUS OF THE SHORELINE PERMIT AND REQUIRE THAT AMBRE
PREPARE AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT. Ambre failed to prepare an EIS for its shoreline permit application, arguing that exporting coal would have no significant environmental impact. Ecology could assume lead agency status and require that Ambre prepare a comprehensive EIS evaluating the impacts of coal export.
THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE CAN SUSPEND ACTIVE RECRUITMENT AND SUPPORT FOR COAL
EXPORT FACILITIES IN WASHINGTON. Recruiting coal export directly undermines Washington’s commitment to re- duce global warming pollution and support job stability. Commerce should immediately halt efforts to recruit coal export and, instead, promote a clean energy economy.
Northwest Coal Exports
Some common questions about economics, health, and pollution.
Eric de Place September 2011
“Coal is a dead man walkin’.”
That’s what Kevin Parker, the global head of asset management for Deutsche Bank, told the Washington Post. Regarding coal-fired power plants, he said, “Banks won’t finance them. Insurance companies won’t insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make [coal] clean don’t work.”1
Customer demand for coal has been declining in the United States, in part because of competition from cleaner energy sources. With dimming prospects in North America, coal companies are looking to Asian markets where demand appears to be increasing.2 These companies hope to take coal mined on public land in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, carry it by rail to West Coast ports, and ship it to Asia, including China and India, where it would be burned to generate electricity.3 Before coal companies can export large volumes of coal to Asia, however, they would need new shipping terminals. Yet exporting coal from the Northwest states could open a Pandora’s box of pollution and economic risk for the region.
What is the status of coal exports in the Northwest?
Two coal export terminals are planned so far, both in Washington. They have the potential to dramatically increase the amount of coal shipped to Asia. Other ports are reportedly talking with coal companies.
Some coal already travels through terminals in British Columbia. Most of it is high grade metallurgical coal mined in Canada, rather than the thermal power plant fuel coal from the Powder River Basin. The biggest coal export facility is the Westshore Terminal at Roberts Bank, just north of the US border, which moves about 21 million metric tons of coal annually. Neptune Terminals in North Vancouver moves an additional 8 million metric tons, and Ridley Terminals in Prince Rupert exports roughly 9 million.4Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 2
The region’s coal export picture would change dramatically with the addition of two new export facilities currently planned for Washington:
‹‹Longview. Millennium Bulk Terminals, a subsidiary of the Australian coal mining company Ambre Energy, purchased a port site in Longview, Washington, along the Columbia River, in January 2011.5 Arch Coal, a major American coal mining company, also acquired a 38 percent
stake in the site.6 The companies hope to export between 20 and 80 million tons of coal a year from Longview.7
‹‹Cherry Point. In February 2011, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, announced plans to export 24 million tons of coal a year from a large new shipping terminal at Cherry Point, just north of Bellingham.8 The terminal is to be built and operated by SSA Marine. Once completed, it would be capable of handling 48 million tons of coal annually.9
In addition, several other ports in the Northwest appear to be considering coal exports. The Port of Morrow, in eastern Oregon, signed a one-year lease option to transfer coal from trains to barges, presumably to be shipped onward to an export facility on the lower Columbia, such as Longview.10
Also downriver is the Port of St. Helens, Oregon, where officials are reportedly talking with a coal export developer.11 Other ports that are known to be considering coal exports include Coos Bay, Oregon, and Grays Harbor, Washington, though rail access is problematic for both of those sites.12
How much coal would flow to Asia through Northwest ports?
Coal companies are planning to export from Longview and Bellingham at least 100 million—and possibly 130 million or more—tons of coal annually. Future export volumes are unknown, because coal companies and project developers have not always given the public and elected officials accurate information. When applying for its initial permit, Millennium led the community of Longview
to believe the terminal would handle about 5 million tons of coal a year.13 Internal documents subsequently came to light showing that the company planned to expand to 20, 60, or even 80 million tons a year, which would make it by far the largest marine coal terminal in North America.14
Near Bellingham, the terminal planned for Cherry Point could accommodate 54 million tons of bulk materials. Many community members believe that it would be relatively easy for Peabody to double its stated export target of 24 million tons. In fact, a little over a week after Peabody Energy announced plans to ship coal from Cherry Point, Fred Palmer, a senior vice president, told the Guardian newspaper that the terminal, “could reach up to 50 million tons per year.”15
Does the US already export coal to Asia?
In recent years, the US has exported only a few million tons of coal to Asia, and just a fraction of that to China.16 Even though the volume of Asia-bound coal increased during 2010 and early 2011, the two facilities proposed for Washington could easily multiply total American coal exports to China tenfold.17
Coal mining companies want to tap new markets as domestic utilities shift away from coal. Coal power in the US is facing economic competition from cleaner fuels, and older plants can’t meet modern
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 3
pollution standards without expensive upgrades. In January 2011, Chevron announced it would sell its coal mines by the end of the year because staying in the industry was no longer a good business strategy.18 Over the last two years, utilities have announced plans to close more than three dozen outdated coal plants, including Oregon’s only coal-fired electricity plant at Boardman.19 Washington’s lone coal plant will close by 2025.20
At the same time that North American prospects are dimming, however, coal has been commanding higher prices in Asia.21 Coal mining companies are looking to overseas markets that lack strong pollution and health standards. Yet even exports to Asia will not save the industry. A July 2011 research report from Deutsche Bank argues that Chinese coal imports for power plants will stabilize at roughly 100 million tons per year, rather than increasing as many analysts had been expecting.22
Do coal export facilities make good neighbors?
One of the primary objections to coal export terminals is the spread of coal dust. Exporters store coal in large piles at terminals, and these piles can feed prolific quantities of dust to the wind, especially when terminal machinery are loading and unloading the fuel. As one study put it, “coal terminals by their nature are active sources of fugitive dust.”23 Unsurprisingly, coal dust problems plague several coal export facilities in North America.
In Seward, Alaska, for example, residents have sued the local terminal operators because coal dust blowing off the terminal’s stockpiles regularly coats nearby fishing boats and neighborhoods with debris. The residents’ suit states that the conveyor system used to load ships drops coal dust into Seward’s scenic harbor, violating the Clean Water Act.24 In 2010, the state of Alaska fined the railroad company that delivers coal to the terminal $220,000 for failing to adequately control dust.25
British Columbia’s Westshore coal terminal, which ships about 21 million metric tons per year, sits on a peninsula jutting into the Strait of Georgia. Some residents of Point Roberts, a beachfront community three miles away, complain that coal dust blackens their homes, patio furniture, and boats moored in the local marina.26 A comprehensive 2001 study of coal dust emissions in Canada found that the Westshore Terminal emits roughly 715 metric tons of coal dust a year.27 A separate study recently conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that the concentrations of coal dust in the vicinity of the terminal had doubled during the period from 1977 to 1999.28
The Lamberts Point Coal Terminal in Norfolk, Virginia, which ships 28 million tons of coal annually, is legally permitted to release up to 50 tons of coal dust into the air each year. Black grit from the coal piles commonly coats cars, windowsills, and plants in neighboring communities. Neighbors worry that the dust is responsible for the vicinity’s elevated asthma rates.29
The scale of likely dust emissions at the export facilities planned for the Northwest is unclear. Project developers at Longview and Bellingham are promising to install mitigation devices that they say will control dust, yet it’s highly unlikely that the coal dust can be contained entirely. Huge piles of coal will stand outdoors in wind and weather, and frequently be shoveled into new positions by giant bulldozers and other machinery.
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 4
Does rail transport release coal dust?
Coal dust escapes from the open-top rail cars used for transporting coal and can create safety and congestion problems for rail traffic. In 2005, for example, coal dust that had accumulated in ballast, the layer of crushed rock that supports rail tracks, caused two derailments. Coal dust deposits sometimes even cause spontaneous fires.
