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

have a new 5 year plan whose policies shift away from a coal driven economy toward development and
use of low carbon energy sources and conservation. It puts a cap on the use of coal at shipping ports,
power plants, and their own coal mines – stock piles of excess coal inventories have been piling up.
Ships that have arrived with more coal have been turned away. One Chinese trader said, “The glory days
of big coal are behind us”. Another said, “We stopped importing at the end of May.” There are similar
facts in other Asian countries such as India, Korea, and Japan. The impact of beginning or completing
and the possibility of then shutting down, as well as operating this project, need to be addressed and
quantified in the Environmental Impact Statement.
My name is Charles Ward, I’m a Bellingham resident. I hope that the Environmental Impact Statement
will include the effects of the carbon dioxide that is going to get into the air in China and its going to
come down here in the ocean off our coasts. Acid rain on our trees and our fresh water – there’s no way
we are going to be able to stop it. I’m pretty sure the Australians are doing a study on how much carbon
dioxide is adding to the citification and that it’s killing a great barrier reef. Has anybody checked with
them to see what they find is a correlation between man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
the citification of our water, of our environment?
Peter Brigham and my address is 2437 Cherry Street in Bellingham, WA 98225. I live in Bellingham’s
Columbia neighborhood, about a quarter mile from the railroad tracks. I was diagnosed with a chronic
lung condition about 13 years ago. We purchased our home here in 2005 after hearing of the American
Lung Association’s designation in 2002 of Bellingham as having the cleanest air in the country. We
moved from Central California – one of the smoggiest areas of the country – to Bellingham as soon as
we could afford to do so. We love the region and we love our neighborhood. I’m concerned about a
decline in air quality created by an increase in rail traffic and the cumulative impact that this could have
on the pulmonary health of those living along the rail corridor, particularly the health of children and the
elderly. I’m asking that you please study the impact of the projected increases in rail traffic with its
intended emissions from the burning of diesel fuel and the transport of coal on the pulmonary health on
the most vulnerable citizens – children and elderly – who live adjacent to the railroad tracks.
My name is Bob Wagner. I live at 3607 Boxwood Avenue in Bellingham, that’s south of the airport –
within about a half mile of the train tracks going through that area. Right now we have several trains
every night, coal trains going to Vancouver. With this increase in coal train traffic, 9 trains each day
going both ways in late July or August, both the BP refinery and Phillips 66 refinery are going to have
unit trains carrying crude oil through there daily. Plus we have Amtrak going through there twice a day,
we have the other chemical trains feeding the refinery going through there every day. It appears to me
we’re going to probably have a train going through the area every hour. These trains are going to be
long – well over a mile long – probably take 20 min to go through there. We’re going to have significant
noise through the whole town – the whole Westside of Bellingham – for twenty min every day or every
hour of every day. This is totally unacceptable. If this does go through, they need to have some kind of