http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26284-anti-coal-campaigners-continue-to-win-in-the-northwest
[multiple links in on-line article]
Anti-Coal Campaigners Continue to Win in the Northwest
Thursday, 18 September 2014 11:19
By Mara Kardas-Nelson, Waging Nonviolence | Report
There is an adage commonly spoken in many activist circles: Think
global, act local. And several communities across the Northwest, linked
together in their opposition to coal transports by concern for the
health of their communities and of the planet, are aiming to do just that.
Feeling the squeeze of reduced demand for coal in the United States, a
series of companies have proposed coal transportation projects that
would see dozens of trains filled with Powder River Basin coal — one of
the world’s largest deposits of the fuel — wind through hundreds of
communities every day before arriving in Northwest ports for export to
Asia. Since the terminals would help to bring hundreds of millions of
tons of dirty fuel to the global market, the carbon impact would be
profound. Coal from just three of originally six proposed terminals
would, according to the Center for American Progress, “result in the
same annual increase in carbon pollution as adding approximately 35
million new passenger cars to the road.”
As such, blocking these terminals has been called “just as important as
KXL [the Keystone XL pipeline]” by Bill McKibben, who says it’s “one of
the most crucial fights for American climate activists to win.” And
winning they are, thanks to the collective efforts of seemingly
disparate communities, all of which are concerned, for various reasons,
with coal transport. The coalition, known as Power Past Coal, includes
business people worried that dust will scare away customers, nurses
alarmed by potential health impacts, and tribes aiming to protect
ancestral lands, among others. One hundred and fifteen organizations
comprise the umbrella group.
Just last month, the Oregon Department of State Lands, or DSL, denied a
permit requested by Ambre Energy, which wanted to transport nearly 9
million tons of coal, every year, through the Port of Morrow on the
Columbia River to Washington state and beyond. The victory came after a
nearly four-year fight that included drawn-out obfuscation by Ambre, a
call for rejection of the requested permit by 20,000 Oregonians and
several elected officials including Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber.
Excluding the possibility of a reversal during the appeals process, the
DSL’s decision is historic — it’s the first time a Pacific Northwest
state agency has officially rejected a permit for a coal terminal. It
also puts one more nail in an increasingly sealed coffin for Big Coal:
While there were initially plans for six coal export terminals across
the Northwest, only two remain in the works.
Efforts from local tribes have been key to the successes thus far.
Despite some tribes being offered substantial income from the coal
companies in exchange for their support of the terminals, several have
come out strongly against the companies’ efforts, concerned about the
projects’ impact on the environment, generally, and traditional fishing
grounds, specifically. It was this latter point that seemed to draw the
attention of the DST. In their rejection of the permit, the agency wrote
that the terminal could impact “a small but important and long-standing”
tribal fishery, belonging to the Yakama.
With two other proposed terminals in the region still on the table, the
tribe remains resilient: According to Yakama Nation Tribal Council
Chairman JoDe Goudy, “The Yakama Nation will not rest until the entire
regional threat posed by the coal industry to our ancestral lands and
waters is eradicated.”
With the successful Oregon effort almost safely behind them, campaigners
are focusing their efforts on two remaining proposed transport terminals
in Washington state, which are much bigger than the one in Oregon was
intended to be. Nearly 100 million tons of coal could be shipped
annually from Longview and Cherry Point, Wash., to international shores.
“These are huge projects,” warned Beth Doglio, regional director for the
Power Past Coal campaign and staff member of Climate Solutions. “They
will change the nature of Washington state because they are so massive
and there is so much impact from vessel traffic and rail traffic.”
Small but significant successes have been won thus far. Because of
strong state environmental protection laws that require well-advertised
public hearings, governing bodies — such as the Army Corps of Engineers
and the state’s Department of Ecology — heard from hundreds of thousands
of concerned citizens.
“There was an organic concern about these projects that led people to
contact these agencies,” Doglio said. The agencies are now drafting
environmental impact statements for both proposals, the outcomes of
which will help to determine whether the projects go forward. Activists
saw a key win when the Department of Ecology announced that in drafting
the statements for Cherry Point, not only will the body look at
potential local impact from the proposed terminal, but it will also
consider the combined impact that the two proposals will have together —
not to mention the impact that burning more coal in Asia will have on
global warming — before making their final decision.
Depending on the outcome of both environmental impact statements,
communities will again be ready to rally if need be. And again, tribes
are expected to be at the forefront of the battle. The Lummi Nation,
whose ancestral lands are near the Cherry Point terminal, is in the
midst of a cross-country expedition to unite communities against the
proposed terminal. Emboldened by the recent Oregon decision, Lummi elder
and House of Tears master carver Jewell James said, “The state of Oregon
recognized that tribal sovereignty and treaty fishing rights must be
considered in coal export decisions. We expect the Washington State
Department of Ecology to make the same considerations for Xwe’chi’eXen
[Cherry Point]. Coal exports would devastate our fishery and threaten
non-tribal fisheries, as well as damage one of our most important
cultural sites.”
If companies’ efforts are successfully blocked in the Northwest, they’ll
likely consider going through ports in the Gulf of Mexico instead. But
doing so will require longer and more expensive transport.
“There are already proposals [there] and we’ve already been fighting
them throughout the years,” said Laura Stevens, who works for Portland’s
Sierra Club and has been a key organizer of the Power Past Coal campaign.
To prep for the fight, Doglio has already traveled to Louisiana and
Texas to help groups craft a strategy.
There are also other efforts across the nation. Earlier this summer,
Oakland’s city council voted unanimously in opposition to any
transportation of fossil fuel materials along existing rail lines, as
well as through waterfronts and densely populated parts of the city;
similar resolutions have already been passed in Davis and Berkeley,
Calif. San Francisco is also considering similar moves. Meanwhile, on
the East Coast, the City of South Portland, Maine has passed an
ordinance banning the transport of crude oil from train to boat. And
back along the rail route from the Powder River Basin to the Northwest,
communities are raising their voice: a City Council resolution is in the
works in Sand Point, Idaho, and an unlikely coalition of farmers, cattle
ranchers, fishers and tribes are organizing in Montana.
The Oregon victory has galvanized campaigners across the country.
Cathryn Chudy, a local activist who has been involved in Washington
since 2010, says that the strong show of public resistance thus far
indicates that communities across the country can win.
“We’re in it for the long haul and we’re not going to back off or go
away,” she said. “If I weren’t hopeful about it, I probably wouldn’t be
doing it.”
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