The Burlington Northern / Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) has studied the problem and found that as much as a ton of coal can escape from a single loaded coal car, while other reports show that as much as 3 percent of a coal car’s load, which is typically 100 tons or more, can blow away in transit.30 The US Department of Transportation classifies coal dust as a “pernicious ballast foulant” that can weaken and destabilize rail tracks.31 It is not clear how much coal dust might escape in the Pacific Northwest, but one watchdog group has verified that coal and coal dust does escape from open rail cars traveling along Puget Sound coastlines.32
To reduce or eliminate coal dust from escaping, shippers can fill cars less full or cover them with tarps or chemical sprays, but these measures run up the cost of moving coal, so coal shippers rarely employ them by choice.33 A March 2011 ruling from the US Surface Transportation Board, which oversees railway operations, allows BNSF to require coal shippers to cover their loads or otherwise control dust.34
How effective those measures will be is anyone’s guess: Powder River Basin coal is notoriously difficult to handle. One technical analysis finds that, “PRB coal is extremely friable and will break down into smaller particles virtually independent of how the coal is transported or handled.” According to the study’s authors, “PRB represents the extremes of handling problems.”35
The same analysis found that:
Spontaneous combustion of coal is a well-known phenomenon, especially with PRB coal. This high-moisture, highly volatile sub-bituminous coal will not only smolder and catch fire while in storage piles at power plants and coal terminals, but has been known to be delivered to a power plant with the rail car or barge partially on fire...36
Outside of confined environments, Powder River Basin coal does not spontaneously explode or burst into full flame, but under the wrong conditions it can self-ignite and burn slowly even while it is riding the rails—a troubling proposition for railroad workers and communities along the tracks.
Is coal dust harmful?
Coal dust is more than a nuisance. It degrades water quality and may pose a danger to residents’ health. Coal workers who are exposed to dust, for example, suffer elevated rates of bronchitis, emphysema, and black lung disease.37 In Liverpool, England, researchers found that, even after correcting for economic and environmental factors at home, children exposed to coal dust from the nearby docks were more likely to miss school because of respiratory problems, including wheezing and coughing.38
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 5
In Norfolk, Virginia, home of the Lamberts Point Coal Terminal, soil samples contain up to 20 percent coal by weight at a site less than 1 kilometer from the docks, 3 percent coal at a site 5 kilometers away, and 1 percent coal as far as 12 kilometers away. High coal levels in soil along railroad tracks suggest that trains are another pathway for contamination. Researchers in Norfolk also found arsenic levels were 5 times higher than background soil concentrations nearby, and hypothesize that the coal export terminal is at least partially responsible for the difference because coal often contains arsenic.39
A group of 160 doctors and other health professionals in Whatcom County, Washington, published a position statement documenting a number of health-related problems with coal exports. In addition to the risks of coal dust, the doctors raise concerns about the impacts of the trains themselves, which generate noise, create collision hazards, and delay emergency medical response by impeding rail crossings. Trains are also responsible for hazardous air pollution from diesel engines, a documented threat to health in Washington.40
The BNSF rail yards in Spokane—an important linkage point between the Powder River Basin and Washington’s Pacific ports—would see increased rail traffic that is almost certain to increase harmful
pollution there. A 2010 study by the Spokane Clean Air Agency identified lung cancer risks in Spokane that appear closely related to residents’ proximity to the BNSF railyard, where diesel engines generate prodigious quantities of small particulate pollution—the most health-threatening major air pollutant in the Northwest. Researchers ruled out numerous alternative explanations and concluded that “the BNSF railyard appears to be the only other air pollution source in the vicinity of Hillyard that can account for its differential lung cancer risk.”41
Is Powder River Basin coal better for the environment than China’s coal?
Powder River Basin coal is lower in ash and sulfur than some other kinds of coal, but it also produces less energy per pound than the coals that are more commonly burned in modern power plants.42 To produce the same amount of energy from Powder River Basin coal requires mining, shipping, and burning about 50 percent more.43 After accounting for those differences, coal from the Powder River Basin is somewhat cleaner than China’s domestic sources of coal, but it is still coal—an extremely polluting form of energy.
Coal is a highly impure form of fuel, and burning it releases numerous hazardous substances, including radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium. In fact, the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has estimated that coal plants have released hundreds of thousands of tons of uranium, and that radiation from coal plants is a greater threat to Americans than is radiation from nuclear plants.44
The true costs of coal are daunting. Researchers at the Harvard Medical School recently pegged the annual cost of coal—including harm to public health, mining damage, pollution, and subsidies—at $345 billion per year in the United States alone.45 A 2010 report from the National Research Council finds that the non-climate damages from burning coal are 20 times higher than the damages from natural gas, the next dirtiest and costliest fossil fuel in use.46 And a 2009 report from the National
Academy of Sciences determined that US coal burning results in $60 billion per year in health costs alone.47
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 6
Won’t China just burn someone else’s coal if we don’t supply it?
US coal exports would not supplant the burning of dirtier Chinese coal. Instead, North American exports would add to the volume burned in Asia. In a recent white paper, resource economist Thomas Power demonstrated this point:
This result—that international competition to serve particular import markets will lower the prices that the importing countries have to pay—should not be startling. One of the major benefits of international trade is that it allows countries access to lower cost sources of supply.48
In other words, Washington coal exports will not simply displace other coal in the market. Instead, American coal exports will adhere to fundamental economic principles: an increase in supply will bring
down market prices and thereby increase total consumption. The extent to which increasing supply will boost demand is debatable—just like the extent to which higher prices would dampen demand— but the direction of the change is clear.
In fact, some underlying dynamics may make US exports even more critical. As Power points out, lower prices may encourage China to build more coal-burning power plants than they otherwise would, an investment that would lock in elevated coal burning and pollution for decades to come.
Can Chinese coal burning harm the Northwest’s environment?
Sulfur compounds, soot, and other byproducts of Asian coal combustion are detectable on mountaintops in the western United States.49 Researchers have also linked ozone in the air above the United States to pollution from developing Asian countries that are burning fossil fuels.50 Ozone can exacerbate asthma and heart disease. Mercury, a neurotoxin that is particularly dangerous for children, is especially likely to travel across the Pacific Ocean. An Oregon researcher estimates that as much as 18 percent of the mercury in Oregon’s Willamette River comes from sources overseas, increasingly from China.51 Another study found that human-created pollution from Asia contributed to 14 percent of the mercury dropped on Mount Bachelor in central Oregon.52
What’s more, burning large amounts of coal accelerates global climate change. Burning 100 million tons of Powder River Basin coal releases roughly 180 million tons of heat-trapping carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s about twice as much global warming pollution as results from every activity in
Washington in a year, including every power plant, car, truck, factory, and farm in the state combined. The power plant in Centralia, now scheduled to phase out coal-burning, emits about 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.53 All the activity in the entire city of Seattle emits less than 7 million tons.54
Would coal exports help the Northwest’s economy?
Coal export terminals employ surprisingly few people. In Longview, estimates for the original version of the export project were that operations would employ 70 people to move about 5 million tons of coal.55 The site currently employs 50 people, however, and news reports indicate that the coal terminal would eliminate most of the activity related to those 50 jobs.56 The net employment gain could be as small as 20 jobs. Project sponsor Millennium Bulk Logistics might create more jobs if its ambitions are
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 7
actually to move 20 to 60 million tons of coal a year, as court documents suggest, rather than 5 million.
At Cherry Point, project developers say that a 24 million ton facility, which they plan to open in 2015, would employ 89 workers. In 2026, when the entire 54 million ton facility is completed, proponents believe that it would directly employ about 280 people.57
Each of the coal export facilities planned for Washington would occupy hundreds of acres of waterfront land with storage for raw coal, possibly forestalling other, more job-intensive uses for those lands. For example, at the Port of Tacoma, a marine construction company leasing just 3.5 acres of land and a new cold storage facility on 17 acres of land are each likely to generate 100 new jobs.58 A Port of Seattle economic impact study found that shipping 1,000 metric tons of grain—a bulk commodity like coal—generates just 0.09 jobs, compared with 0.57 jobs for containerized cargo and 4.2 jobs for “break bulk” cargo, such as big machines or goods shipped on pallets, which requires more handling.59 A study at the Port of Baltimore came to similar conclusions, finding that coal export supports just 0.11 jobs per 1,000 metric tons, as compared to 0.41 for other dry bulk commodities, 0.43 jobs for containerized cargo, and 1.71 jobs for autos.60
Recent redevelopments on port sites along the Lower Columbia River illustrate the weakness of coal exports as an economic strategy. The proposed coal export terminal at Longview would occupy 416 acres of heavy industrial waterfront property and produce 70 jobs—less than 0.2 jobs per acre. By contrast, in Troutdale, Oregon a recently cleaned-up port site attracted a FedEx Ground regional distribution center that employs over 750 people on 700 acres of heavy industrial property— supporting 1.1 jobs per acre.61 In Vancouver, Washington another redeveloped port site with 218 acres of heavy industrial waterfront is expected to employ up to 1,000 people to accommodate a surge in wind turbines and other cargo—generating 3.4 jobs per acre.62
Will Canada ship the coal if the US does not?
