Bellingham Comments from Digital Recorder - EISs for the Proposed ...

GATEWAY PACIFIC TERMINAL EIS SCOPING HEARING VOL. II
COURT REPORTER: BETH DRUMMOND PROCEEDING DATE: October 27, 2012
Page 53
1 love living here.
2 I actually live in Bellingham. I have a
3 granddaughter that goes to school in Burlington, and I have
4 a daughter that works at Western, so I do a lot of traveling
5 between Mount Vernon and Bellingham.
6 And very often, inevitably, I'm stopped at a
7 lot of train crossings. Recently, I've been stopped at
8 quite a few more because of the coal train.
9 I would like you to consider the amount of idle
10 time for the people that are stopped at the train tracks
11 because the line is so long. And all of these people that
12 are stopped in there are using up a lot more gas waiting for
13 the train, so that's one consideration.
14 I would also like to speak for elderly people
15 that not only don't have as much of a voice. I have a
16 friend that has COPD and she lives in a retirement center
17 that's right on the train tracks. And she said that every
18 time the train goes by, she doesn't need to listen for it
19 now. She begins a coughing fit when the coal train goes by,
20 so she doesn't need to hear it. She feels it when the coal
21 dust is causing her to cough.
22 I'm also a grandmother of an unborn. I just
23 found out I was going to be a grandma, again, so I'd like to
24 speak for them on what the coal dust and just the
25 environmental impact has on unborn children.