Besides going to hearings, submit comments on coal trains online and by snail mail [View all]

[eridani]

I'm forwarding below a reminder about tomorrow's Environmental Impact Statement Scoping Hearing in Seattle (4-7 pm, rally at 2 pm) regarding the proposed Gateway Pacific (coal) Terminal.

The hearing in Vancouver, Wa. is happening today from from 4-7 pm at the Clark College Gaiser Student Center, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way.

The information about the Seattle hearing and rally is in the forwarded email below.

I strongly encourage you to show up and enter your name in the lottery to deliver a two-minute oral comment to the agencies doing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for this proposed project.

I also want to make sure you know that, beyond making a two-minute comment before the agencies, you can submit a separate comment for each concern you have. This is much better than submitting all your concerns in one comment because if you do that, all your concerns will only count as one comment. And the more comments that are submitted, the better.

If you make an oral comment at tomorrow's hearing, you can follow up with as many comments as you want online or by mail, and expand on what you said in your two-minute oral comment.

The deadline for comment submissions is January 21.

Here's the EIS website for submitting comments online: http://www.eisgatewaypacificwa.gov/get-involved/comment

You can also submit comments by regular mail to this address:

GPT/BNSF Custer Spur EIS Co-Lead Agencies
c/o CH2M HILL
1100 112th Avenue NE, Suite 400
Bellevue, WA 98004

In order for comments to be considered by the agencies doing the EIS, they must include these three elements:
1. Briefly tell the agencies who you are and what you value (eg, I like to walk on the beach with my family).
2. Then tell them which part of the proposed operation threatens that thing that you value - what impact you’re concerned about and why that impact (an oil spill, for example) is significant to you. Then, if you can, expand it and try and show how many other people are impacted, to make it significant. (Significant Adverse Impacts – those go into the system and stay there.)
3. Then ask them to study the risks of that impact happening to what you value as a result of this operation. (Then they need to come up with a way to measure it.)
Note that a “comment” as the agencies define it is not an opinion piece. They're interested in the Significant Adverse Impacts that you want them to study.

One more important point: You may hear the argument that if the coal doesn't go to Cherry Point, it will go to Canada anyway on the same route. Here's the link to a 26-page study done by Communitywise Bellingham that explains why this is not true:

http://www.communitywisebellingham.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CWB-Report-Coal-Train-Traffic-to-Canada-and-Gateway-Pacific-Terminal.pdf

Experts at our scoping hearing prep workshop on Orcas also explained that it’s not true because the capacities won’t come close to 48 million tons, much less 155 tons.


Here are a couple of recommended links:
www.coaltrainfacts.org
101 Reasons to be Concerned about Coal Export:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/02/1088274/-101-Reasons-to-be-Concerned-About-Coal-Export

Let's keep coal out of this year's Christmas stockings! :&gt

With thanks and best wishes for a joyous holiday season!