Although coal mined in the US accounted for no more than 6 percent of the total volume shipped through BC ports in 2009 and 10 percent in 2010, US coal mining companies appear to have looked at reaching new Asian markets through BC ports.63 In January 2011, for example, Arch Coal announced that it had reached an agreement with Ridley Terminals to export 2.5 million metric tons of coal annually from Prince Rupert. In June 2011, Cloud Peak Energy announced an agreement to export an unspecified volume of coal from Westshore over a 10-year period.64
Yet big increases in shipments of American coal from British Columbia seem unlikely. Canadian steelmaking coal is in high demand, and it brings significantly higher prices than the Powder River Basin coal. Moreover, to a large extent, BC’s coal ports are structured to handle primarily Canadian coal and other exports.
Finally, space is limited at BC terminals. Expansions planned for BC’s coal terminals do not come close to providing enough capacity for the volumes of coal called for by the recent proposals in Washington. Even if none of the planned new capacity were filled with high-value Canadian coal, and even if all three of BC’s coal ports were able to operate year-round at full capacity—two highly unlikely scenarios—the terminals would have less than 28 million metric tons of extra capacity, a small fraction
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 8
of the 100 million tons or more planned for Washington.
What’s the history of coal exports on the West Coast?
Two West Coast port cities have already gambled and lost on coal-export facilities. After investing millions of dollars in infrastructure and setting aside sizeable harbor acreage to coal export facilities, both Portland and Los Angeles watched their promised revenue from coal exports evaporate. The abandoned coal export facilities represented millions in stranded investments and clean-up expenses, not to mention years-long missed opportunities for more durable economic development choices.65
The early 1980s saw a rush of coal companies proposing export terminals in Washington and Oregon to satisfy a hungry Asian market. Longview, Kalama, Vancouver, and Astoria all entertained proposals, but the Port of Portland bought in,66 committing to a 25-year lease with Pacific Coal for 90 acres and 900 feet of prime riverfront for a coal export terminal.67
The Port and investors spent $25 million building a coal export terminal, but two years later, the project imploded after Asian markets proved unstable and unreliable.68 The Oregonian reported:
A five-month investigation showed Port and Pacific Coal officials heedlessly plunged ahead despite clear warnings that they might never move a solitary lump of coal.”69
Contractors didn’t get paid, borrowers defaulted, and lawsuits flourished. Analysts later determined that coal export failed because the Asian demand was based on promises rather than actual long-term contracts. International banks studying the issue found that the demand for coal had been “vastly overstated.”70
Soon after the Port of Portland collapse, nearly all other West Coast coal plans died. In the early 1990s, however, Los Angeles forged ahead with another coal export facility when coal giant Peabody led a consortium of investors that promised jobs, tax revenue, and environmental protection with a new coal export terminal at LAXT, the Port of Los Angeles.71 The plan was an enormously divisive project that alarmed neighbors and nearby workers.72
A 1993 Los Angeles Business Journal article prefigures today’s debates in the Northwest:
... although the terminal will create jobs and taxes throughout Southern California, the terminal will have a negligible impact on L.A. County because the product (coal) is sourced from other states and the automated terminal won’t generate many direct jobs.73
And:
[The City of Long Beach filed] a lawsuit July 14, alleging that the Port of L.A.’s environmental impact report doesn’t adequately address the negative environmental impact of coal dust that will be spewed from the massive uncovered storage pile of coal and petroleum coke.
Fears proved well-founded. The terminal experienced at least two fires after dangerous amounts of coal dust accumulated in the ship-loading machinery.74
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 9
The facility closed just six years after it opened, owing to unfavorable market conditions. When the facility shut down, the city of Los Angeles had to write off $19 million of capital investment, and forfeit $94 million in expected revenue.75 Ultimately, the city was sued for improperly managing the site—and for failing to consider alternative uses of the site—and local authorities shelled out $28 million to settle the suit.76
About the Author
Eric de Place leads Sightline’s work on climate and energy policy. He is an expert on regional carbon- reduction programs, and his commentary on federal carbon legislation has been widely influential.
Sightline Institute is a not-for-profit research and communications center—a think tank—based in Seattle. Sightline’s mission is to make the Northwest a global model of sustainability—strong communities, a green economy, and a healthy environment.
Endnotes
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Coal Terminal Issues
It’s time for Governor Gregoire to take a stand against dirty coal that will undercut Washington’s commitment to reducing global warming pollution.
Coal companies are targeting Washington State as the gateway for coal export terminals that would send staggering quantities of U.S. coal to China. The first terminal, proposed by Australia-based Ambre Energy, would annually export 5 million tons of Powder River Basin coal from a Longview port.
THE FUTURE OF COAL IN WASHINGTON?
Coal giants Peabody, Arch Coal, and other players also have plans to transport massive volumes of coal from Wyoming, through the Columbia River Gorge, to SW Washington, where the coal will be shipped to China. Peabody’s stock reports said they plan to export 20 to 30 million tons of U.S. coal per year to Asia. This has the carbon equivalent to ten Trans-Alta coal-fired power plants. Peabody Coal stated that "Coal's best days are ahead" while Washington fights for clean energy.
COAL EXPORT IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY
Coal export requires a small workforce and wastes hundreds of acres of waterfront property to store raw coal. Currently, 50 peo- ple work at the targeted port in Longview and Ambre proposes to add just 20 more. This 460-acre site has tremendous potential for thousands of jobs in light industrial and smart-tech growth, in- stead of being mired in a single-commodity dirty export trade. Far from being a job creator, the volatile export market for coal leaves the long term viability of these terminals an open question.
COAL EXPORT THREATENS WASHINGTON’S CLEAN ENERGY GAINS
While Washington invests in clean tech jobs for wind, wave, and solar energy, the coal export terminals would fly in the face of the state’s commitment to reduce global warming pollution. The coal export proposals come on the heels of Washington’s popular 2007 legislation restricting coal plant development, Governor Gregoire’s Executive Order on climate change, and both
Washington’s and Oregon’s efforts to end their dependence on coal-fired power.
The idea of Washington exporting coal is creating alarm across the state. The Washington Environmental Council, Sierra Club, Climate Solutions, Columbia Riverkeeper, and partners have launched a state-wide campaign to support our state’s investment in a clean-tech economy and stop coal speculators’ plans to reverse years of progress.
Site of the proposed Ambre Energy coal export Facility on the Columbia River in Longview, WA.
Governor Gregoire tours a wind farm.
“Washington is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of Climate Change ... the impacts will negatively affect nearly every part of Washington’s economy and environment.”
~ Governor Gregoire’s Executive Order
Fore Information visit www.columbiariverkeeper.orgDon’t let Washington become the gateway for coal to china
COAL TRANSPORT WILL POLLUTE WASHINGTON’S AIR, WATER, AND COMMUNITIES. For the farmers, landowners, and communities along the rail lines, coal dust is more than a nuisance—it’s a public health issue. According to Bur- lington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad studies, 500 to 2,000 pounds of coal can be lost in the form of dust from each rail car. Each 100-car train may spill 20,000 pounds of coal dust into our rivers and towns.
COAL TRANSPORT WILL CLOG UP RAIL TRAFFIC.
Coal export will significantly increase train traffic in Washington. Ambre’s own transportation analyses reveal that moving this volume of coal to Longview will require a train well over a mile in length — 125 fully loaded
cars — every ten hours year round, as well as an additional 84 truck trips from the site per day. BNSF already recognizes coal dust as a major problem for the rail lines.
CHEAP EXPORT WILL LEAD TO MORE COAL PLANTS. Washington should not facilitate cheap coal exports while saying coal is unsafe in the Pacific Northwest.
COAL BURNING IN ASIA POLLUTES WASHINGTON’S RIVERS & AIR
A major source of mercury in Washington is air deposition from ChinaMercury is highly toxic, and coal-fired power plants in China are not subject to modern pollution controls.
THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES CAN REJECT COAL EXPORT ON STATE-OWNED AQUATIC LAND. Ambre will ask DNR to approve a transfer of a DNR lease to operate the terminal. DNR’s lease gives the state broad discretion to deny the transfer based on the “nature of the proposed transferee’s business.”
