January 22, 2016

Sonia Bumpus, EFS Specialist, & EFSEC Members

Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC)

State of Washington

1300 S. Evergreen Park Drive SW

P.O. Box 43172

Olympia, Washington 98504-3172

sbumpus@utc.wa.gov

Sent via email and attachment

WIRT Comments on Tesoro Savage Vancouver Energy Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement

Members of the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council,

On behalf of over 3200 members, friends, and allies of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), including potentially impacted, concerned north Idaho residents near the proposed and existing rail routes affected by this proposal, I respectfully offer and request inclusion in the public record of these comments regarding the Tesoro Savage Vancouver Energy Project draft environmental impact statement (DEIS), during the public agency and citizen review period from November 24, 2015, until January 22, 2016 [1]. WIRT and associates collectively object to state permitting of the Tesoro Savage oil train terminal planned for the Port of Vancouver, Washington, which would impart myriad, significant risks and only marginal rewards for communities along the rail tracks and bridges, rivers, and lakes of Tesoro’s and Savage’s profitable thoroughfare to crude oil export.  In support of this official letter of resistance to Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) approval of this application and resulting, destructive, implementation activities, we thoroughly concur with, contribute toward, and incorporate the concerns, oral testimony, and comments of all project opponents.

The Tesoro and Savage corporations intend to build the biggest crude-oil-by-rail terminal in the U.S. at the Port of Vancouver, potentially transferring an estimated 360,000 barrels per day of explosive Bakken shale oil and volatile Alberta diluted bitumen (tar sands) to tank farms across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, and to huge, ocean-going oil tankers shipping it to West Coast refineries and the world market [2]. Inevitable, disastrous, consequent oil spills into river, lake, or sea waters along rail and ocean routes, especially releases of thick tar sands oil that sinks to the bottom of waterways, would devastate local and regional waters and environments, fisheries, tribal lifeways, communities, and economies.

While moving enormous volumes of oil that ultimately impact our shared global climate, the Tesoro Savage facility would also increase the risk of fiery oil train accidents in countless communities along Northwest rail lines, from the Hi-Line around U.S. Highway 2 in Montana, to U.S. Highway 95 corridor towns from Bonners Ferry to Rathdrum in northern Idaho, to the dangerously elevated bridge and track funnels through the Sandpoint, Idaho area and downtown Spokane, Washington, to the Columbia River Gorge between eastern Oregon and Washington, to Vancouver [3, 4]. Every day, the huge oil terminal would bring four or more 100-car, mile-long trains toward the West Coast, hauling flammable cargo through climate-change-drying forests, increasingly dense cities, and ever more precious water bodies.  Public officials and emergency responders across the Northwest have raised concerns about the severe threats of oil train derailments, explosions, and pollution, as such incidents continually proliferate [5-7].

Many WIRT and allied group members who carpooled from Moscow and Sandpoint, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington, participated in the regional community rally of terminal opponents and orally testified at the public hearing on the project’s DEIS, hosted by EFSEC on Thursday evening, January 14, 2016, in Spokane Valley, Washington [8-10]. These activists spoke against the Tesoro Savage proposal, the deficiencies of its DEIS findings, greater hazards imposed by this massive project of significant oil spills, air pollution, loaded train derailments, explosions, fires, and accidents causing numerous injuries and deaths, increased rail and waterway traffic of oil tankers, harm to federally protected salmonids and aquatic species, detrimental effects on tribal treaties, cultures, and resources, susceptibility of the facility to earthquakes, more and longer vehicle delays at railroad crossings, and overall exacerbation of climate change [11].  These myriad, significant, environmental, social, and human health harms cannot be fully mitigated by the project proponents or local, state, and federal agencies.  Moreover, the project DEIS does not even consider the predictable potential impacts of this oil terminal beyond Washington state. Continue reading →

Organizing the first in a series of coordinated, region-wide, fall 2015 Flood the System actions and ongoing mobilization of frontline, inland Northwest communities impacted by fossil fuel incursions and unjust economic, social, and political conditions, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allied activists in Sandpoint, Moscow, Spokane, and beyond are excited to announce and host the Panhandle Paddle on Saturday, August 29 [1]! After further WIRT outreach and education between 9 am and 1 pm at the Farmers’ Market at Sandpoint, WIRT members and friends are converging at 2 pm at City Beach Park in Sandpoint, Idaho, for music, speakers, refreshments, and on- and off-shore protests of Northwest fossil fuel transports and terminals and rail bridge expansion on Lake Pend Oreille. In the wake of four Flood the System slide shows and discussions in Idaho and Washington and parallel Montana initiatives, we are eager to “flood, blockade, occupy, and shut down the systems that jeopardize our future” [1-3].

Join in some summer fun on the water and beach to show Big Oil, King Coal, their railroad industry haulers, and government facilitators that north Idahoans will not stand for their reckless endangerment of our lives, communities, water, air, and climate, with their explosive Alberta tar sands and Bakken crude oil trains and their heavy, dusty Powder River Basin coal cars. Northwesterners have plenty to celebrate about our shared resistance, as dozens of proposals for new and expanded fossil fuel infrastructure falter and fall [4]. Please participate in these Panhandle Paddle activities: Continue reading →

On Monday evening, July 6, through Sunday afternoon, July 12, activists of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), Spokane Rising Tide (SPORT), and the Occupy movement participated in several demonstrations of the Sandpoint Stops Oil Trains Week of Action 2015, to halt oil train traffic while commemorating the second anniversary of the July 6, 2013, Lac Mégantic, Quebec oil train catastrophe that took 47 lives [1, 2]. Together with climate, environmental, and social justice activists across North America, WIRT and allies organized and staged over 100 powerful and effective, local demonstrations during the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action [3, 4]. These events in the United States and Canada stood in solidarity, defense, and protection of the residents of Lac Mégantic, who lost 47 people killed by an exploding oil train, and other frontline, rail corridor communities and our shared global climate, all caught in the crosshairs of the oil and rail industries’ pipelines on wheels.

Although dozens of horrifying, fiery, extreme energy train wreck disasters have occurred over the last two years since the grim Quebec accident, northern Idaho and eastern Washington citizens continue to endure the unsafe, risky, and expanding rail transportation of potentially explosive Alberta tar sands dilbit, moved by the Union Pacific Railroad, and fracked Bakken shale oil, hauled by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), both to Washington and West Coast refineries. BNSF has previously reported that 16 to 19 mile-long oil trains traverse the interior Northwest every week. Additionally on the 70-mile-long, railroad chokepoint between the Sandpoint and Spokane downtown areas, referred to as “the funnel,” BNSF carries dusty, diesel-towed coal from the Powder River Basin along the Montana/Wyoming border to coastal terminals for export. Recently revised federal regulations no longer require BNSF to report the number of oil trains that pass through the region, and have never forced disclosure of Union Pacific tar sands by rail volumes.

With their hazardous loads and reckless resource and policy exploitation, Big Oil and Rail discount and transgress the millions of lives, the human and environmental health and safety repercussions, and the associated carbon and other toxic pollution within the mile-wide, track-side, oil train blast zones, along their paths to profit around the Pacific Rim [5]. In appropriate response, thousands of concerned citizens gathered for 63 events in July 2014, including multiple protest and outreach actions in Sandpoint and Spokane [6]. 2015 participants joined in actions to publicly call attention to the growing threat of “bomb trains,” to display the growing power of the worldwide climate movement, and to demand an immediate ban on all crude oil trains. Continue reading →