Spokane: Tuesday, October 28, 5 to 10 pm

The doors to the public hearing room at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel, 322 North Spokane Falls Court, open at 5 pm. Gather at the Riverfront Park Rotary Fountain at 5 pm for a rally with music, youth climate ambassadors, and other dynamic speakers, then march three blocks to the hearing, where public comment begins at 6 pm and a hospitality suite will provide snacks.

Olympia: Thursday, October 30, 5 to 10 pm

The hearing room doors at the Red Lion Inn, 2300 Evergreen Park Drive SW, open at 5 pm. Meet outside for a coastal jam session at 4 pm and for a rally and music at 5 pm, before a Department of Ecology presentation at 6 pm and public input starting at 6:30 pm.

On October 1, 2014, the Washington state Department of Ecology released for public review the 2014 Marine and Rail Oil Transportation Study Preliminary Findings and Recommendations Report, which assesses the serious health, safety, and environmental risks and impacts of the onslaught of Northwest oil shipments by rail and vessel [1]. When the 2014 Washington Legislature failed to pass a bill assuaging growing concerns about more volatile and unpredictable crude oil traffic, lawmakers directed and funded the state agency to conduct the study in April 2014.  Governor Jay Inslee issued a directive in June 2014, outlining key components of the study designed to identify regional oil transportation risks, regulatory gaps addressing these risks, and possible state actions to reduce risks.  For this research, the administration-appointed Department of Ecology consulted the Federal Railroad Administration, the Washington Department of Transportation, the Utilities and Transportation Commission, and the Military Department’s Emergency Management Division [2].  If the state adopts an aggressive regulation plan in its final report due to the Legislature in March 2015, which will guide state agency, executive, and legislative actions, industry could mount legal challenges.

Although this draft report intricately describes the vulnerabilities of Washington sacrifice-zone communities and resources to the explosive, toxic dangers of existing oil train traffic and proposed port facilities, and thus supports citizens’ and firefighters’ demands for an immediate moratorium on rail-shipped crude, it flagrantly dismisses these hazards potentially affecting tribal treaty rights, public infrastructure, and the regional economy as secondary to the focus of the study [3]. The report partially conducted by the only paid railroad consultant, Mainline Management – comprised of retired, career Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) corporate executives with former BNSF, Port of Vancouver, and Washington Public Ports Association clients – incorrectly seeks to normalize the new risks of unconventional extreme energy extraction and transportation as simply additional threats augmenting decades of similar rail and ship activities that can be mitigated.

Even worse, this study defers to federal authorities regulating interstate commerce, relinquishing state leverage of railroad and ship traffic to national agencies such as the industry-dominated, inspection capacity-challenged Federal Railroad Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard. It insufficiently suggests actions to protect public waters and their changing dynamics from the risks of tar sands oil shipments and increased tanker passage.  While state and federal agencies declare the environmental non-significance of Northwest coal and oil terminals and the report promotes further investigation but sidesteps safety precautions to avert catastrophes, regional fossil fuel freight and facilities proliferate, and bulk commodity and passenger rail service suffer.  Attempting to deter widespread resistance to policies ensuring climate chaos, the study authors overlook significant, statewide opposition to proposed oil terminals, misused public ports, expanding oil refineries, risky oil trains and ships, and bureaucratic collaboration in transformation of the Northwest rail system into a permanent, global carbon pollution export corridor.  Did they consider the best interests of Washingtonians over those of private industry in this report that recommends implementation of several procedures costing more than $13 million? Continue reading →

On Saturday, August 16, and during the previous week, grassroots groups are holding a coordinated day of peaceful actions, to protest the passage of coal trains through interior Northwest communities [1, 2].  From Montana and Wyoming to Oregon and Washington, proposals to bring more polluting coal trains through the region impact dozens of communities along rail lines, who are organizing to protect their towns from coal exports.  This summer, 350-Missoula, Blue Skies Campaign, Indian People’s Action, Wild Idaho Rising Tide, and other organizations are together catalyzing this movement against dirty energy in new and bolder ways, evident in this regional day of action.

As inland Northwest citizens largely dismissed by the federal and state regulatory processes that determine the fate of three proposed coal export facilities at Cherry Point and Longview, Washington, and Boardman, Oregon, we stand in solidarity with Northwest tribes and climate activists resisting these West Coast ports and Powder River Basin coal mines that despoil native lands and watersheds and ultimately global climate [3].  While Oregon agencies deliberate their possible issuance of key permits allowing financially risky, Australia-based Ambre Energy to begin construction on the controversial Morrow Pacific coal train terminal dock and warehouses at Boardman, we support friends among the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, who rejected  the companies’ bribes of up to $800,000 per year to partner in and benefit from building this Coyote Island Terminal and shipping 8.8 million tons of coal per year down the Columbia River [4, 5]. Continue reading →

On July 6, 2013, 47 residents of tiny Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, lost their lives when a unit train transporting fracked Bakken oil in outdated DOT-111 railcars derailed and exploded in their downtown.  One year later, despite dozens of additional oil train disasters, similar tanker cars carry crude Alberta tar sands and Bakken shale oil around and over northern Idaho lakes and through the urban core of Spokane, Washington.  As the urgent need for climate justice activism escalates and the expanding movement blocks pipelines and megaloads across North America, the oil industry has stealthily but drastically increased oil-by-rail shipments in the U.S. and Canada.  Meanwhile, dirty energy producers, railroad haulers, and federal governments quibble over the ‘best methods’ to transport fossil fuels and other hazardous materials on railways.  Congress could improve the situation by enacting legislation banning DOT-111 railcars from moving any type of oil, even while industry pushes to remove prohibitions on exporting crude oil.  But such debates distract public attention and action away from the root causes and solutions of this debacle.  Alberta and North Dakota oil producers and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) and other railroad companies will extract, transport, and export all the oil they can find.  They will downplay the risks and costs of “bomb trains” to public, environmental, and climate health, well-being, and safety, and recklessly endanger communities for every opportunity to turn a profit.

