Eugene weekly., January 19, 2012, Page 9, Image 9

Coal Train
Fossil fuels make tracks through Oregon
C
oal doesn’t just burn hot, it burns dirty — it’s
pretty much dirt that burns — and like most
hot things, it just might burn you.
No active commercial coal mines remain
in Oregon, and the state plans to phase out coal
from the Boardman coal-burning power plant
in the Columbia Gorge by 2020. But if you
thought coal wasn’t a concern for Oregonians, think again.
Oregon is pretty dependent on coal — almost 40 percent
of the state’s electricity comes from coal-burning power
plants — and now Big Coal has plans to drive massive open
trainloads of the grimy fossil fuel right through Eugene.
Coos Bay was once home to a coal mine and shipment of
coal was a major part of its economy — almost one hundred
years ago. But coal might be making a comeback in Coos
Bay, and if it does, it will affect all of Lane County.
“I don’t think people were prepared for it,” says Grace
Pettygrove, a Eugene activist who is organizing a coalition
to fi ght the coal trains. She adds, “I think the Coos Bay
proposal caught people off guard.”
In October 2011, the Oregon International Port of Coos
Bay signed an exclusive negotiating agreement with an
anonymous company interested in shipping coal from the
port. The code name for the coal export proposal is “Project
Mainstay,” and it calls for dredging the bay to deepen it,
building a new terminal and shipping out of the port 6 to 10
million metric tons of coal a year. Estimates put that at one or
two trains a day with 15,000 tons of coal — about 110 to 130
cars carrying 120 tons of coal each — coming from mines in
Wyoming and Montana. Project Mainstay also means Eugene
might see trains more than one mile long coming through
town with huge amounts of coal dust blowing from the cars.
A Sightline Institute investigation into coal found that “500
pounds to a ton of coal can escape from a single loaded car,”
according to calculations by the BNSF railroad.
Opponents point to multiple health issues including
coal dust, diesel fumes blowing along the rail route, toxic
pollution the coal burning in Asia will blow back to Oregon,
contributions to climate change and a host of other problems
that transporting coal will bring to local communities.
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
Coal Complex
“The way to think about coal generally is not just a coal
mine or a coal-fi red power plant or a transmission line or a
rail line or an export plan,” says Erik Schlenker-Goodrich
director of Western Environmental Law Center’s Climate
& Energy program. “The way to really think about this is
that you have this pretty massive coal complex that stretches
across the landscape.”
The whole coal complex starts with mining, but it
stretches from the mine to rail lines to power plants to
exports and so on. “It’s a massive supply chain and at every
single stage there are impacts from coal,” he says.
According to Schlenker-Goodrich, in addition to the dust
from the trains, those impacts include water and air quality
issues at the mines and at the power plants from the arsenic,
mercury and lead that are byproducts of mining and coal
burning. “Coal combustion waste can be very toxic,” he
says. “The chemicals and compounds can be detrimental to
human health and water quality and aquatic species.”
When the Environmental Protection Agency released
its new emissions standards for mercury and other toxic
substances from coal-burning power plants last December,
the agency said the new standards “will prevent as many
as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year.”
But with proposed Northwest exports sending coal
to Asia, “we are sort of kicking ourselves twice over,”
according to activist and fi lmmaker Jasmine Zimmer-
Stucky, who recently completed a fi lm project with Balance
Media documenting the coal export issue. “We’re shipping
it overseas only to have it blow back here.”
A fi fth of the mercury pollution in waterways in the
Pacifi c Northwest comes from abroad, Laura Stevens of the
Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign says. “Climate change
pollution, no matter where it’s burned, affects us.”
Zimmer-Stucky says the federal government recently
opened up more public land for coal mining in the West,
despite the lack of need for it in the U.S. where many plants
are turning away from the fossil fuel. She says that coal will
be exported via cheap rail and then shipped overseas for a
huge profi t margin for the coal companies.
MAP COURTESY SIERRA CLUB
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EUGENE WEEKLY JANUARY 19, 2012 9
PHOTO BY TRASK BEDORTHA
UO’s Climate Justice League wants to stop
coal trains from coming through Eugene.