ECOLOGY CAN ASSUME LEAD STATUS OF THE SHORELINE PERMIT AND REQUIRE THAT AMBRE
PREPARE AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT. Ambre failed to prepare an EIS for its shoreline permit application, arguing that exporting coal would have no significant environmental impact. Ecology could assume lead agency status and require that Ambre prepare a comprehensive EIS evaluating the impacts of coal export.
THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE CAN SUSPEND ACTIVE RECRUITMENT AND SUPPORT FOR COAL
EXPORT FACILITIES IN WASHINGTON. Recruiting coal export directly undermines Washington’s commitment to re- duce global warming pollution and support job stability. Commerce should immediately halt efforts to recruit coal export and, instead, promote a clean energy economy.
Northwest Coal Exports
Some common questions about economics, health, and pollution.
Eric de Place September 2011
“Coal is a dead man walkin’.”
That’s what Kevin Parker, the global head of asset management for Deutsche Bank, told the Washington Post. Regarding coal-fired power plants, he said, “Banks won’t finance them. Insurance companies won’t insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make [coal] clean don’t work.”1
Customer demand for coal has been declining in the United States, in part because of competition from cleaner energy sources. With dimming prospects in North America, coal companies are looking to Asian markets where demand appears to be increasing.2 These companies hope to take coal mined on public land in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, carry it by rail to West Coast ports, and ship it to Asia, including China and India, where it would be burned to generate electricity.3 Before coal companies can export large volumes of coal to Asia, however, they would need new shipping terminals. Yet exporting coal from the Northwest states could open a Pandora’s box of pollution and economic risk for the region.
What is the status of coal exports in the Northwest?
Two coal export terminals are planned so far, both in Washington. They have the potential to dramatically increase the amount of coal shipped to Asia. Other ports are reportedly talking with coal companies.
Some coal already travels through terminals in British Columbia. Most of it is high grade metallurgical coal mined in Canada, rather than the thermal power plant fuel coal from the Powder River Basin. The biggest coal export facility is the Westshore Terminal at Roberts Bank, just north of the US border, which moves about 21 million metric tons of coal annually. Neptune Terminals in North Vancouver moves an additional 8 million metric tons, and Ridley Terminals in Prince Rupert exports roughly 9 million.4Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 2
The region’s coal export picture would change dramatically with the addition of two new export facilities currently planned for Washington:
‹‹Longview. Millennium Bulk Terminals, a subsidiary of the Australian coal mining company Ambre Energy, purchased a port site in Longview, Washington, along the Columbia River, in January 2011.5 Arch Coal, a major American coal mining company, also acquired a 38 percent
stake in the site.6 The companies hope to export between 20 and 80 million tons of coal a year from Longview.7
‹‹Cherry Point. In February 2011, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, announced plans to export 24 million tons of coal a year from a large new shipping terminal at Cherry Point, just north of Bellingham.8 The terminal is to be built and operated by SSA Marine. Once completed, it would be capable of handling 48 million tons of coal annually.9
In addition, several other ports in the Northwest appear to be considering coal exports. The Port of Morrow, in eastern Oregon, signed a one-year lease option to transfer coal from trains to barges, presumably to be shipped onward to an export facility on the lower Columbia, such as Longview.10
Also downriver is the Port of St. Helens, Oregon, where officials are reportedly talking with a coal export developer.11 Other ports that are known to be considering coal exports include Coos Bay, Oregon, and Grays Harbor, Washington, though rail access is problematic for both of those sites.12
How much coal would flow to Asia through Northwest ports?
Coal companies are planning to export from Longview and Bellingham at least 100 million—and possibly 130 million or more—tons of coal annually. Future export volumes are unknown, because coal companies and project developers have not always given the public and elected officials accurate information. When applying for its initial permit, Millennium led the community of Longview
to believe the terminal would handle about 5 million tons of coal a year.13 Internal documents subsequently came to light showing that the company planned to expand to 20, 60, or even 80 million tons a year, which would make it by far the largest marine coal terminal in North America.14
Near Bellingham, the terminal planned for Cherry Point could accommodate 54 million tons of bulk materials. Many community members believe that it would be relatively easy for Peabody to double its stated export target of 24 million tons. In fact, a little over a week after Peabody Energy announced plans to ship coal from Cherry Point, Fred Palmer, a senior vice president, told the Guardian newspaper that the terminal, “could reach up to 50 million tons per year.”15
Does the US already export coal to Asia?
In recent years, the US has exported only a few million tons of coal to Asia, and just a fraction of that to China.16 Even though the volume of Asia-bound coal increased during 2010 and early 2011, the two facilities proposed for Washington could easily multiply total American coal exports to China tenfold.17
Coal mining companies want to tap new markets as domestic utilities shift away from coal. Coal power in the US is facing economic competition from cleaner fuels, and older plants can’t meet modern
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 3
pollution standards without expensive upgrades. In January 2011, Chevron announced it would sell its coal mines by the end of the year because staying in the industry was no longer a good business strategy.18 Over the last two years, utilities have announced plans to close more than three dozen outdated coal plants, including Oregon’s only coal-fired electricity plant at Boardman.19 Washington’s lone coal plant will close by 2025.20
At the same time that North American prospects are dimming, however, coal has been commanding higher prices in Asia.21 Coal mining companies are looking to overseas markets that lack strong pollution and health standards. Yet even exports to Asia will not save the industry. A July 2011 research report from Deutsche Bank argues that Chinese coal imports for power plants will stabilize at roughly 100 million tons per year, rather than increasing as many analysts had been expecting.22
Do coal export facilities make good neighbors?
One of the primary objections to coal export terminals is the spread of coal dust. Exporters store coal in large piles at terminals, and these piles can feed prolific quantities of dust to the wind, especially when terminal machinery are loading and unloading the fuel. As one study put it, “coal terminals by their nature are active sources of fugitive dust.”23 Unsurprisingly, coal dust problems plague several coal export facilities in North America.
In Seward, Alaska, for example, residents have sued the local terminal operators because coal dust blowing off the terminal’s stockpiles regularly coats nearby fishing boats and neighborhoods with debris. The residents’ suit states that the conveyor system used to load ships drops coal dust into Seward’s scenic harbor, violating the Clean Water Act.24 In 2010, the state of Alaska fined the railroad company that delivers coal to the terminal $220,000 for failing to adequately control dust.25
British Columbia’s Westshore coal terminal, which ships about 21 million metric tons per year, sits on a peninsula jutting into the Strait of Georgia. Some residents of Point Roberts, a beachfront community three miles away, complain that coal dust blackens their homes, patio furniture, and boats moored in the local marina.26 A comprehensive 2001 study of coal dust emissions in Canada found that the Westshore Terminal emits roughly 715 metric tons of coal dust a year.27 A separate study recently conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that the concentrations of coal dust in the vicinity of the terminal had doubled during the period from 1977 to 1999.28
The Lamberts Point Coal Terminal in Norfolk, Virginia, which ships 28 million tons of coal annually, is legally permitted to release up to 50 tons of coal dust into the air each year. Black grit from the coal piles commonly coats cars, windowsills, and plants in neighboring communities. Neighbors worry that the dust is responsible for the vicinity’s elevated asthma rates.29
The scale of likely dust emissions at the export facilities planned for the Northwest is unclear. Project developers at Longview and Bellingham are promising to install mitigation devices that they say will control dust, yet it’s highly unlikely that the coal dust can be contained entirely. Huge piles of coal will stand outdoors in wind and weather, and frequently be shoveled into new positions by giant bulldozers and other machinery.
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Does rail transport release coal dust?
Coal dust escapes from the open-top rail cars used for transporting coal and can create safety and congestion problems for rail traffic. In 2005, for example, coal dust that had accumulated in ballast, the layer of crushed rock that supports rail tracks, caused two derailments. Coal dust deposits sometimes even cause spontaneous fires.