While continuing to oppose Big Oil resuming these volatile shipments through their still-recovering town, the devastated community of Lac-Mégantic will gather on the solemn July 6, one-year anniversary of this terrible tragedy, to honor the memory of their families and friends.  In a letter to the Quinault Nation translated from French and dated June 27, 2014, Lac-Mégantic representatives commended the support and solidarity expressed by Northwest tribes, communities, and organizations, who are rising up to create and stage actions and send a unified message to industry and government decision makers during the week of July 6 through 13: “Keep oil off the rails and in the ground!” [1]  Although frontline, grassroots, Rising Tide activists usually decline Big Green bandwagon actions, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) requests your participation in local and continent-wide demonstrations promoted by 350.org, ForestEthics, Oil Change International, and the Sierra Club [2].  For the sake of Lac-Mégantic and other people and places in the path of bomb trains and for the protection of north Idaho’s greatest natural assets, please RSVP and join Blue Skies Campaign, Spokane Rising Tide, and WIRT resistance in commemorating the Lac-Mégantic lives grimly lost to Big Oil and in ensuring that such senseless suffering and destruction never happens again, as we call for public awareness and action on a moratorium on all crude oil shipments by rail.

Monday, July 7: Railroad Direct Action Skill-Share (with Blue Skies Campaign)

This summer, Blue Skies Campaign of Missoula, Montana, and allies like WIRT are holding a series of skill-shares in communities along Northwest coal- and oil-transporting rail lines, to discuss tactics and strategies that they have learned from direct actions on railroad property [3].  Through the process of staging two acts of non-violent civil disobedience on Montana Rail Link (MRL) property in the last nine months, Blue Skies comrades have acquired plenty of practical lessons that other groups may find useful for similar actions.  They are eager to share insights about MRL security, coal train movements, and the unique logistics of direct actions on or near train tracks.

At this skill-share, a few Blue Skies volunteers will give a brief presentation on what happened during their direct actions, what they learned from the experience, and how security and law enforcement could likely respond to future actions on railroad property.  Inter-group conversations about participants’ experiences and opportunities to work together will follow the presentation.  Please join Blue Skies Campaign and WIRT on Monday, July 7, from 5 to 6:45 pm in Rooms 103 and 104 of the East Bonner County – Sandpoint Library, 1407 Cedar Street in Sandpoint, Idaho, for this significant discussion. Continue reading →

Express your concerns to Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council by the December 18 comment deadline.

Almost a dozen new crude oil terminal and refinery infrastructure projects currently proposed for the Oregon and Washington coasts could drastically increase the amount of oil trains moving across northern Idaho and Spokane, as these rail shipments escalate across the country [1].  The most advanced in the permitting process, Tesoro Savage plans to construct and operate the largest crude oil storage and transfer facility of all, at the Port of Vancouver, Washington, to transport nearly half the capacity of the Keystone XL pipeline: 380,000 barrels of oil per day [2].

The fracked Bakken shale oil fields in North Dakota and surface and the in-situ and surface tar sands mines in Alberta supply this volatile crude “pipeline on rails.”  Continent-wide, over 30 accidents on such conduits have occurred during the last year.  A Bakken oil train derailed, exploded, and killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, this summer, and an Alabama wreck burned for days and ruined wetlands in November [3].  The British Petroleum oil drilling rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico and the Enbridge tar sands pipeline breach along the Kalamazoo River in 2010, and the Exxon Valdez oil tanker grounding and spill into Prince William Sound in 1989 all serve as reminders that transporting oil guarantees accidents with devastating consequences.  Although state, county, and city agencies do not currently have emergency response plans for oil train accidents in place, it is not a matter of if, but when, similar disasters could happen in the interior Northwest.

Additional rail traffic carrying dangerous crude oil through the region raises numerous community concerns about conditions similar to coal train passage, such as the impacts of diesel exhaust and coal dust on human and environmental health, of vehicle congestion and strained rail line capacity on regional commerce, and of infrastructure upgrades on public funds.  More coal trains and coal dust on the same tracks could compromise their integrity and stability and cumulatively increase the probability of hazardous rail scenarios. Continue reading →

Eastern Washington and northern Idaho activists are gathering in Spokane at noon on Tuesday, October 1, to carpool, coordinate, and participate in a public protest and scoping hearing in Pasco, Washington, about the Millennium Bulk Terminals proposal for coal export facilities in Longview, Washington.  The Tri-Cities area, where a unit train derailed and 31 of its cars spilled six million pounds of coal on July 2, 2012, could experience up to 18 more coal trains rolling through these communities every day.  The Longview coal port and accompanying train traffic would threaten the human, environmental, and climate health as well as the public safety and economic vitality of the region.

Do not miss your only other inland Northwest opportunity, after the September 25 Spokane rally and hearing, to speak out against coal exports from Longview!  Please get an online lottery ticket to testify or share, wear red in opposition to coal, bring your friends, family, and protest signs, and voice your concerns on Tuesday about the broad coal export impacts that county, state, and federal agencies should consider in an upcoming draft environmental impact statement.  The Pasco protest commences at 3 pm outside and before the doors to The Trac Center at 6600 Burden Boulevard open at 4 pm, with proposal information displays available until 8 pm.  Citizens can offer oral comments between 5 and 8 pm either privately or publicly.  Call 509-879-7470 or 208-301-8039 for carpool arrangements with Occupy Spokane, Wild Idaho Rising Tide, and other regional coal export resisters.  For further issue and comment process information, see: Continue reading →