PAGE 12 | December 15, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Congress hears about coal terminal delay
From Page 6
safe projects that provide jobs
for our members.”
Millennium has so far spent
$15 million on technical work
for the state and federal govern-
ment EIS process, and another
$20 million on cleanup of the
smelter site, including the re-
moval over 300,000 tons of ma-
terial.
At the hearing, Committee
Chair Rob Bishop, a Utah Re-
publican, said like other environ-
mental statutes, NEPA had a no-
ble intent, but was written in too
open-ended and vague a manner.
“A common refrain that we
are hearing,” Bishop said, “… is
that NEPA is used as a tool to
slow or block needed infrastruc-
ture projects and rural develop-
ment. Delays, duplications, mul-
tiple reviews, add a cost to the
program, which drives up the
cost of everything from milk to
lumber to energy.”
That point got pushback from
some Democrats on the commit-
tee, including ranking member
Raul Grijalva of Arizona. Gri-
jalva says delays are partly the
result of federal agency under-
staffing.
“Since the Republicans took
the House majority in 2011 they
have renewed their assault on
NEPA,” Grijalva said. “They
have pushed for drilling, log-
ging, dam-building and other en-
vironmentally destructive activ-
ities to be conducted without
federal agency oversight or pub-
ONLINE EXTRA
Read Bridges’ full testimony at http://bit.ly/2l96MId or watch a video of the testi-
mony, and the questioning from members of Congress that ensued, at
https://youtu.be/_ESzJAz-jUE?t=28m51s
lic review. … Blaming NEPA
for uncovering bad projects is
like blaming a tumor on the X-
ray that discovered it.”
Grijalva didn’t specifically
criticize the Millennium project,
or say why it’s taken almost six
years to study the impact on wa-
ter quality of two Columbia
River docks.