The Burlington Northern / Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) has studied the problem and found that as much as a ton of coal can escape from a single loaded coal car, while other reports show that as much as 3 percent of a coal car’s load, which is typically 100 tons or more, can blow away in transit.30 The US Department of Transportation classifies coal dust as a “pernicious ballast foulant” that can weaken and destabilize rail tracks.31 It is not clear how much coal dust might escape in the Pacific Northwest, but one watchdog group has verified that coal and coal dust does escape from open rail cars traveling along Puget Sound coastlines.32
To reduce or eliminate coal dust from escaping, shippers can fill cars less full or cover them with tarps or chemical sprays, but these measures run up the cost of moving coal, so coal shippers rarely employ them by choice.33 A March 2011 ruling from the US Surface Transportation Board, which oversees railway operations, allows BNSF to require coal shippers to cover their loads or otherwise control dust.34
How effective those measures will be is anyone’s guess: Powder River Basin coal is notoriously difficult to handle. One technical analysis finds that, “PRB coal is extremely friable and will break down into smaller particles virtually independent of how the coal is transported or handled.” According to the study’s authors, “PRB represents the extremes of handling problems.”35
The same analysis found that:
Spontaneous combustion of coal is a well-known phenomenon, especially with PRB coal. This high-moisture, highly volatile sub-bituminous coal will not only smolder and catch fire while in storage piles at power plants and coal terminals, but has been known to be delivered to a power plant with the rail car or barge partially on fire...36
Outside of confined environments, Powder River Basin coal does not spontaneously explode or burst into full flame, but under the wrong conditions it can self-ignite and burn slowly even while it is riding the rails—a troubling proposition for railroad workers and communities along the tracks.
Is coal dust harmful?
Coal dust is more than a nuisance. It degrades water quality and may pose a danger to residents’ health. Coal workers who are exposed to dust, for example, suffer elevated rates of bronchitis, emphysema, and black lung disease.37 In Liverpool, England, researchers found that, even after correcting for economic and environmental factors at home, children exposed to coal dust from the nearby docks were more likely to miss school because of respiratory problems, including wheezing and coughing.38
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In Norfolk, Virginia, home of the Lamberts Point Coal Terminal, soil samples contain up to 20 percent coal by weight at a site less than 1 kilometer from the docks, 3 percent coal at a site 5 kilometers away, and 1 percent coal as far as 12 kilometers away. High coal levels in soil along railroad tracks suggest that trains are another pathway for contamination. Researchers in Norfolk also found arsenic levels were 5 times higher than background soil concentrations nearby, and hypothesize that the coal export terminal is at least partially responsible for the difference because coal often contains arsenic.39
A group of 160 doctors and other health professionals in Whatcom County, Washington, published a position statement documenting a number of health-related problems with coal exports. In addition to the risks of coal dust, the doctors raise concerns about the impacts of the trains themselves, which generate noise, create collision hazards, and delay emergency medical response by impeding rail crossings. Trains are also responsible for hazardous air pollution from diesel engines, a documented threat to health in Washington.40
The BNSF rail yards in Spokane—an important linkage point between the Powder River Basin and Washington’s Pacific ports—would see increased rail traffic that is almost certain to increase harmful
pollution there. A 2010 study by the Spokane Clean Air Agency identified lung cancer risks in Spokane that appear closely related to residents’ proximity to the BNSF railyard, where diesel engines generate prodigious quantities of small particulate pollution—the most health-threatening major air pollutant in the Northwest. Researchers ruled out numerous alternative explanations and concluded that “the BNSF railyard appears to be the only other air pollution source in the vicinity of Hillyard that can account for its differential lung cancer risk.”41
Is Powder River Basin coal better for the environment than China’s coal?
Powder River Basin coal is lower in ash and sulfur than some other kinds of coal, but it also produces less energy per pound than the coals that are more commonly burned in modern power plants.42 To produce the same amount of energy from Powder River Basin coal requires mining, shipping, and burning about 50 percent more.43 After accounting for those differences, coal from the Powder River Basin is somewhat cleaner than China’s domestic sources of coal, but it is still coal—an extremely polluting form of energy.
Coal is a highly impure form of fuel, and burning it releases numerous hazardous substances, including radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium. In fact, the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has estimated that coal plants have released hundreds of thousands of tons of uranium, and that radiation from coal plants is a greater threat to Americans than is radiation from nuclear plants.44
The true costs of coal are daunting. Researchers at the Harvard Medical School recently pegged the annual cost of coal—including harm to public health, mining damage, pollution, and subsidies—at $345 billion per year in the United States alone.45 A 2010 report from the National Research Council finds that the non-climate damages from burning coal are 20 times higher than the damages from natural gas, the next dirtiest and costliest fossil fuel in use.46 And a 2009 report from the National
Academy of Sciences determined that US coal burning results in $60 billion per year in health costs alone.47
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 6
Won’t China just burn someone else’s coal if we don’t supply it?
US coal exports would not supplant the burning of dirtier Chinese coal. Instead, North American exports would add to the volume burned in Asia. In a recent white paper, resource economist Thomas Power demonstrated this point:
This result—that international competition to serve particular import markets will lower the prices that the importing countries have to pay—should not be startling. One of the major benefits of international trade is that it allows countries access to lower cost sources of supply.48
In other words, Washington coal exports will not simply displace other coal in the market. Instead, American coal exports will adhere to fundamental economic principles: an increase in supply will bring
down market prices and thereby increase total consumption. The extent to which increasing supply will boost demand is debatable—just like the extent to which higher prices would dampen demand— but the direction of the change is clear.
In fact, some underlying dynamics may make US exports even more critical. As Power points out, lower prices may encourage China to build more coal-burning power plants than they otherwise would, an investment that would lock in elevated coal burning and pollution for decades to come.
Can Chinese coal burning harm the Northwest’s environment?
Sulfur compounds, soot, and other byproducts of Asian coal combustion are detectable on mountaintops in the western United States.49 Researchers have also linked ozone in the air above the United States to pollution from developing Asian countries that are burning fossil fuels.50 Ozone can exacerbate asthma and heart disease. Mercury, a neurotoxin that is particularly dangerous for children, is especially likely to travel across the Pacific Ocean. An Oregon researcher estimates that as much as 18 percent of the mercury in Oregon’s Willamette River comes from sources overseas, increasingly from China.51 Another study found that human-created pollution from Asia contributed to 14 percent of the mercury dropped on Mount Bachelor in central Oregon.52
What’s more, burning large amounts of coal accelerates global climate change. Burning 100 million tons of Powder River Basin coal releases roughly 180 million tons of heat-trapping carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s about twice as much global warming pollution as results from every activity in
Washington in a year, including every power plant, car, truck, factory, and farm in the state combined. The power plant in Centralia, now scheduled to phase out coal-burning, emits about 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.53 All the activity in the entire city of Seattle emits less than 7 million tons.54
Would coal exports help the Northwest’s economy?
Coal export terminals employ surprisingly few people. In Longview, estimates for the original version of the export project were that operations would employ 70 people to move about 5 million tons of coal.55 The site currently employs 50 people, however, and news reports indicate that the coal terminal would eliminate most of the activity related to those 50 jobs.56 The net employment gain could be as small as 20 jobs. Project sponsor Millennium Bulk Logistics might create more jobs if its ambitions are
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 7
actually to move 20 to 60 million tons of coal a year, as court documents suggest, rather than 5 million.
At Cherry Point, project developers say that a 24 million ton facility, which they plan to open in 2015, would employ 89 workers. In 2026, when the entire 54 million ton facility is completed, proponents believe that it would directly employ about 280 people.57
Each of the coal export facilities planned for Washington would occupy hundreds of acres of waterfront land with storage for raw coal, possibly forestalling other, more job-intensive uses for those lands. For example, at the Port of Tacoma, a marine construction company leasing just 3.5 acres of land and a new cold storage facility on 17 acres of land are each likely to generate 100 new jobs.58 A Port of Seattle economic impact study found that shipping 1,000 metric tons of grain—a bulk commodity like coal—generates just 0.09 jobs, compared with 0.57 jobs for containerized cargo and 4.2 jobs for “break bulk” cargo, such as big machines or goods shipped on pallets, which requires more handling.59 A study at the Port of Baltimore came to similar conclusions, finding that coal export supports just 0.11 jobs per 1,000 metric tons, as compared to 0.41 for other dry bulk commodities, 0.43 jobs for containerized cargo, and 1.71 jobs for autos.60
Recent redevelopments on port sites along the Lower Columbia River illustrate the weakness of coal exports as an economic strategy. The proposed coal export terminal at Longview would occupy 416 acres of heavy industrial waterfront property and produce 70 jobs—less than 0.2 jobs per acre. By contrast, in Troutdale, Oregon a recently cleaned-up port site attracted a FedEx Ground regional distribution center that employs over 750 people on 700 acres of heavy industrial property— supporting 1.1 jobs per acre.61 In Vancouver, Washington another redeveloped port site with 218 acres of heavy industrial waterfront is expected to employ up to 1,000 people to accommodate a surge in wind turbines and other cargo—generating 3.4 jobs per acre.62
Will Canada ship the coal if the US does not?
