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
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1 atmosphere is studied. Thank you.
2 MS. STRAUSZ-CLARK: Okay. I just wanted to
3 introduce two new listeners.
4 We have Francis Eugenio, with the U.S. Army Corps
5 of Engineers and Alice Kelly with the Department of Ecology.
6 They are listening now.
7 And up is No. 33. 34 and 35 you are at the desk.
8 Please state your name for the record.
9 THE SPEAKER: It's Michael Gallegos. I'm from
10 Bellingham, lived here 23 years. I've been a member of the
11 city council, and I'm a retired cable engineer. I've worked
12 for corporations all of my life, until I worked for public.
13 I do have some concerns about the Gateway Pacific
14 terminal. It represents to me a corporate field of dreams.
15 If you build it, they will come. And who do I
16 mean by "they"?
17 You're talking about up to 3,000 unit coal trains
18 per year, each one at least a mile and a half long. We're
19 talking about almost 500 very large boat carriers per year,
20 each one somewhere between 700 and 1,000 feet long.
21 And by the way, these very large boat carriers
22 burn fuel that's much dirtier than coal itself. And in some
23 estimates, it might be in the same order of magnitude with
24 pollution, plus some heavy metals.
25 I guess the point is that all of this coal is for