Although coal mined in the US accounted for no more than 6 percent of the total volume shipped through BC ports in 2009 and 10 percent in 2010, US coal mining companies appear to have looked at reaching new Asian markets through BC ports.63 In January 2011, for example, Arch Coal announced that it had reached an agreement with Ridley Terminals to export 2.5 million metric tons of coal annually from Prince Rupert. In June 2011, Cloud Peak Energy announced an agreement to export an unspecified volume of coal from Westshore over a 10-year period.64
Yet big increases in shipments of American coal from British Columbia seem unlikely. Canadian steelmaking coal is in high demand, and it brings significantly higher prices than the Powder River Basin coal. Moreover, to a large extent, BC’s coal ports are structured to handle primarily Canadian coal and other exports.
Finally, space is limited at BC terminals. Expansions planned for BC’s coal terminals do not come close to providing enough capacity for the volumes of coal called for by the recent proposals in Washington. Even if none of the planned new capacity were filled with high-value Canadian coal, and even if all three of BC’s coal ports were able to operate year-round at full capacity—two highly unlikely scenarios—the terminals would have less than 28 million metric tons of extra capacity, a small fraction
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 8
of the 100 million tons or more planned for Washington.
What’s the history of coal exports on the West Coast?
Two West Coast port cities have already gambled and lost on coal-export facilities. After investing millions of dollars in infrastructure and setting aside sizeable harbor acreage to coal export facilities, both Portland and Los Angeles watched their promised revenue from coal exports evaporate. The abandoned coal export facilities represented millions in stranded investments and clean-up expenses, not to mention years-long missed opportunities for more durable economic development choices.65
The early 1980s saw a rush of coal companies proposing export terminals in Washington and Oregon to satisfy a hungry Asian market. Longview, Kalama, Vancouver, and Astoria all entertained proposals, but the Port of Portland bought in,66 committing to a 25-year lease with Pacific Coal for 90 acres and 900 feet of prime riverfront for a coal export terminal.67
The Port and investors spent $25 million building a coal export terminal, but two years later, the project imploded after Asian markets proved unstable and unreliable.68 The Oregonian reported:
A five-month investigation showed Port and Pacific Coal officials heedlessly plunged ahead despite clear warnings that they might never move a solitary lump of coal.”69
Contractors didn’t get paid, borrowers defaulted, and lawsuits flourished. Analysts later determined that coal export failed because the Asian demand was based on promises rather than actual long-term contracts. International banks studying the issue found that the demand for coal had been “vastly overstated.”70
Soon after the Port of Portland collapse, nearly all other West Coast coal plans died. In the early 1990s, however, Los Angeles forged ahead with another coal export facility when coal giant Peabody led a consortium of investors that promised jobs, tax revenue, and environmental protection with a new coal export terminal at LAXT, the Port of Los Angeles.71 The plan was an enormously divisive project that alarmed neighbors and nearby workers.72
A 1993 Los Angeles Business Journal article prefigures today’s debates in the Northwest:
... although the terminal will create jobs and taxes throughout Southern California, the terminal will have a negligible impact on L.A. County because the product (coal) is sourced from other states and the automated terminal won’t generate many direct jobs.73
And:
[The City of Long Beach filed] a lawsuit July 14, alleging that the Port of L.A.’s environmental impact report doesn’t adequately address the negative environmental impact of coal dust that will be spewed from the massive uncovered storage pile of coal and petroleum coke.
Fears proved well-founded. The terminal experienced at least two fires after dangerous amounts of coal dust accumulated in the ship-loading machinery.74
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The facility closed just six years after it opened, owing to unfavorable market conditions. When the facility shut down, the city of Los Angeles had to write off $19 million of capital investment, and forfeit $94 million in expected revenue.75 Ultimately, the city was sued for improperly managing the site—and for failing to consider alternative uses of the site—and local authorities shelled out $28 million to settle the suit.76
About the Author
Eric de Place leads Sightline’s work on climate and energy policy. He is an expert on regional carbon- reduction programs, and his commentary on federal carbon legislation has been widely influential.
Sightline Institute is a not-for-profit research and communications center—a think tank—based in Seattle. Sightline’s mission is to make the Northwest a global model of sustainability—strong communities, a green economy, and a healthy environment.
Endnotes
1. 2.
3.
4. 5.
Steven Mufson, “Coal’s Burnout,” Washington Post, January 2, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2010/12/31/AR2010123104110.html. Production and consumption trends from US Energy Information Administration, “US Coal Supply and Demand: 2009 Review.” Export volumes to Asia and China from US Energy Information Administration, “US Coal Supply and Demand: 2009 Review,” http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/special/article_dc.pdf; and US Energy Information Administration, “US Coal Exports,” January 2011, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/html/ t7p01p1.html.
Scott Learn, “Mining Companies Aim to Export Coal to China Through Northwest Ports,” The Oregonian, September 8, 2010, http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/09/global_mining_companies_are_ fo.html Eric de Place, “Coal Exports From Canada,” Sightline Institute, August 2011, http://www.sightline.org/research/ energy/coal/canada-coal.pdf.
Andre Stepankowsky, “Millennium Buys Chinook Ventures Sites, Pledges Cleanup of Contamination,” Longview Daily News, January 12, 2011, http://tdn.com/news/local/article_463012b6-1e7f-11e0-957c-001cc4c002e0.html.
6.“Arch Coal Pays $25 Million for Stake in Terminal,” Associated Press, January 12, 2011, http://www.businessweek. com/ap/financialnews/D9KMURBG1.htm; and Arch Coal, Inc., “News Release: Arch Coal Acquires Equity Interest in West Coast Terminal,” January 12, 2011, http://news.archcoal.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=107109&p=irol- newsArticle&ID=1515428&highlight.
7.
8.
William Yardley, “In Northwest, a Clash over a Coal Operation,” The New York Times, February 14, 2011, http:// www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/15coal.html; and Erik Olson, “Millennium Internal E-mail Reveals Goal of 80 Million Tons in Annual Coal Exports,” Longview Daily News, February 24, 2011, http://tdn.com/news/local/ article_8a86fa28-4072-11e0-b60d-001cc4c002e0.html.
Peabody Energy News Release, “Peabody Energy and SSA Marine Enter Into Long-Term Agreement for Powder
River Basin Coal Exports,” February 28, 2011, http://www.peabodyenergy.com/content/120/Press-Releases. 9.“Project Information Document: Gateway Pacific Terminal,” Pacific International Terminals Inc., February 28, 2011,
http://www.communitywisebellingham.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/GPT_PID_Index_2011-02-28.pdf.
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 10
10.“2 Oregon River Ports Considered For Coal Terminal,” Billings Gazette, June 16, 2011, http://billingsgazette.com/ news/state-and-regional/montana/article_114ea17c-9899-11e0-abf1-001cc4c03286.html; and Dean Brickey, “Utah Company Sending Coal Shipments To Asia Through Port of Morrow,” East Oregonian, May 13, 2011, http://www. eastoregonian.com/news/utah-company-sending-coal-shipments-to-asia-through-port-of/article_7b943774-7d94-
11e0-b49a-001cc4c002e0.html. 11. Scott Learn, “Port of St. Helens a Potential Candidate for a Terminal to Export Coal to Asia,” Oregonian, June 14,
2011, http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2011/06/port_of_st_helens_potential_ca.html. 12. Gail Elber, “CB Could Become Coal Port Again,” Coos Bay World, July 22, 2011, http://theworldlink.com/news/
local/article_16869cbf-f325-54f1-920a-52778a5889e8.html; Scott Learn, “Environmental News: Coos Bay in Running for Terminal to Export Coal to Asia,” Oregonian, July 22, 2011, http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/ index.ssf/2011/07/coos_bay_in_running_for_termin.html; and Tom Banse, “Short-line Railroad Floats Third Coal Export Terminal Proposal in Wash.,” Oregon Public Broadcasting, August 9, 2011, http://news.opb.org/article/ short-line_railroad_floats_third_coal_export_terminal_proposal_in_wash/.
13. Scott Learn, “Cowlitz County OKs permits for Longview terminal to ship coal to Asia,” The Oregonian, November 23, 2010, http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/11/cowlitz_county_approves_permit.html.
14. William Yardley, “In Northwest, a Clash over a Coal Operation,” The New York Times, February 14, 2011, http:// www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/15coal.html; and Erik Olson, “Millennium Internal E-mail Reveals Goal of 80 Million Tons in Annual Coal Exports,” Longview Daily News, February 24, 2011, http://tdn.com/news/local/ article_8a86fa28-4072-11e0-b60d-001cc4c002e0.html. Largest in North America from “Unlikely ambition: Coal officials see upsides, barriers of Longview port,” Platts, Vol. 35, No. 8, February 21, 2011.
15. Leo Hickman, “Fred Palmer Interview: ‘We’re 100% Coal. More Coal. Everywhere,” The Guardian, Environment Blog, March 8, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/mar/08/fred-palmer-peabody-coal- interview.
16. Few million tons from US Energy Information Administration, “Table 7.4: Coal Exports by Country of Destination, 1960-2009,” http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/txt/ptb0704.html.
17. Export volumes to Asia and China from US Energy Information Administration, “US Coal Supply and Demand: 2009 Review,” http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/special/article_dc.pdf; and US Energy Information Administration, “US Coal Exports,” January 2011, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/html/t7p01p1.html. Multiply by 10 times or more assumes a 100 million ton export facility as compared to roughly 2 million tons of coal shipped to China during the first quarter of 2011. (See: US Energy Information Administration, “Table 7: US Coal Exports,” June 2011, http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/html/t7p01p1.xls.
18. Mead Gruver, “Chevron Leaving Coal Mining Industry,” Associated Press, January 28, 2011, http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/31/chevron-quits-coal-mining_n_816255.html.
19. Clifford Kraus, “Breaking Away from Coal,” The New York Times, November 29, 2010, http://www.nytimes. com/2010/11/30/business/energy-environment/30utilities.html; and April Baer, “PGE to Close Boardman Plant by 2020,” Oregon Public Broadcasting, January 15, 2011, http://news.opb.org/article/pge-close-boardman-plant-2020/.
20.“In Our View: A Win for Clean Air,” Vancouver Columbian, July 21, 2011, http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/ jul/21/in-our-view-a-win-for-clean-air/.
21. David Gambrel, “Building a Coal Terminal on the West Coast,” Coal Age, November 18, 2010, http://www. coalage.com/index.php/features/763-building-a-coal-terminal-on-the-west-coast.html.
22.“Improved Domestic Coal Out From China May Slow Imports,” MarketWatch, July 21, 2011, http://www. marketwatch.com/story/improved-domestic-coal-out-from-china-may-slow-imports-2011-07-21?reflink=MW_ news_stmp.
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 11
23.
24. 25. 26. 27.
28.
29.
30. 31.
32. 33.
34.
35. 36. 37. 38.
Douglas L. Cope and Kamal K. Bhattacharyya, A Study of Fugitive Coal Dust Emissions in Canada, “Chapter 8: Coal Terminals: Fugitive Dust Emissions and Control,” prepared for The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, November 2001. Andrew Jensen, “Judge Allows Lawsuit: Seward Coal Facility Faces Clean Water Act Suit,” Alaska Journal of Commerce, January 24, 2011, http://www.peninsulaclarion.com/stories/012411/new_775559217.shtml.
Mary Pemberton, “Alaska Railroad Takes Steps to Reduce Coal Dust,” Ventura County Star, July 9, 2010, http:// www.vcstar.com/news/2010/jul/09/alaska-railroad-take-steps-to-reduce-coal-dust. Erik Olson, “Westshore provides glimpse of Longview’s potential future with coal,” The Daily News, February 12, 2011, http://tdn.com/news/local/article_35ad9c0c-3634-11e0-8eea-001cc4c03286.html.
Douglas L. Cope and Kamal K. Bhattacharyya, A Study of Fugitive Coal Dust Emissions in Canada, “Chapter 8: Coal Terminals: Fugitive Dust Emissions and Control,” prepared for The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, November 2001. Ryan Johnson and R.M. Bustin, “Coal dust dispersal around a marine coal terminal (1977–1999), British Columbia: The fate of coal dust in the marine environment,” International Journal of Coal Geology, Volume 68, Issues 1-2, 1 August 2006, Pages 57-69., http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166516206000206. William J. Bounds and Karen H. Johannesson, “Arsenic Addition to Soils from Airborne Coal Dust Originating at a Major Coal Shipping Terminal,” Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, June 21, 2007, 185: 195-207, http://www. springerlink.com/content/98146r1160021h13/; and Joe Lawlor, “Coal Dust, Piles an Issue for Southeast Newport News,” July 16, 2011, http://articles.dailypress.com/2011-07-16/news/dp-nws-cp-nn-coal-dust-20110716_1_coal- dust-coal-piles-coal-terminals.
Eric de Place, “At Least the Website is Clean,” Sightline Institute blog, August 10, 2011, http://daily.sightline.
org/2011/08/10/at-least-the-website-is-clean/. “Surface Transportation Board Authorizes Tariff Rules on Coal Dust but Strikes Down Specific BNSF Tariff,”
Troutman Sanders LLP, Washington Energy Report, http://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2011/03/ surface-transportation-board-authorizes-tariff-rules-on-coal-dust-but-strikes-down-specific-bnsf-tariff. Gary Chittim, “Traces of coal found along Washington railways,” King 5 News, August 16, 2011, http://www. king5.com/news/environment/Coal-Found-Along-Washington-Railways-127907523.html.
Josh Voorhees, “Railroads, Utilities Clash Over Dust From Coal Trains,” New York Times, January 25, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/01/25/25greenwire-railroads-utilities-clash-over-dust-from-coal-55265.html; and Joe Deaux, “Regulations Could Derail Railroad Profits,” The Street, August 21, 2011, http://www.thestreet. com/story/11215990/1/regulations-could-derail-railroad-profits.html.
Surface Transportation Board, “Decision, Docket No. FD 35305, Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation: Petition for Declaratory Order,” March 3, 2011, http://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/wp-content/ uploads/2011/03/Coal-Dust.pdf. Roderick J. Hossfeld and Rod Hatt, “PRB Coal Degradation: Causes and Cures,” PRB Coal Users Group, http:// www.prbcoals.com/pdf/paper_archives/56538.pdf.
Roderick J. Hossfeld and Rod Hatt, “PRB Coal Degradation: Causes and Cures,” PRB Coal Users Group, http:// www.prbcoals.com/pdf/paper_archives/56538.pdf.
Occupational Safety and Health Guideline for Coal Dust, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/coaldust-greater5percentsio2/recognition.html. Liverpool from Bernard Brabin et al., “Respiratory morbidity in Merseyside schoolchildren exposed to coal dust and air pollution,” Archives of Disease in Childhood, 1994; 70: 3015-312, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC1029784/pdf/archdisch00564-0049.pdf.
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39. William J. Bounds and Karen H. Johannesson, “Arsenic Addition to Soils from Airborne Coal Dust Originating at a Major Coal Shipping Terminal,” Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, June 21, 2007, 185: 195-207, http://www. springerlink.com/content/98146r1160021h13/.
40. “Whatcom Docs Position Statement and Appendices,” Coal Train Facts, http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/whatcom- docs-position-statement-and-appendices.
41. Charles E. Studer, “Health Risk Study for the Burlington Northern / Santa Fe Railroad Spokane Railyard,” Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency,” June 16, 2010, http://www.spokanecleanair.org/documents/Study_Reports/BNSF%20 Spokane%20Railyard%20Health%20Study.pdf.
42. Coal quality from Wyoming State Geological Survey, “Wyoming Coal Quality,” http://www.wsgs.uwyo.edu/ coalweb/library/science/wyquality.aspx.
43. Union of Concerned Scientists, “How Coal Works,” http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/brief_coal. html.
44. Alex Gabbard, “Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger?” Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review, Vol. 26, No. 3&4, Summer/Fall 1993, http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/contents.html.
45.“Mining Coal, Mounting Costs: the Life Cycle Consequences of Coal,” Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School, February 2011, http://chge.med.harvard.edu/programs/ccf/documents/ MiningCoalMountingCosts.pdf; and Robert R. Epstein et al., “Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1219, Ecological Economics Review, February 2011, http:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x/full.
46. National Research Council, “Report in Brief: The Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use,” The National Academies Press, http://dels-old.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/hidden_costs_of_energy_ Final.pdf.
47. Matthew L. Wald, “Fossil Fuels’ Hidden Costs is in Billions, Study Says,” New York Times, October 19, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/science/earth/20fossil.html.
48. Thomas M. Power, “The Greenhouse Gas Impact of Exporting Coal from the West Coast: An Economic Analysis,” Sightline Institute, http://sightline.org/research/energy/coal/Coal-Power-White-Paper.pdf.
49. Keith Bradsher and David Barboza, “Pollution from Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow,” New York Times, June 11, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/worldbusiness/11chinacoal.html.
50. O.R. Cooper et al., “Increasing springtime ozone mixing ratios in the free troposphere over North America,” Nature, January 21, 2010, 463:344-348, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7279/pdf/nature08708.pdf.
51.“China’s mercury flushes into Oregon rivers,” The Oregonian, November 24, 2006, http://www.atmos.washington. edu/jaffegroup/publications/116400a.pdf.
52. Sarah A. Strode et al., “Trans-Pacific transport of mercury,” Journal of Geophysical Research, 2008, Vol. 113, D15305, http://www.atmos.washington.edu/jaffegroup/publications/Pacific_Transport_Hg.pdf.
53. Washington state and Centralia power plant emissions from Washington State Climate Advisory Team, “Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Reference Case Projections, 1990-2020,” Washington Department of Ecology, April
2007, http://www.ecy.wa.gov/climatechange/cat_documents.htm. For more on the method of calculation see Eric de Place, “Coal Exports and Carbon Consequences,” Sightline Institute blog, February 22, 2011, http://daily.sightline. org/2011/02/22/coal-exports-and-carbon-consequences/.
54. Seattle Climate Protection Initiative, “Progress Report 2009,” City of Seattle, http://www.seattle.gov/archive/ climate/docs/CPI-09-Progress-Report.pdf.
55. Erik Olson, “Westshore Provides Glimpse of Longview’s Potential Future With Coal,” Longview Daily News, February 12, 2011, http://tdn.com/news/local/article_35ad9c0c-3634-11e0-8eea-001cc4c03286.html.
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 13
56. Andre Stepankowsky, “Millennium Buys Chinook Ventures Site, Pledges Cleanup of Contamination,” Longview Daily News, January 12, 2011, http://tdn.com/news/local/article_463012b6-1e7f-11e0-957c-001cc4c002e0.html.
57. Gateway Pacific Terminal, http://www.gatewaypacificterminal.com/economic/localstate.shtml. 58. Cold storage facility from Port of Tacoma, “Construction starts on new cold storage facility at the Port of Tacoma,”
January 12, 2010, http://www.portoftacoma.com/Page.aspx?cid=4229. Marine contractor from Port of Tacoma, “Port of Tacoma leases to marine contractor for new Northwest base,” March 24, 2010, http://www.portoftacoma.
com/Page.aspx?cid=4365. 59. Martin Associates, “The 2007 Economic Impact Study of the Port of Seattle,” February 10, 2009, http://www.
portseattle.org/downloads/business/EconomicImpact_20091.pdf. 60. Martin Associates, “The Economic Impacts of the Port of Baltimore,” January 28, 2009, http://mpa.maryland.
gov/_media/client/planning/EconomicImpactReport-revisedJan’08.pdf. 61. Amy Hsuan, “FedEx Distribution Center Promises Jobs, Tax, From SuperFund Site,” The Oregonian, April 14,
2010, http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/04/fedex_distribution_center_prom.html. 62. Port of Vancouver, “Terminal 5 Brings New Jobs, Business and Rail to the Port of Vancouver,” http://www.
portvanusa.com/industrial-property/new-marine-terminal. 63. 2009 figure estimated by Sightline based on Westshore’s 1.9 million tons of US coal exports in 2009 compared to
total BC exports of around 38 million tons. (See Eric de Place, “Coal Exports From Canada,” Sightline Institute, August 2011, http://www.sightline.org/research/energy/coal/canada-coal.pdf.) 2010 figure estimated by Sightline based on Cloud Peak’s 3.3 million tons shipped from Westshore in 2010 compared to total BC exports of around 38 million tons. (See Cloud Peak Energy, “Cloud Peak Energy Agrees to Terms for Export Capacity,” June 14, 2011, http://www.cloudpeakenergy.com/news/press-releases/331-cloud-peak-energy-agrees-to-terms-for-terminal-capacity.)
64. Arch Coal, Inc., “Arch Coal Announces Agreement with Canada’s Ridley Terminal for Pacific Coast Exports,” January 18, 2011, http://news.archcoal.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=107109&p=irol- newsArticle&ID=1517028&highlight; and Cloud Peak Energy, “Cloud Peak Energy Agrees to Terms for Export Capacity,” June 14, 2011, http://www.cloudpeakenergy.com/news/press-releases/331-cloud-peak-energy-agrees-to- terms-for-terminal-capacity. In Los Angeles, for example, the city’s projected losses were to include: writing off the city’s $19 million investment; forfeiting nearly $94 million in projected revenue; losing access to 117 acres of harbor land; paying $1 million to clean up approximately 36 acres of that land. (See Patrick McGreevy, “L.A. Weighs Costly Exit From Coal Terminal,” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/14/local/me-coal14.) Eric Goranson, “Coal’s once bright future goes up in smoke,” The Oregonian, February 14, 1983. James Long and Leslie L. Zaitz, “A terminal case: Demise of coal port more than just bad luck,” The Oregonian, March 14, 1984. James Long and Leslie L. Zaitz, “A terminal case: Demise of coal port more than just bad luck,” The Oregonian, March 14, 1984. James Long and Leslie L. Zaitz, “A terminal case: Demise of coal port more than just bad luck,” The Oregonian, March 14, 1984. James Long and Leslie L. Zaitz, “A terminal case: Demise of coal port more than just bad luck,” The Oregonian, March 14, 1984.
65.
66. 67.
68. 69. 70.
71.“Planned coal-export terminal promises jobs, taxes,” Los Angeles Business Journal, August 23, 1993, http://www. allbusiness.com/north-america/united-states-california-metro-areas/389538-1.html.
72. Deborah Belgum, “Huge Coal Storage Facility Fuels Fears,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1996, http://articles. latimes.com/1996-08-16/local/me-34702_1_coal-storage.
Sightline FAQ • Northwest Coal Exports • September 2011 14
73.“Planned coal-export terminal promises jobs, taxes,” Los Angeles Business Journal, August 23, 1993, http://www. allbusiness.com/north-america/united-states-california-metro-areas/389538-1.html.
74. Exponent, “Coke and Coal Shiploader Fire: Los Angeles Port,” http://www.exponent.com/Coke-and-Coal- Shiploader-Fire-Los-Angeles-Port/.
75. Patrick McGreevy, “L.A. Weighs Costly Exit From Coal Terminal,” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2003, http:// articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/14/local/me-coal14.
76. LAXT’s development and subsequent closure also sparked a firestorm of lobbying, backroom deals, and lawsuits. As one city councilmember at the time put it, “Every lobbyist I have ever heard of is in this chamber... I would like
to know where, if [the terminal] is on the verge of bankruptcy, they got the money to hire all these lobbyists.” The LA Times reported that the terminal, “made 25 political contributions totaling more than $10,000 to city officials and candidates including Mayor James K. Hahn and his sister, Councilwoman Hahn.” (See Patrick McGreevy,
“L.A. Weighs Costly Exit From Coal Terminal,” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/ jun/14/local/me-coal14; Patrick McGreevy, “L.A. To Pay $28 Million to Settle Port Suit,” Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/dec/14/local/me-settle14; and Patrick McGreevy, “City Is Hit With $4 Million in Claims Over Rejected Port Project,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2004, http://articles.latimes. com/2004/jun/11/local/me-laxt11).
KUOW did a story 6-7 pm news slot, quoting Longview resident about coal dust:
KOMO TV (ABC affiliate) did a story on the evening news:
Olympian sent a photographer, so we’ll watch for that tomorrow (not up yet tonight). We also had local radio and local public access TV. Matt also got a call from B-ham radio station.
AP:
Wenatchee World:
Longview Daily News (day before drop)
Statement from Goldmark:
